Every time I see a thread like this I feel the same way.
Sure I have to admit there are downsides to it but oh my goodness the number of benefits from running something like Kodi is huge. If you are willing to take a hit to dynamic range of your audio you can fix all but the most extreme cases of audio level problems. I’m sure there are a bunch of other ways to handle it as well.
Control from a phone app once you have Kodi open works great.
Windows or Linux at your preference.
Only ever used old free hardware too so the complaints about the cost of a PC never made sense to me either.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
Are we talking about downmixing? If that is the case, Jellyfin has built in downmixing. Kodi might have something too.
Thrawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 hours ago
Nope although it has that as an option as well. There are two options I use. The first is to boost the center channel on surround mixes since the voice is almost always on that channel.
Then more specifically in Kodi there is both a main volume option and a separate volume boot option that if you look into the documentation says that it is able to increase volume differently by moving up the middle of the audio while reducing the dynamic range. In other words reducing the difference between the lowest and highest sounds so it can increase it without clipping.
I basically change the main volume to what I want and then since both main and boost use the same numbers I reduce it by the exact same number I increase the boost level. End result is moving the bottom and middle of the audio volume closer.
In an ideal setup like a literal quiet audience in a full IMAX or with studio monitor grade headphones etc. the dynamic range is nice. Let’s you hear talking normally and then get blown away by the action right at the top of the safe listening range. Or for classical orchestra music the quiet solot small instrument then a full booming with the entire band going.
But in reality I have five kids running around. Even in stuff like Pixar I still like having a fairly aggressive setting for the boost. It lets me set a default fairly aggressive one and then only occasionally need to edit it manually from the default for particular movies.
Thrawn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 hours ago
Also a self reply to add that I don’t use the downmix because I got lucky and in addition to free old PC hardware which most people in the USA at least can also get free or cheap if you are creative with old business hardware. The addition is I got an AV Receiver just barely new enough to support HDMI so I do have the full range of channels on very cheap speakers.
Having used Kodi elsewhere the downmix seems to work just fine and a lot of current and still fairly cheap sound bars can interpret surround mixes directly.