BeLight/BeSweetGUI - How to increase Volume?

[Mickey79]

Ave,

I know you can increase the volume of the Audio in BeLight when encoding from AVI to AC3 .. but i don't know how? There's so many options and i can't understand which one is used to increasing the audio volume...

Either in BeLight or BeSweetGUI, it doesnt matter. I use both.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,
Mickey

[nic2k4]

Enable Boost and SSRC, then click on the boost button. Use the DG preset curve and set the top value to 1, the bottom one is automatic. Boost flattens the dynamic range, making the sound louder at the expense of the difference between quiet and loud sounds i.e. a whisper could sound as loud as a scream. Increase the top value to flatten more. Click on the SSRC button and enable normalisation; I usually set it to 98%. I don't use normalisation in Azid, it doesn't seem to do anything.

[Mickey79]

Enable Boost and SSRC, then click on the boost button. Use the DG preset curve and set the top value to 1, the bottom one is automatic. Boost flattens the dynamic range, making the sound louder at the expense of the difference between quiet and loud sounds i.e. a whisper could sound as loud as a scream. Increase the top value to flatten more. Click on the SSRC button and enable normalisation; I usually set it to 98%. I don't use normalisation in Azid, it doesn't seem to do anything.

Ave,

Awesome! Thanks a ton!

Mickey

[Mickey79]

Enable Boost and SSRC, then click on the boost button. Use the DG preset curve and set the top value to 1, the bottom one is automatic. Boost flattens the dynamic range, making the sound louder at the expense of the difference between quiet and loud sounds i.e. a whisper could sound as loud as a scream. Increase the top value to flatten more. Click on the SSRC button and enable normalisation; I usually set it to 98%. I don't use normalisation in Azid, it doesn't seem to do anything.

Ave,

I was trying to follow your instructions carefully. But i don't think they matched up to what i saw in BeSweetGUI. I did assume you are giving me these instructions for BeSweetGUI and not BeLight as i couldn't see these options in BeLight.

Now firstly, in BeSweetGUI, i enabaled Boost & SSRC. I clicked on the Boost button for it's settings, specified DG in the box below as the Curve. There are two options on the left, Manual or Auto. I choose Manual, under which there are two boxes.. they don't say "Top" or "Bottom" as label, but i gave 1 in the top box and it had 0.95 in the bottom one already.
Then i clicked on SSRC button and hit the "Normalive wave file" option. There was no box there where i could specify a percentage as you mentioned.. 98%. The only place i could give this percentage was in the settings for AZID1.

Did i do everything correctly or did i need to do it differently?

Thanks a ton,
Mickey

[nic2k4]

That's right, my mistake on the 98%, I'm at work and working of memory. The Boost setting in the bottom box (0.95) is set automatically and is related to the top one. Even if you changed it, it wouldn't take it, just look at the command line (it only does that with the DG curve). I found only the manual mode works right, but that's normal since Besweet doesn't support all the programs switches).

[Abond]

What about "Gain"?

[Mickey79]

That's right, my mistake on the 98%, I'm at work and working of memory. The Boost setting in the bottom box (0.95) is set automatically and is related to the top one. Even if you changed it, it wouldn't take it, just look at the command line (it only does that with the DG curve). I found only the manual mode works right, but that's normal since Besweet doesn't support all the programs switches).

Ave,

Excellent.. no harm done.
Thanks again!

Mickey

[Mickey79]

What about "Gain"?

Ave,

What about Gain?

Mickey

[Abond]

Ave,

I know you can increase the volume of the Audio in BeLight when encoding from AVI to AC3 .. but i don't know how? There's so many options and i can't understand which one is used to increasing the audio volume...

Either in BeLight or BeSweetGUI, it doesnt matter. I use both.

Can anyone help?

Thanks,
Mickey

I am using gain in besweet to increase the volume. My question was directed to nic2k4.

[nic2k4]

I am using gain in besweet to increase the volume. My question was directed to nic2k4. :D

I used to use that, the problem is finding out what value to put in there, too high a value will cause clipping. I'd run Besweet once with normalize in Azid and get the max gain from the log...

Sometimes the value I would get, would cause the level to exceed 0 dB (probably due to rounding errors). Using Boost to adjust the dynamic range avoids this; it raises the level of the quiet parts while preventing the louder parts from clipping.

Of course, you don't have to use Boost. You can just rely on the normalize function in SSRC, but the dynamic range on DVD is so wide that once the audio has been normalized to its peak, the quiet parts remain too low.

[Mickey79]

I used to use that, the problem is finding out what value to put in there, too high a value will cause clipping. I'd run Besweet once with normalize in Azid and get the max gain from the log...

Sometimes the value I would get, would cause the level to exceed 0 dB (probably due to rounding errors). Using Boost to adjust the dynamic range avoids this; it raises the level of the quiet parts while preventing the louder parts from clipping.

Of course, you don't have to use Boost. You can just rely on the normalize function in SSRC, but the dynamic range on DVD is so wide that once the audio has been normalized to its peak, the quiet parts remain too low.

Ave,

Nick.. i tested the AC3's and your method works great! The volume is really good on the AC3's and there is more volume loss during encoding/conversion!

Thanks a ton!

Mickey

[sdsumike619]

can someone expand upon what nic2k4 said? I don't quite understand but apparently it worked for that Mickey guy...Do I need this Azid.exe?

[bobkart]

From what I am reading here, this Boost function makes the overall (average) level of the audio file higher, but at the expense of dynamic range, i.e. reducing the difference between the quietest and loudest parts (quiet parts get much louder, loud parts don't). Where I come from, dynamic range is a good thing, so I'd hate to lose it. Maybe in a car that's less of an issue (I'm talking about home audio).

Gain is what will bring up the audio levels uniformly (both quiet and loud parts) with no sacrifice of dynamic range. Gain just multiplies each sample by the same number, say 1.5, to increase the amplitude by 50%.

I have written various WAV file utilities, which work via command line execution, that can do just that kind of "gain" function to a WAV file (assuming 16-bit stereo). One of the utilities will tell you the minimum/maximum sample values in a WAV file, allowing you to easily compute what gain value will give the most use of the available amplitude without clipping.

[sdsumike619]

Ok, here's what I really want to know:

Is there a way (and if there is what is it) to encode an ac3 file that maintains the exact volume levels throughout as the original input wav file. In other words, I play a wav file on my computer, say, a song and listen to it. I then play the ac3 file encoded from that wav file and WANT it to sound identical (volumewise).

As it is now, to get that same volume level on the ac3, I have to turn the volume knob on my stereo up quite a few notches.

[bobkart]

I've only ever encoded WAV files to AC3 as part of a DVD authoring process. Using TMPGEnc DVD Author. And I can't tell you if I got the same amplitude or not. I suppose I could try reversing the conversion, from AC3 to WAV, and see if I get the same amplitude as the original, but even that would not be conclusive since the amplitude change could be being reversed on the way back. So I can't answer your question, my experience is with uncompressed audio, I don't mess much with the compressed formats unless I have to.

[sdsumike619]

I see.. Well there is a significant difference between what i'm hearing in the wav and encoded ac3... Tried fooling with settings in the ac3 encoder but I just made a mess!