Audio Problems with Spiderman

[CodeZero]

Well, I don't know if this is an issue specific to the movie at all, but the audio to the movie is very out of balance.  Foreground sound, like speech, are very faint, while background noise, like ambient sounds, music, etc. are all very loud.  The main characters will be having a conversation and all I hear is what the kids sitting at the next table are saying to each other.

Has anyone had this problem before?  Should I just try using some other codecs?

Thanks.

[Scott M Davis]

I get this problem with every single DVD I own, not just Spiderman.

[torgosPizza]

Sounds to me like the way Dolby Digital 5.1 surround is being (not) decoded properly by your computer's audio drivers. What OS are you guys using?

[Scott M Davis]

Win XP Home.

It may be my sound card. I may need to configure properly.

[torgosPizza]

I know that depending on your system, not sure if you can tweak XP home that much, but a lot of times you can set options with how the sound is decoded. For instance if you have a 5.1 surround sound card, your wIndows system might be decoding it properly - but you can't hear it unless you have a surround setup. Definitely look through your options and if it IS a surround card, and you only have stereo speakers, setup your card in this way. It'd probably be something(s) like "Downmix to stereo" (as an option for 5.1) or a "Stereo" output mode.

Your Mileage May Vary so definitely look through your options. Good luck!

[CodeZero]

Well, I highly doubt my soundcard supports 5.1 sound.  It's a pretty low end one.  Additionally, when I watch the DVD using PowerDVD, the audio sounds great.

[CodeZero]

OK, it looks like I have it working now.  I think the codecs you want to use have to be selected before you load the riff file.  I was always switching between codecs during playback, and it sounded like nothing was changing. 

If this is the case, that should be made clear in the window that pops up when you change settings, like by explicitly saying that it can't or graying out the options to change the codecs during playback.