Share unknown audio / video player features

Communities Audio Hardware & Music
1

What features in a specific music / media playback program do you believe more people should be aware of?

For VLC it is

Tools, customize interface, speed selector

I bet not a single person on this forum except me is aware of its existence–not bragging, just happened to see it one day, and never seen it mentioned on any website.

VLC menu only allows 10% or a changing amount of shift in speed.

(fine) is 10%

Slower / Faster is all over the place–and without the speed selector, you’ll have no idea what it is.

Slower first changes to 66% speed, then 50, then 33.

Speed selector allows 3 or 4% speed changes, varies

Also, turn off time-stretch in the audio settings

Audacious (windows mac linux) has 3 decimal precision on speed, quite nice, and the EQ has 31 hz, which only mobile VLC has, not desktop vlc.

2

i use the +/- on keyboard to change speeds or are you talking about another setting?

3

In vlc? If that works or you set a custom key (tools pref hotkey) then it’s usually 10% shifts.

You can shift by 3 or 4% using the speed selector.

Tools customize interface, scroll down to it, and drag to Line 2

There isn’t a hotkey for it (hopefully I can convince the devs to add one) and left right arrows might be the only key to change it, only with the slider shown.

Have you ever tried without the default time-stretch on? For faster speeds it works amazing, makes thw voices sound the same tone as original.

For slower speeds it turns into a robot.

There are a lot of different time-stretch methods though

https://bungee.parabolaresearch.com/compare-audio-stretch-tempo-pitch-change

You can even use the demo page to upload any audio file you want and try the bungee time-stretch method. Doesn’t work on Firefox mobile.

4

Thank you so much for sharing the link, It helped me.

5

ok, imo the 10% increment from +/- is enough and doesn’t distort audio, usually only go to 10%

6

If you listen to any jazz, or more instrumental music, like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd or electronic, a slower speed will allow a more relaxed experience and since there are not much vocals, the reduced pitch will be very difficult to notice if you haven’t heard a song many times.

7

Nope, VLC is straight up unusable in this regard for me. I liked MPC-HC’s 5% steps with a button press much more. Maybe if I used VLC more often, I’d write a plugin for this.

Lesser known feature: bilingual users can specify language priority for subtitle and audio tracks for the default selection.

How ffplay’s decoder handled an MPEG-TS stream from a DVB-C receiver much better than VLC, which apparently kept running ahead of buffer and would start freezing intermittingly.

How folks praise mpv’s aproach to a/v sync and vsync. All those framerate interpolation plugins too, that I had never tried.

Youtube’s video player hotkeys. Especially the 10s forward-backward jumps. I suggest them to you too. I had changed MPC-HC hotkeys to match it.

Imo MPC-HC is a great player, the borderless mode is an underestimated feature. By comparison VLC is a mechanically plug-wired cockpit.

PS: Subtitle styles. You can change every bit of the default style to your liking and size to match your distance to display. Streaming services would never care to allow this much customizeability.

8

If you use decent speakers, set the amp on the receiver or active speakers to max, and turn down eq pre-amp in software player. Do you think this makes your speakers sound better?

9

I have always held the belief, the software side ought to be at 100% and further volume manipulations be done on the analog. I find this is a competent explanation: audio - From a quality perspective, what is better: turning volume up in the software, in the OS, or on the speakers? - Super User

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10

If your speakers are at only 15% volume at the physical amp level, bass notes only have 15% their full power potential, depending on how the amp / bass crossover is designed. Often, most amps stop amplifying bass above a certain volume, but I’d say it still increases overall available power.

Setting the amp to whatever level near-equally amplifies most sound (maybe 70 or 80%) instead of below 20% will allow much more power to be delivered to bass and mid-tone sounds.

This will allow the speakers to have all available power to play deeper sounds, not physically possible at very low power levels.

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11

This is a misconception. A low volume setting on an audio amplifier doesn’t limit the amp’s ability to reproduce bass any more than other frequencies. Amps also generally don’t have crossovers unless they’re designed to power passive subs. Crossovers have to be part of the speaker design because amps have no way to even know if the connected speakers will need a crossover because maybe they only use a single driver.

@vad is correct that ideally you leave everything software side at 100% and use the analog volume control on the amp to adjust the listening level. Amps don’t vary their frequency response depending on if the signal they’re fed is attenuated digitally or using their built in volume control.

Setting your amp to a high level and controlling volume digitally is detrimental to both signal to noise ratio and dynamic range. Noise will be amplified more than it would if volume was controlled at the amp and the most significant bits of digital signals at low levels remain unused limiting dynamic range. For practical purposes it’s fine to leave your amp set slightly above the highest level you’re likely to need and use a digital control for convivence but as far as sound quality goes setting software to 100% and using your amps volume control is ideal while the opposite is slightly detrimental. Just to be clear you’d probably have to be listening to reverb tails trail off into dead silence with the digital volume very low and a powerful amp cranked up to actually notice. This sort of thing mattered more back when DACs were 16 bit.

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12

I would think the bass would be overall quieter in volume vs a high amp volume, with the input adjusted to output similar (lower input volume). Try playing quiet musac with lots of bass from analog instruments. Then try to somewhat match the volume of your desired level, between speaker level vs player volume with maximum amp volume. It may be a better test if you have a mild increase of volume (vs unintentionally slightly quieter) with speakers at max. On the speakers I have, they output bass more deeply and loudly but the other parts of the music at very similar. I have run the test many times by adjusting the volume to get it just right. Of course I tried keeping pc at max and keeping speakers around maybe 25% for quiet listening. I didn’t want the music loud but I also wanted more power to the softer bass instruments. So I maxed out the speaker volume and limited it at the player. The sound is much stronger but still soft and quiet. Give it a try if you haven’t and if you need specific genre, artist, or even albums I’d be glad to share so we can all compare with different speaker setups, maybe mine just work a bit differently.

I greatly appreciate the information about digital volume control being a bit-depth modification, I didn’t know that’s how it worked. I do understand bit-depth, just didn’t think at all about how system volume control worked, nice to have that understanding.

So to do this without degrading / modifying the digital side (100% volume output from player) how about two amplifiers?

One to control output volume, and another to always keep speaker amplification at maximum, all analog.

I am confident in my experience of maximizing speaker volume setting and limiting player level to be a comfortable quiet level allows significantly stronger bass output. It could just be the way the speakers are designed, no large sub, but it does have a port in the back that does an excellent job even though it is a 2 channel system. I also notice that above around 85-90% on the volume knob, bass is not amplified to the same degree as other sounds, weakening deep bass compared to mid-volume, and amplifying more vocal range sounds. What might cause that?

13

I’m afraid your experience is probably just confirmation bias. If you get a friend and an SPL meter and do some level matched blind A/B testing (or even signal analysis) you should find no difference in tone between attenuating the signal at the player or the preamp.

That’s actually an accurate description of every setup. There are always at least two analog amplifiers involved when driving speakers from a digital source. One in the DAC that drives the line level analog signal and a power amplifier to drive the speakers. Before the power amp sits a preamp where the volume control is found along with an input selector. Consumer amps are referred to as “integrated” because they’re the combination of both a power amplifier and a preamplifier with the volume control being part of the preamp.

The difference between active and passive preamps is that active preamps use a third amplifier to control the level instead of passively attenuating the signal with a resistor. High end preamps will often be passive because the fewer amplifier stages the less distortion but phono inputs require amplification so preamps with phono inputs have to be active… at least when the phono input is selected.

Strictly speaking audio power amplifiers don’t have volume controls so the setup you’re advocating (having the power amplifier always at high volume) is an accurate description of any setup because attenuating the high power signal that leaves a power amplifier is best avoided. No matter how you setup various volume controls you’ll always be attenuating the signal before the power amplifier.

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14

That’s possible but try it with your own speakers too. I recommend quiet jazz with lots of string bass.

Try playing the speakers at a very low volume that you could play at night without annoying others.

Then, turn down the media playe or website volume to nearly the lowest volume and max out your speakers. Compare that with max website / app volume but very low operating system output, still using max speaker volume. Does your speaker have stronger bass string notes, at max volume, vs max system volume regulated by the speaker volume?

I’m still testing and doing recording from the headphone jack, and it’s very difficult to match volume. I set the player volume to 50 since 100 noticably clips the sound, with regulated speaker volume.

That goes to the speaker headphone jack to line-in.

I then test with max speaker volume, with makes it very difficult to match volume because the player volume has to be 3 or 4, out of 100, so I switch between that range depending on the part of the song. The volume change is very limited, whereas with the player at 50, the volume knob is much easier to set.

15

I’m not sure I understand your setup. Are you going headphone jack > amp? If you’re getting clipping at 100% volume then that’s not a line level output and may explain why you’re getting better results with the software volume control turned down.

Headphone jacks are designed to power speakers, although small headphones are still speakers which differ substantially from line level inputs. Most sound cards can detect high impedance connections and limit output to levels that a line level input expects but it sounds like you may be driving the line level input on your amp with a headphone output that can easily exceed the voltage levels that inputs on amps are designed to work with.

16

Actually I remember something now. On an ALC1220 motherboard, the Realtek Windows driver has the “amplification” setting. Three levels to choose from: Standard, Powerful, Extreme.

There was very noticeably more bass with the Powerful setting than Standard, when driving my headphones (advertised impedance 32 Ohm). I mean, it was skewed towards increasing the volume of bass more than the mids. I could only find one other human on the internet, who had the same question. I never got around to measure it. I still have the PC though, if you have a guide to point me to, I might do this.

17

When you’re not powering headphones but are just sending a signal to speakers via a line input on an amp you don’t want any of the features that sound cards offer for use with headphones like boost, HRTF, specializers, environment simulations, EQ presets etc. Ideally you’d just set the output to some sort of “line” mode and disable any and all “features”… or use another output designed for line level instead of the headphone jack.

The best way to adjust the tone of speakers in a room is by repositioning them. You’ll get significantly more or less bass by just moving speakers towards or away from the nearest wall, even just a few inches can often make a noticeable difference.

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18

Not relavent, I probably didn’t need to mention that. It is more helpful to say that I have used multiple systems, smartphone, laptop, and TV.

The TV headphone out definitely clips with Pandora set to 100, not sure if it’s the app or the TV, really doesn’t matter.

So for all setups, I am using the only dac output port available, so pc is good at 100%, and smartphone and laptop seem fine too, TV output good at 90%.

To record the sound I’m using the headphone out on the speakers, which is something to write home about. The amp is not the best quality but still very powerful. Full volume is far too loud, I have to keep the pre-amp at -14 in VLC with a 2-pass filter so it’s safe to listen to. This allows full amplification to the bass, but keeps the overall volume reasonable, so it’s not some cheap weak headphone out.

I really notice the largest difference on Pandora with these speakers. It seems like the dynamic range is increased by setting pandora website volume to the absolute lowest possible option. That’s a bit tricky to get to, need very slow mouse movements and learn what the lowest volume really is, no clear indication except by volume output, not obvious which level that is on the first couple slider changes.

With pandora at max in the website, I think the difference is enough that Audacity can capture it, seems like dynamic range is very compressed at high / max volume. What I do is turn down the website volume, and max out the speaker volume and it seems to free the dynamic range, quiet music with powerful low notes. The bass notes seem stronger than with low volume–could be unique to these speakers.

What is probably most important is that these speakers definitely pick up the bass, easily provable with audacity recording the headphone output–and it’s not the headphone output, it’s how the speakers change the sound. These speakers pick up the bass range smoothly, but when the speakers are cranked up above about 80% they don’t amp up the bass in the same way and mid-range gets amplified a lot more. This makes the bass a lot weaker compared to mid volume, I assume to prevent the speakers from distorting.

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19

Those are all headphone outputs that are not suitable for connecting to inputs on an amp.

This is likely another symptom of the amp’s input being over driven. When the input signal on an amp is too hot it will output a lot of power at relatively low volume settings.

100% volume on media players generally just passes the original signal untouched, software volume controls should never even slightly affect tone.

All the things you’ve been describing are hallmarks of feeding your amp with a signal that’s too hot. The warm pleasant tone you’ve described when you drive the amp’s input not quite into clipping but just before is referred to as saturation. It sounds good but it’s a form of distortion. The lack of dynamic range as volume is increased that you’ve described is what happens as you transition from saturation towards more aggressive clipping.

Line level inputs are not designed to handle the output from headphone jacks which is why plugging a headphone output into a line level input is generally a bad idea. You can do it but you risk causing damage to the input side and you’ll have to manage volume levels to prevent issues with distortion like what you’ve described. If you’re using a DAC with a proper line level output going to your amp’s input then you’ll get no clipping, and no change in tone as you change the volume in software media players all the way up to 100%.

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20

While all of that may be accurate, this happens when hooked up to both a laptop and desktop with standard line out.

It must have something to do with the speaker design where even using the speakers headphone out, I get the accentuated bass in audacity recordings. Maxing out the speaker output and pc volume can push the speakers into distortion or noticable over power what bass was there, no longer as strong.