vlc-0.8.4a plays horribly distorted and loud audio when playing an MP4 video. Some web chatter suggests that it is a simple bug, see http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1376426&group_id=704&atid=100704 I have applied this patch, but still get the distorted audio. (Then again, I might have patched incorrectly) Here are my CFLAGS for vlc: media-video/vlc-0.8.4a USE="X a52 aac alsa avahi cdda cddb corba daap dvd ffmpeg flac hal joystick matroska mod mp3 mpeg ncurses nls ogg opengl oss png real samba sdl shout skins speex stream svg theora truetype v4l vcd vlm vorbis win32codecs wxwindows xml2 xosd xv -3dfx -aalib -arts -bidi -debug -dts -dvb -esd -fbcon -ggi -gnutls -httpd -libcaca -lirc -live -nsplugin -screen -svga -xinerama" and my emerge --info Gentoo Base System version 1.12.0_pre16 Portage 2.1_pre4-r1 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.6-r2, 2.6.15-suspend2-r6 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.15-suspend2-r6 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1500MHz distcc 2.18.3 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled] dev-lang/python: 2.3.5, 2.4.2-r1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/splash /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/web2c /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks keeptemp keepwork sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://mirror.tucdemonic.org/gentoo/ http://mirror.clarkson.edu/pub/distributions/gentoo/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1,--enable-new-dtags" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages/pentium-m" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 16bit X a52 aac acl acpi aim alsa amuled async atlas automount avahi avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts blas browserplugin bzip2 cairo canvas cdda cddb cdf cdio cdparanoia cdr cdrom chm chroot clisp cmucl commercial corba cpudetection crosscompile crypt css cups curl daap dba dbus dnd dpms dv dvd dvdr dvdread dvi edl eds emboss encode erandom evo exif fame fat fbsplash festival ffmpeg fftw firefox flac foomaticdb fortran freetype fuse gcj gcl gdbm gif gimp gimpprint ginac glibc-compat20 glitz glut glx gmail gmailtimestamps gnome gnomedb gnuplot gphoto2 gpm gps gsl gstreamer gtk gtk2 hal hbci hddtemp hdf hdf5 icecast ieee1394 imagemagick imlib inkjar ipod irda jack jack-tmpfs java javascript jfs jikes joystick jp2 jpeg kde kdeenablefinal kdexdeltas kerberos kqemu ladcca ladspa lame lapack latex lcd libg++ libwww linuxthreads-tls lm_sensors mad matroska mikmod mime mmap mmx mod mono motif mozilla mozsvg mp3 mpeg mpeg4 mpi mplayer muine multicall musepack musicbrainz mysql mythtv nautilus ncurses netcdf network nls nptl ntfs nvidia nvram ocaml offensive ofx ogg oggvorbis openal opengl openssh oss pam pascal pcmcia pda pdf pdflib perl php pic plotutils plugin png pnp posix ppds python qemu-fast qhull qt quicktime radiotap rar rdesktop readline real reiserfs rhythmbox rtc ruby samba scanner sdl sftp shared sharedmem shout skey skins sndfile softfax softmmu speex spell spreadsheet sql sse sse2 ssl stencil-buffer stream stroke svg symlink tagwriting tcltk tcpd tetex theora threads tiff timidity transcode truetype truetype-fonts type1 type1-fonts unicode usb v4l v4l2 vcd vlm vnc vorbis webservices wifi win32codecs winbind wma wma123 wmf wxwindows xfs xine xml2 xosd xpm xprint xrandr xscreensaver xv xvid xvmc zeroconf zlib elibc_glibc kernel_linux userland_GNU" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS
I don't think that patch might be related. Unfortunately faad is a really broken piece of code that it's usually difficult to fix. Please try with vlc 0.8.5_beta2, but I won't ensure you that it works anyway, as it should still use the same faad2. Try also >=xine-lib-1.1.1-r5, see if that helps. Consider that 5.1 AAC files are not supported by faad2 in an usable way. I suppose the only thing we can do here is to wait till ffmpeg's implementation of AAC decoding is mature enough.
Please update to beta3 and try what I asked.
