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Speakers on the MBP

P

Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
2,118
125
Is there a setting that changes the audio balance of DVDs, I played a film that I'm very familiar with on a TV and the sound on the MBP was completely wrong, the music that was loud in parts is very feint in the background and the levels of audio in general between speech and music are completely wrong?
I'm using the bog standard player on the new MBP 13"
 
Not DVD no, it plays perfectly fine on the TV DVD player, but sound is completely out and levels unlistenable. Wondered if it's a speaker issue on the baby MBP?

Will give VLC a go, thanks.
 
In actual fact, the sounds heard by the OP via his DVD player/TV and his MBP were both wrong!

The audio quality recorded on most DVD's is usually very good and the reproduced sound is entirely dependent on the reproducing equipment. Try experiencing a film via a quality DVD Player, amplifiers, speakers and display. The sound and vision will not bear any comparison with that from the TV or MBP.

In the OP's example, obviously the MBP will sound inferior to the TV simply because of the different quality of electronics in the two systems and their physical sizes. The TV was, within limitations, designed to reproduce both sound and picture. The MBP was not and no amount of fiddling is going to make the proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear!
 
Thanks for the replies, I know not to expect a great audio playback from the MBP, without additional speakers plugged in, but on my old Windows laptop you could hear the way it was intended, all be it a poorer version of the way it sounded on the telly, but levels were the same, It's not a great modern TV with any special sound systems, just a normal telly. The difference with the Mac is it levels out the music and speech in a completely different way which other laptops didn't do. Difficult to describe other than where the music comes in it's very distant and you know it just doesn't sound right
 
Sound track?

Does the DVD in question have different sound tracks? 5.1DTS vs 5.1DolbyHD vs Stereo? Maybe when you play it on your Mac, the default sound track was wrong.
 
MaxBeagleton said:
Does the DVD in question have different sound tracks? 5.1DTS vs 5.1DolbyHD vs Stereo? Maybe when you play it on your Mac, the default sound track was wrong.
Click to expand...

No, it's an old film, are there settings to change that on the MBP?
 
A DVD can have multiple video streams (like alternate camera angles) and multiple audio streams (different languages, comment tracks, DTS, Dolby, stereo, etc). If it is a commercial DVD, you can probably select which sound track to use on the DVD's main menu. Otherwise most DVD players allow you to switch the tracks, if present, during playback.
 
Hey Max, yes it does have the audio commentary etc, but this is just the actual film soundtrack that's not right. And yes they can all be changed on a DVD player, but just not on the MBP
 
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