[Designing Waves]

Hello,


I searched so I hope this hasn't been covered *too* much before, ha. I recently put together a new Windows Vista Home Premium Computer and realized that standard DVD movies are not playing at the same level of sound quality I had previously on my old Windows XP machine. What I mean by worse sound quality is that the volume seems lower, and the bass seems much less thunderous.

All music and games sound just as good on my new PC, only the DVDs sound worse. I am using the same Loogitech 4.1 speakers as before, and I am also using a Soundblaster card from Audigy in both PCs. The old one had a SB Live! and the new one has a SB Audigy2 SE...shouldn't make a differance.


My old PC had PowerDVD installed as the DVD codec, and on my new Home Premium Vista machine I am using the Microsoft supplied codec. I am writing here to ask if this is likely the cause? Can I install the PowerDVD I had been using before on the new pc even though it only says its for Windows XP?


Thanks for any advice!

 

[Designing Waves]

Anybody have anything to say whether the vista codec provides less than quality dvd sound?

 

[Knight_2000]

I did noticed the same problem you are describing. After i switched to Vista X64 Premium using my sound blaster audigy 2 Zs , any dvd i would play will seem to sound lower in volume but playing music, games or anything else would be fine so i knew it had something to do with the decoder. My system is setup to use the Internal decoder of the card and hooked up to a 7.1 speaker system using analog connections. After messing around i found out that if you go to the Audio Console for the sound card, then go to the tab Decoder, and under decoder youre going to find if you want the card in passtrough mode or to use the internal decoder. Right underneath you are going to find that there is a Dolby Digital Symbol with a Settings Button next to it, get into settings and put the Dynamic Range into Night Mode which is basically uncompressed and if you are playing a movie at the same time you are going to noticed a noticeable increase in volume than if you leave it in normal. I hope this helps you because it was driving me nuts to have to raise the volume that much to listen to movies. Let me know how this worked for you.