recently I bought a mediaplayer with Kodi. Now I see, that MKV files with 5.1 surround sound plays the LFE/bass very quietly on Infuse compared to this Kodi Player.
The same movie (Transformers 4) plays on Netflix via Apple TV 4K on the same bass loudness like on the Kodi Player. So Infuse (and also MrMC) have a problem with bass. I think it has something to do with missing Dolby flags/tags for LFE +10dB.
I am using an Yamaha RXV685 directly connected via HDMI to the ATV4K. AVR is getting PCM like it should when selected best quality sound in tvOS settings.
Transformers is just an example. I tested several movies and it seems to be the same behaviour everytime.
mediainfo for Transformers:
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 2
File size : 19.7 GiB
Duration : 2 h 45 min
Overall bit rate : 17.1 Mb/s
Movie name : PS!!!
Encoded date : UTC 2014-11-18 01:41:31
Writing application : mkvmerge v3.4.0 (âRapunzelâ) gebaut am May 15 2010 09:38:20
Writing library : libebml v0.8.0 + libmatroska v0.9.0
Audio #1
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2 h 45 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 756 MiB (4%)
Title : German RETAIL
Language : German
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : Yes
Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2 h 45 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 756 MiB (4%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : No
Forced : No
Text #1
ID : 4
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Title : German FORCED
Language : German
Default : Yes
Forced : Yes
Text #2
ID : 5
Format : VobSub
Muxing mode : zlib
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : Picture based subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : German
Default : No
Forced : No
Text #3
ID : 6
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Title : English FORCED
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : Yes
Text #4
ID : 7
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Title : English
Language : English
Default : No
Forced : No
I havenât heard of a bass boost tag on a file. Is it perhaps the reverse where infuse is correct and others are doubling bass through a setting? Possibly an issue with room correction or maybe specific to pcm receiver settings such that bass isnât loud enough?
No the bass sounds like it should on the other devices/apps. Infuse is definitely to low in bass. Same settings everywhere, my system isnât new either.
This whole âApple TV 4K magically converts everything to PCMâ pisses me off. Fact is, you never know, what they actually do in this process. When they dropped bitstream support, they made the biggest mistake in my opinion.
Iâm pretty sure Firecore knows such problems, but they canât fight against it due to tvOS limitations. Same thing with real 24p playback. But this is another sad story.
You might want to try one of the videos that you noted issues in the past on 7.3 and see what you think. Often audio issues can be subjective and youâre the one who will know whatâs right for you.
I didnât try Infuse since I discovered this and went over to Kodi with RPi4. But with Kodi 19 there are some new bugs like sometimes little stutter whatever.
What I donât understand: Apple and Infuse developers always stated, that the audio track is given to the AVR via HDMI lossless LPCM. So if this is true, why is now a change in the dynamic range of Dolby audio tracks necessary? Makes no sense to me.
I tried one movie and it could be better. Last time I tried was over one year ago but I remember, that the volume of bass scenes were dramatically lower as on bitstreamed via Kodi devices. I think it still a little bit quieter compared to bitstreaming.