[FFmpeg-devel] Default dynamic range compression on AC3

[Wiebe Cazemier]

Hi,

What started as a question at the Kodi (XMBC) forum ([1]) on how to turn off Dolby Digital (AC3) dynamic range compression, turned into a patch and then a discussion on Github [2] about the default value for the AC3 dynamic range compression.

Kodi, using ffmpeg, didn't set the 'drc_scale' option to avcodec, resulting in the DRC meta data embedded in AC3 streams being applied, to arrive at a compressed output. On virtually every hardware and software decoder I've seen, DRC has been on by default (currently trying to write a patch to VLC, having the same issue). This has led me to the hypothesis that this is why people think DTS and AAC sound better than AC3. It does for most people, but it doesn't have to. AC3 is given an unfair disadvantage because as far as I know, it's the only codec with this meta data embedded and for some reason, developers/manufacturers have chosen to enable it by default, even in high-end receivers. 

See this [2] particular post with recordings and waveform screenshots of the difference with DRC on and off.

So I was wondering if the default of 1 for drc_scale was chosen purposefully or not. I feel very strongly that it should be 0 by default, because I don't see why streams with AC3 (as opposed to DTS, AAC, PCM, whatever) as audio should be treated differently if the user didn't ask for it. 

Regards,

Wiebe


[1] http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=219228
[2] https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/6820
[3] http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=219228&pid=1958799#pid1958799