Is there any way to play AC-3 on a PC without DRC?

[deleted user]

For processing an AC-3 track on the fly, I use AC3Filter in concert with MPC-HC.  (The former will pop up automatically when you play a video using the latter.)  Give it a shot and have a look at the settings to see if it meets your requirements.  I decode the track and downmix using my preferred settings, but you can bitstream if necessary.

If you are remuxing, you can use eac3to to strip the dialnorm and see if you like the result better.  (As I'm sure you know, it's not necessary to convert the track to WAV to do that.)  When I remux, I often downmix multi-channel AC-3 to 2.0 PCM so that it sounds the way that I want regardless of playback device.  Like you, I far prefer the way audio sounds with VLC (which, in my case, is probably because it downmixes differently), so that was my playback method of choice before I discovered AC3Filter.

I shall try that eac3to road, that would at least save some space. Didn't know a tool existed that actually did it, but it seems logical that it is possible.

How do you guys deal with this? Do you all have Dolby Decoders and use bitstreaming or play directly via Blu Ray players? And if so, how do you know your players aren't doing the same thing?

do you use HDMI, Coax/Optical, or just the native directsound on the soundcard when watching movies?

I have a Onkyo TX-SR606 amplifier that doesn't seem to apply dialnorm to AC3 sources when it is being bitstreamed or transcoded and played using VLC and Media Player classic Via HDMI (but set-top DVD players apply the Dialnorm) 


if you can recall my comments on previous postings about how when i converted AC3 2.0 stereo sources to FLAC/WAV that they sounded better because the Dialnorm has been stripped, I got a lot of backlash because other members thought I was bs'ing but apparently i'm not the only one that recognizes the Dialnorm issue.

Just the other day, I converted a Mariah Carey #1's DVD AC3 5.1 track to FLAC using foobar2000, and it sounded just as good as the FLAC 2.0 track (the Rip that I downloaded had a 2.0 track was converted to flac from PCM)

I play it using my soundcard, although I also use HeSuVi to convert a 5.1 output to a 2 channel headphone output on-the-fly.

Yes, I do remember your comments, but I nevertheless stand by what I said. Converting lossy to lossless (unless necessary for PAL->NTSC conversion or similar) is a waste of space. It's better to transfer a 600 MB file and then have everyone process it as they wish than to send a file twice that size. Plus, as Chewtobacca noted, perhaps there's a lossless way of stripping the DRC.

By the way, what exactly is the relationship between the terms DRC and Dialnorm?