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PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2008 10:14 am 
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OK, yet another post about volume leveling. I just tried using mythmusic this morning and noticed that leveling is occurring on music as well which is a little too aggressive for my liking (call me crazy but dynamics in music is important!). What would be ideal is something that leveled the volume from track to track. Anyway, to get mythmusic to use the default alsa device instead of the leveler I set the device under settings>media settings> music settings> general to: ALSA:default I may set up another filter to level the tracks somewhat but not as aggressively but, this works ok for now.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 8:44 am 
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footeo wrote:
ok I believe I have it working now. I don't know how It wasn't working before but, I guess this is the one thing I didn't try.

settings are:
Audio output device: ALSA:ladcomp
Mixer Device: ALSA:default

This seems to work. Although it is sort of a hard thing to test. The question I have is does this affect the settings in video or are the mplayer settings that I did above separate?


Boy, was I soooo ready to try this, but alas I could not get my setup to work. I added the /etc/asound.conf as you described. I changed the plughw:0,0 to plughw:1,0 because I have a USB turtle beach to send digital audio to the AV receiver. I verified that this worked by typing in a shell:
Code:
aplay -D ladcomp  Blue_Moon.wav

The music came out the main speakers and you could tell it was compressed. (So I agree that the settings are too aggressive for music) So I go into Home -> Util/Setup -> Setup -> General and change my output device to
Code:
ALSA:ladcomp

I back out and try a recording, no sound. :cry: I don’t have a mixer line, but I do have a passthru device line, which I tried ALSA:ladcomp, ALSA:default, ALSA:hw:1,0, default, none of which helped. If I change the audio out device to:
Code:
ALSA:hw:1,0

I get sound. It was late, but I am pretty sure I got sound with
Code:
ALSA:plughw:1,0

I poked around looking for some kind of error message, but found none. Not sure where to go next.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 10:04 am 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
Quote:
I installed the ladspa sdk to see what plugins were installed and ended up needing to install the fastLookaheadLimiter plugin:
Code:

aptitude install ladspa-sdk
aptitude install swh-plugins


When I installed ladspa-sdk it didn't seem to need anything additional. Do I still need to install the swh-plugins?

How do I know what plugins are installed?

Thanks


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 Post subject: Tried it...
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 11:13 am 
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Posts: 17
I tried this on my system last night.

The good - it appears to be a very nice, high quality sound compression.

The bad - it's quite finnicky, and after watching maybe 2 recordings, I always lose my sound completely and I have to reboot in order to get my sound back.

One thing that definitely "confuses" the system is the use of other programs that output to the ALSA default. I have a script which makes button sounds when I press keys on my remote, and that one now has a nasty "echo" effect, even though the sound output for that script is using aplay with the default device which is not compressed.

Also, the sound compression algorithm does use a small amount of processing, so there is a short delay in the audio. If you really care a lot about audio sync, this can be a problem. Alternatively, if your audio is *ahead* of your video, this may help fix it! :)

By the way, I have another technique for volume leveling. My Dragon2's analog output is connected to a Behringer Minicom COM800 compressor. You can find it online for about $50 and it has a bunch of presets that compress audio. It's not quite as aggressive as the algorithm in the ALSA plugins, but it's good enough that I don't get totally blown away by commercials anymore. It's a nice device for the price.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 12:46 pm 
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tscholl wrote:
Quote:
I installed the ladspa sdk to see what plugins were installed and ended up needing to install the fastLookaheadLimiter plugin:
Code:

aptitude install ladspa-sdk
aptitude install swh-plugins


When I installed ladspa-sdk it didn't seem to need anything additional. Do I still need to install the swh-plugins?

How do I know what plugins are installed?

Thanks


You may not even need the ladspa-sdk but, you definitely need the swh-plugin as it contains the fastLookaheadLimiter. The first post in this thread that suggests using ladspa with alsa has a link to the wiki page for ladspa. Which explains what is in ladsp-sdk. It has some utilities one of which is to see what plugins you already have installed on your system.

I have been running it now without any real issues on my system for the past few days.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 1:10 pm 
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cfr131 wrote:
I back out and try a recording, no sound. :cry: I don’t have a mixer line, but I do have a passthru device line, which I tried ALSA:ladcomp, ALSA:default, ALSA:hw:1,0, default, none of which helped. If I change the audio out device to:
Code:
ALSA:hw:1,0

I get sound. It was late, but I am pretty sure I got sound with
Code:
ALSA:plughw:1,0

I poked around looking for some kind of error message, but found none. Not sure where to go next.


Under the general > audio do you have use internal volume control checked?
If it is unchecked you do not have the option to change your mixer settings. If you are using AC3 pasthrough I believe the raw AC3 signal sent to what ever your external device is without any processing from your sound card so this leveler wouldn't work for ac3 audio. But, maybe someone else knows better. I am just sending an analog signal to my regular old TV or to my stereo.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 3:18 pm 
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Joined: Wed May 31, 2006 8:19 pm
Posts: 19
footeo wrote:
cfr131 wrote:
I back out and try a recording, no sound. :cry: I don’t have a mixer line, but I do have a passthru device line, which I tried ALSA:ladcomp, ALSA:default, ALSA:hw:1,0, default, none of which helped. If I change the audio out device to:
Code:
ALSA:hw:1,0

I get sound. It was late, but I am pretty sure I got sound with
Code:
ALSA:plughw:1,0

I poked around looking for some kind of error message, but found none. Not sure where to go next.


Under the general > audio do you have use internal volume control checked?

No. In fact that was one option that I did not try.
Quote:
If it is unchecked you do not have the option to change your mixer settings. If you are using AC3 pasthrough I believe the raw AC3 signal sent to what ever your external device is without any processing from your sound card so this leveler wouldn't work for ac3 audio. But, maybe someone else knows better. I am just sending an analog signal to my regular old TV or to my stereo.

I think you are right about the AC passthrough. I did try both with it checked and without it checked, but I did not try the use internal controls. I will tonight and report back.


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 4:56 pm 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
Ok here's where I'm at

Quote:
I createded the /etc/asound.conf

Configured the Video player as:
player-resumer.pl -fs -zoom -ao alsa:device=ladcomp %s

Changed Audio Ouput Device and Mixer Device to

Audio output device: ALSA:ladcomp
Mixer Device: ALSA:default

But still no volume, and I don't get the volume control bar on the screen either. Any suggestions?

Tim


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 7:06 pm 
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Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2005 2:09 pm
Posts: 107
tscholl,
Did you install the plugin?
Try running mplayer from a shell using:
Code:
mplayer MyNotSoLoudMovie.avi -ao alsa:device=ladcomp

With one of the files in your video directory. If you don't get any sound scroll up through the output of mplayer and see if there are any errors with the audio. What are you sending your audio signal to? how did you control your volume before if you didn't use the internal volume control?

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2008 7:16 pm 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
Thanks for the reply. I'll give that a try and post again with the results. I always used the internal volume control.

Thanks.

Tim


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 9:43 am 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
Quote:
Did you install the plugin?
Try running mplayer from a shell using:
Code:
mplayer MyNotSoLoudMovie.avi -ao alsa:device=ladcomp


Yes I did install the plugin, from a shell if I run:
mplayer MyNotSoLoudMovie.avi -ao alsa:device=ladcomp
I do get the video and sound but have no control over it.

Tim


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 8:17 pm 
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Posts: 107
tscholl wrote:
Ok here's where I'm at

Audio output device: ALSA:ladcomp
Mixer Device: ALSA:default
But still no volume, and I don't get the volume control bar on the screen either. Any suggestions?

Tim


Do you recall what your settings were before you made the changes? Do you get the volume control on screen if you set the audio output device and mixer device to: ALSA:default When you launch mplayer from a shell window are you using the keyboard commands for mplayer to change the volume? (9 0)

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2008 9:40 pm 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
I wrote down the setting and set them back to original after I didn't get any audio after making the changes. I did not try the keyboard to change the volume though when I played the mpg with the from a shell.

I'll give that a try and see.

Thing are with the original setting but really want to get ladcomp to work.

Tks


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:41 am 
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Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2006 3:48 pm
Posts: 997
Location: Lexington, Ky
Update:
Running from a shell
Code:
 
mplayer MyNotSoLoudMovie.avi -ao alsa:device=ladcomp

plays the video and I can control the sound using keyboard commands / *

However when I configure
Code:
Utilities and Settings > Setup > Media Settings > Video Settings > Player settings to:
mplayer-resumer.pl -fs -zoom -ao alsa:device=ladcomp

and
Code:
Utilities and Settings > Setup > General > Audio
Audio Output Device  ALSA:ladcomp
Mixer Device to ALSA:default


And then try Watch Live TV, still no volume but I do get the Volume control bar onscreen.

Any other variations to settings in Utilities and Settings > Setup > General > Audio
and I lose the onscreen Volume control bar and no sound.

One other thing I noticed is that if I run the listplugins

root@mythtv:/etc# listplugins | grep fastLookaheadLimiter
Warning: You do not have a LADSPA_PATH environment variable set.
Fast Lookahead limiter (1913/fastLookaheadLimiter)
I get the above warning message. Should this be set somewhere?

Tks


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:32 pm 
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Posts: 107
tscholl wrote:
Update:

root@mythtv:/etc# listplugins | grep fastLookaheadLimiter
Warning: You do not have a LADSPA_PATH environment variable set.
Fast Lookahead limiter (1913/fastLookaheadLimiter)
I get the above warning message. Should this be set somewhere?

Tks


Unfortunately I get the same message about the path not being set as well. What kind of sound card do you have? Which version of Mythtv are you running? What is plugged into your sound card to listen to the audio? Can you post the output from using mplayer on the command line.

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