Dial Norm?

deronb1
deronb1 Posts: 5,021
edited May 2012 in Electronics
Often, especially when playing a BluRay, a message will appear in the window of my Pio AVR that says "dial norm -3" or some other number, usually -2 to -4. What does that mean?
Post edited by deronb1 on
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  • tonyb
    tonyb Posts: 32,967
    edited May 2012
    The "-3 " means your down 3 beers for that point in the movie.:cheesygrin:

    Honestly, I don't know, never saw that before on my Pioneer. Sorry I can't help ya bro, maybe someone will chime in with an answer. I'm guessing maybe it's telling you your down x db's from reference ? But then, why would it do that ?
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  • Face
    Face Posts: 14,340
    edited May 2012
    When properly calibrated, you should be around 0.
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  • Drenis
    Drenis Posts: 2,871
    edited May 2012
    Yeah even when selecting just TV programming I would see the same thing. I just ignored it.

    I always did my MCACC calibrations but the number never came close to "0".
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  • Tankman
    Tankman Posts: 419
    edited May 2012
    tonyb wrote: »
    The "-3 " means your down 3 beers for that point in the movie.:cheesygrin:

    Honestly, I don't know, never saw that before on my Pioneer. Sorry I can't help ya bro, maybe someone will chime in with an answer. I'm guessing maybe it's telling you your down x db's from reference ? But then, why would it do that ?
    3 beers..lolo..
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  • CoolJazz
    CoolJazz Posts: 570
    edited May 2012
    Dialnorm is an attempt to make it so that loudness (not just VU or peaks) is taken into account and a playback of different sources can automatically compensate for overall loudness differences and playback without big differences. The idea is that by playing back through a metering system, they can establish the content loudness and establish how loud it should be to fit in with other material.

    When you see a -3, I don't know off hand if that means you should attenuate by 3db or if the material is 3db lower than the establish norm and needs turned up by 3db.

    I didn't know that this was ever showing up in consumer equipment actually. Dialnorm is I think the big culprit behind the level problems in HD television since the conversion to HDTV. It was suppose to make everything easier and seems instead to have resulted in all kinds of confusion and level problems. Such that congress has even passed a law to save us from levels not matching. The biggest problem has always been cable systems inserting their own commercials and some tech not bothering to even attempt to set levels. Dialnorm is supposed to do that automatically and not rely on the underpaid, untrained tech to do it.

    CJ
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  • wingnut4772
    wingnut4772 Posts: 7,519
    edited May 2012
    From what I have read you just leave it alone. It's a Dolby thing.
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  • gdb
    gdb Posts: 6,012
    edited May 2012
    Call the New Yankee Workshop for AV built-in shelving services, ask for Norm.:wink:
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  • bansheesho
    bansheesho Posts: 227
    edited May 2012
    Dialog normalization is a setting that is set by the sound editor when they are mixing. It is not something that you can change or turn off.. if you Google it you will find some very detailed info on it on how the engineer is suposed to calculate it and the differences between dts and dolby calculations..
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  • deronb1
    deronb1 Posts: 5,021
    edited May 2012
    Good stuff guys. Thanks.
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