I would love to see Dolby Volume , or something with the same functionality added. I've seen this demo'd and it works great controlling the volume of the obnoxiously loud TV commercials.

Just for that feature it would be worth it. Is there any other way to limit the LOUDNESS of commercials. It is a real source of irritation and I find myself not watching network TV because of it.

You mean to tell me the 997 does not not have Dolby Volume?
Outlaw you be get cracking on that soon, because a lot people will expect it to be a feature, even the upcoming low base model emotiva pre amp will have it, what gives?

I heard a demo of Dolby Volume at CES and was really impressed. I consider it a "must-have" for my next pre-pro so I sure hope they put it in the 997 otherwise it's off my list.

I hope soon after the 997 arrives, I will be able to throw off the shackles of condo bondage and get back into a house again; at which point, the Dolby Volume that I so ardently desire at the moment will become a completely useless feature as I sit in my own home and turn the amplifier to "11".

"Dolby Volume " looks interesting. The algorithm mentioned has to be digital-based. Gotta wonder what this will do to lossless, if anything. Wonder if compression.

WIll be interesting. Shouldn't be of interest for audiophile-listening. Should be good for TV, though. Always gotta turn down the volume (thank goodness for remotes-which sponsors probably hate)during commercials

No compression - it's happening downstream of the decoding, when any digital source is a multichannel LPCM signal.

I will be surprised if we get Dolby Volume since it came later in the game. It would be a great addition. Can't stand the loud commercials with some programming.

I just ordered an Integra 9.9 to hold me over until I see how the 997 fares. It has Dolby Volume.

I bought my father the Onkyo 885. I really like the sound quality, but there are a couple niggles. The first is that all inputs/outputs are either scaled our passed through. I would have preferred this to be input selectable. The second is Audyssey turned out not to be that special, IMO. I just didn't like the results and I tried many times, but it just wasn't for me.

I think the 9.9 has Audyssey Dynamic Volume (and Dynamic EQ), not Dolby Volume.

Ahhh. My mistake. Carry on.

I know we haven't heard much from Outlaw on this, but I sure hope they add dolby volume or have the capability to add it at a later date. Didn't think it would be a big deal, but with more HD channels coming through I find myself using the ht system more and the commercials are murder on my ears.

I agree, but I think my wife would appreciate it more - and in turn I would because of that. The little she does watch TV she adjusts the volume down during the first commercial, but then never wants to adjust it back up when a show is back on. Drives me nuts, cause if I do turn it back up, I hear her frustration the second the next commercial break starts - never fails.

It would be helpful for my girlfriend as well. She constantly tells me how annoying the commercials are. She usually reads while I numb and dumb my brain, so it effects her quite a bit. I turn it down as well during the commercials and it's a pita.

Turn it down during commercials? What else is the mute button for?? (Yes, there are other uses, but silencing commercials is sure #1 on my mute-uses list.) Of course I can fast-forward over them on recordings of shows from my cable box, but what a pity it is that no boxes offer commercial skip any more; it was on lots of VCRs.

Anyway, just use the mute.

Yeah, except Dolby Volume does more than just volume leveling. It also acts as a loudness contour, compensating for non-linearities in our human hearing as the volume level is lowered. Unfortunately, can't do that with a mute button.

I agree, a mute button would be very helpful for a girlfriend!!

I take it you guys don't have the same problem with the wife/girlfriend when watching tv. Yes, the mute button is logical, but that is not necesarily the solution to this problem.

I do use it (or turn it down), but like I said, that first bit of sound from the commercial is what is irritating - maybe not as much to me, but to my wife. Unless you are there with your hand on the mute button.......

People like you would leave us in the stone age, so I'm glad you're not in charge or making important decisions.

Aren’t there FCC rules about the audio-level ratio between program material and commercials? I’m guessing those rules apply only to over-the-air broadcasts and perhaps cable or internet channels are exempt.

It does seem that the truest indicator that the content has switched from program material to commercials is the vast increase in audio level. Would someone like to make and market a pass-through loudness detector? Inserted between source and pre/pro or receiver, it monitors the audio level of the incoming signal. The user sets threshold levels (several presets). Once the threshold is exceeded, the output volume is cut by as much as the user wishes, usually either mute or cut by a significant amount, like -20db or -30db (coordinated with aforementioned presets). This is not meant to ‘level out’ the audio level, it is meant to eliminate or move commercials’ audio into the background.

If such a thing were in widespread use, broadcasters who ‘behaved themselves’ and kept commercials’ audio on par with program material would be ‘rewarded’ by passing commercials’ audio through without reduction by the consumer. Broadcasters that ‘goose’ commercials’ audio would learn that consumers were no longer listening during the commercials and perhaps find their sponsors asking that the audio for their commercials be kept in line with the program material - finally getting the broadcasters’ attention where their bread is buttered.

After all, I don’t just want to level the volume to eliminate the annoying blast as the commercials begin, I want to eliminate the commercials’ audio altogether.

It isn't as easy as that. Perceived loudness is a product of the power content of the waveform, and this can have little to do with amplitude. The most obvious example of this is with rock CDs which utilize "brick-wall" limiting which raises the total audio level to near maximum without exceeding full scale digital at any point. Music processed in this manner sounds extremely "loud" compared to a non-processed version which might have the same peaks occurring at full scale digital, but with the lower levels elsewhere preserved.

A mere level detector as you propose would not be able to differentiate between the two, because the levels are basically the same in both instances.

The problem arises because almost all broadcast (and cable) content is highly compressed, and the difference in the amount of compression (and brick-wall limiting) between normal program material and commercials is often difficult to differentiate with electronic means, yet the difference between the two can be readily detected by the ear.

I designed a box awhile back which attempted to perform this differentiation through integral analysis of the audio. It worked to a degree, but the problem was that once a channel was changed, the thresholds between program and commercials was invariably different, and the box had to be recalibrated.

Dolby Volume uses more sophisticated analysis, along with metadata.

I find myself constantly adjusting the volume of my system when watching movies with my wife. The volume is set at a certain level to hear dialogue. But when a loud scene (ocean waves, car chase, etc.) is introduced, I get that "look" from my wife that says "turn it down!" I believe Dolby Volume would be of great use to me given my wife's sensitivity to louder sounds. I would love to see it in the 997, and the mute button certainly wouldn't do the trick for me!

While I am familiar with some means of compression/expansion, having used such technology in production and broadcasting myself, and while I don’t have analysis electronics monitoring the output of my ‘cable/sat box’ …

By ‘level’, I didn’t mean to point toward amplitude only, but level of ‘energy’ in the waveform, which does increase as compression is pushed toward a ‘brick wall’. I didn’t intend to mislead.

I appreciate Altec’s effort of experimenting with a ‘box’ of his own.

In listening to the ‘major networks’, my subjective listening would seem to indicate that the audio levels follow the ‘increase via compression not amplitude’ description give by Altec. However, in listening to some cable channels, I sense such a huge jump in audio that, as a person familiar with compression, I cannot attribute the jump to compression alone, but judge that amplitude has also risen by an egregious degree.

It is broadcasters in this latter group that would easily exceed a threshold and have their commercials’ audio cut or cut back by a ‘monitor box’. But, as Altec points out, broadcasters are not very consistent, a single threshold would not do for all. And, even within the same program, one can see commercials inserted at least at four levels: the production level, the network/national level, the local broadcast level, and the cable/satellite provider level. This means that, within one group of commercials, one might see both commercials that limit themselves to reasonable audio and those that do not. I would tolerate those that merely use compression and make subsequent decisions with my remote’s mute button ... and I do appreciate the idea of Dolby Volume and similar options.

At this time, Dolby volume works only with a few limited DSP chips. The CS49700 is one of them. Not sure if the 997's DSP has Dolby Volume support.

According to the article linked to below, HK's new 7550HD receiver has Dolby Volume and also uses "the latest-generation Texas Instruments Aureus DA710 audio digital-signal processor in a dual-DSP implementation". Not sure these are the same dual TI chips that the 997 will have, but it seems like a fair guess. If so, it seems the TI chips are capable of implementing Dolby Volume. Of course, there could be other issues in implementing it in the 997 (e.g., how much processing power the Trinnov Optimizer eats up).

I also noticed that the HK while using TI audio DSP's (like the 997) rather than the Cirrus CS497xx (like the Emotiva UMC-1) will use the same video processer (Genesis Torino) as the UMC-1 rather than the Silicon Optix Reon that the 997 will employ. I know, I know ... one's audio & the other is video so they have nothing to do with one another, but interesting to see the different manufacturer's parts choices. It appears both the 997 and UMC-1 are getting top shelf components. Note that the HK receiver is listing at $2,799.

http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/receivers/harman-kardon-avr-7550hd

I'm going to be curious to hear how the Torino performs - Genesis has been relying on the Faroudja chipset for a long time now, and frankly it isn't as capable as parts like the Reon (as is to be expected considering the age of the design). Torino is their chance to get back into the race.

Dolby Volume or the like is pretty critical to me. I sure hope they have it otherwise I'll probably lean towards the Integra.

Onkyo must have heard you. I have the 9.9 and each video input can be scaled individually and the global output can be left as "through" so that it will send through whatever the input is scaled to.

This was a huge gripe regarding the 905/885/9.8. I'd love to see them offer it as a firmware update for those products, as it would make the video processing much more usable, even if only to offer the ability to toggle between "processed" and "pass-through" with a global set of processed settings (something that could presumably be done without hardware revisions, whereas the per-input controls may require extra memory). Onkyo's firmware support has been pretty rough, though, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

Is there any sense of how the Outlaw will handle these things?

Not yet.

I've looked up dolby volume and as another poster in this thread mentioned audyssey has a similar feature for low volume compensation to correct the soundfield. That being the case I would think the trinnov processing should be able to achieve the same functionality as the dolby volume. Outlaw should just have to turn on the feature. The real question in my mind is will the trinnov processing do this?

Trinnov got its start as a professional room correction system, so it may not have had a use for that sort of capability before now. And Audyssey added this in recent iterations, likely in large part because of Dolby Volume. From that perspective, I would be surprised if Trinnov already had code in place that would do this. Of course, I've been surprised before...