PS3 Annoyance: Quiet/Loud
Has anyone noticed this? Some games are quiet while others are loud.
On the XMB, some of the audio accompanying the XMB thumbnail is overwhelmingly loud compared to the other audio that I get from my PS3. Worse is games like Heavenly Sword: it seemed that during cut scenes, the audio was barely audible, so I had to turn my speakers way up, then the game portion was deafening loud and I had to turn my speakers way back down.
BTW, aside from this volume annoyance, the audio quality in Heavenly Sword was unusually awesome. Music and effects sounded noticeably crisper than DVD movie audio (which is very good). I don’t know the technical “why” behind this: is the audio stored at a higher sampling rate? does it use lossless or less lossy compression? I only have four speakers, so it can’t be 7.1 separation. Regardless of that, I can clearly hear a difference.
Not to take the discussion to the shotbox, but come on..? Nobody likes all games, its that simple. Some like the mother, other like the daughter 
Keep your "hate-articles" coming, Gary!
November 25th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
The VERY worst offender of this is Motorstorm (EU PAL). This game is SO much louder than any other game (the XMB stuff too) it’s not nice anymore.
For movies, I turn my receiver to about 30 to 35, but Motorstorm requires me to turn it down to 20, so I don’t disturb any neighbours.
It can be an audio seperation issue on your side with the HS cutscenes, as it uses Dolby 5.1 and you don’t have a center. My receiver takes care of it (my center died recently^^) and spreads the sound to the two front speaker!
November 25th, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Segitz, Good point about the lack of center channel. I do have my receiver set up in 4/0 mode, though, so it should spread the sound correctly, but maybe that just isn’t working that way.
I take it that you aren’t experiencing that issue with HS.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:15 am
I didn’t, but can’t test it, as I only rented it^^
November 26th, 2007 at 2:02 am
The volume difference is the game switching to a different audio mode for cutscenes, and your amp treating them differently.
Rather than tweak the amp, the solution here was just to go into the sound options and uncheck everything but Dolby DTS (or whatever highest quality your setup supports). This also solved volume issues with some DVDs being noticeably more “quiet” than others.
I’m using the optical out btw.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:05 am
Wow, thanks for the helpful tip, John. When I get my PS3 working again, I will definitely give that a shot!
November 26th, 2007 at 2:45 am
Segitz, no, the worst offender is Street Fighter Puzzle HD! I removed the Demo simply because everytime I passed on its thumbnail, there was this stupid roar of music.
Anyway, for these problems, dynamic compression always helps. John’s suggestion therefore can be very helpful, as dynamic compression may not be available for stereo inputs (unless, maybe, your amp is always set to use dolby prologic for such inputs, which I guess dynamic compression can be applied)
November 26th, 2007 at 3:14 am
I’m still looking for an optical cable, for some reason they are rare to find in a general electronics shop
November 26th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Sleepy, you are german, right? (your domain points to a de address^^)
Check Reichelt.de for example, they got every possible cable for as low as humanly possible^^ I got my HDMI to DVI cable from them for less than 5€
Or try and check Conrad.de
November 27th, 2007 at 10:05 am
Slow news day?
November 27th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Its a blog, not a news site