I have notice an annoying audio problem with some movie VCDs I'm playing on my standalone DVD/VCD player. It seems to only affect the "dialogue" layer of the audio track. These VCDs are not multi-language ... I've checked (stereo, mono L/R, L/R vocal) & the audio track sounds the same in all the above settings.

THE PROBLEM is that I seems to be getting the dialogue layer separately from BOTH my L/R speakers! Although in sync, it sounds like the actor is speaking in two exact voices simultaneously. The best I can describe it is sort of like the voice you hear when you speak through a moving electrical fan ... a little robotic-like.

At first I thought it was the surround sound that was the problem, but turning off surround did not correct the problem. An interesting note is that the background music/sound seems normal, as suggested by the background vocals in some scenes. I'm baffled as to how to fix this ... it seems to be VCD-specific.

Thanks in advance for any guidance on this issue.

Jerry

-- Jerry Teo (t_bone33333@yahoo.ca), June 09, 2003

Answers

This is not normal. Unfortunately it sounds like a bootleg that someone botched when making it. VCD audio is pretty straightforward. You get two channels - left and right - and that's it. There is no 2nd audio track. You don't say anything about your VCD, so I can only guess that it's a bootleg of some kind and whoever made it botched it. The sound may have been encoded from another format incorrectly or perhaps someone tried to do some kind of Dolby Digital encoding that VCD doesn't support and botched it.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), June 09, 2003.

Hi Root,

Thanks for your prompt & helpful response. I've in fact rented these movie VCDs from a store that rents the copies but not the originals. You seemed to have hit upon something ... the audio tracks might not have been copied correctly. I'll check with the store. Thanks again!

-- Jerry Teo (t_bone33333@yahoo.ca), June 09, 2003.