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Dolby Home Theater suppresses bass

Vardion
Level 7
DHT4 seems to "eat"/suppress bass.

How to reproduce: Download the 6 channel demo WAV from

http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Samples.html

File is: http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Samples/Microsoft/6_Channel_ID.wav

Play this wav on any sound solution other than Phoebus/DHT4 (your onboard audio or Phoebus with DHT offline). You will hear the five main channels and at last the bass channel.

Now play the file on Phoebus with active DHT: you will hear the five main channels but no bass. DHT's spectrum analyzer will display the bass, but there is no audio.

I no longer wonder why my Phoebus seems to seriously lack bass...

Can anybody else reproduce this, please?
4,558 Views
3 REPLIES 3

SoundMan
Level 7
Vardion wrote:
DHT4 seems to "eat"/suppress bass.

How to reproduce: Download the 6 channel demo WAV from

http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Samples.html

File is: http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/AudioFormats/WAVE/Samples/Microsoft/6_Channel_ID.wav

Play this wav on any sound solution other than Phoebus/DHT4 (your onboard audio or Phoebus with DHT offline). You will hear the five main channels and at last the bass channel.

Now play the file on Phoebus with active DHT: you will hear the five main channels but no bass. DHT's spectrum analyzer will display the bass, but there is no audio.

I no longer wonder why my Phoebus seems to seriously lack bass...

Can anybody else reproduce this, please?


Did you try Flex bass? DHT works a lot like Pro Logic II does but without the redirection of bass. Which some speaker sets and the like have problems with. The bass could be there but not getting sent to the speakers capable of handling it.

The misconception in Surround Sound is that .1 part is the bass channel. It's not. It's a Low Frequency Effects channel. Mainly designed for theaters to calibrate special effects like earthquakes and thunder to the size of their sound system. Bass management's job is to redirect it to the speakers capable of handling it. Most 5.1 systems have satellite speakers incapable of handling bass. Some sets just reek overall because they lack management systems in them period.

I use headphones, there is no bass redirection.

Vardion wrote:
I use headphones, there is no bass redirection.


I just turn the Dolby stuff off if you're wearing headphones. I am able to reproduce successfully when you stated headphones. However it disappears when using XEAR Surround Headphones. Probably the program uses 2.1 on 2.0 only source and is not handled correctly by Windows. Windows should be able to downmix any 5.1 or 7.1 stream in to stereo for you when wearing headphones. Providing you don't access the end point directly with such a stream (which would bypass everything and result in error messages or other problems).

Alternatively, you can use a media play that does it correctly for you.