OK, the title is poorly worded. Sorry. What I mean is I’m watching a movie right now. When they’re speaking, I have to turn the volume up,but as soon as there’s any sort of special effect sound I pretty much go deaf because it is so loud. For the record the movie I’m watching is beauty and the beast put out in 2017 with Emma Watson. Speaking I have to set the volume to approximately 45 out of 100 on my home theater. As soon as they start singing, it is so damn loud it’s insane. Why would they do this and how do I fix the problem?
I’m using a Roku for Disney plus and a Denon receiver AVR-E400. I’ve tried going into the settings for Audyssey and strong dynamic volume to medium but that only helps a little bit. Maximum is a possibility, but then the audio doesn’t even sound correct it’s like I don’t know how to explain it, but it sounds strange at that point.
Any ideas on how to fix this problem because the dynamic range that I’m having is insane. I’m glad I live in my own house an apartment otherwise the neighbors would be pissed off at me.
Edit: I have a 5.1 system
If you have a 5.1 system then I’d question the centre speaker or settings. A good centre speaker and you definitely won’t have this issue.
Back when I had just a soundbar I was experiencing the same issue. I added a centre speaker to my now 3.1 setup & haven’t looked back since
I haven’t read other comments but it is worth checkjng your TV audio setup. You might want to set the sound output to cinema or speaking mode. Thus changes the sound and optimizes it for easier listening. If the audio is set to music, it will be amplified and nice to hear but difficult to decipher.
My guess is you your brain puts too much work to decipher the sound and construct words. You can make your brain do leaa work just by changing how the sound is output so it becomes easier to distinguish word, thus not need to compensatory with higher volume.
Of course you may need to experiment with you TV settings to find what is suitable for you. Obviously an audio setting ibtized for speach would reduce quality of music out put.
If you use MS Teams, you will notice that when you start a phone call but still have music playing then out will change in tone. For the same reason, Radio presenter in the past would speak a certain way so they can be heard correctly over the radio.,
The core problem is that many movies have the audio mixed for a movie theatre with multiple separately controllable audio channels. You might see this marked as 5.1 ; DTS; etc. In a typical home environment, you only have stereo sound. This means that the multiple audio channels have to be mixed down to two unless there is a separate stereo audio mix channel provided - basically never except commentary tracks. The shitty way to do it is to just take the left and right front channels which are mainly meant for sound effects and not bother to mix in the center channel which covers the dialogue. It’s still hard even if you mix in some of the centre channel.
Short version: asshole movie makers mix only for movie theatres, not stereo.
Sorry should have clarified. I have a 5.1 system
5 speakers and a sub
It helped me to turn up the volume on center speaker directly on the speakers. Using the speakers infrared remote control. It goes -4 to 4 for all speakers and on +4 i can usually understand what are the actors saying.
A bunch of reasons:
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High dynamic range - I.e. the difference in volume between quiet and loud sounds, means that e.g. explosions have to be loud for speech to be audible. This is a good thing on the mastering of things, but players should support dynamic range compression, and they often don’t.
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Poor quality speakers/headphones, usually without room correction. If the signal isn’t reaching the ears with a relatively flat frequency response (especially if midbass is higher than it should be) that can make speech difficult to hear.
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Stereo tends to result in a relatively unstable center “image” which can make speech muddy. Center speakers help here, and there are some audio processing technologies that may help.
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Poor mastering. Some movies are mixed in such a way that it makes dialogue difficult to hear.
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This is one of the primary reasons I use captions. I do not and never will have the equipment necessary to maximize the audio experience. Even if I did, I think I’d still struggle for many other reasons.
So captions it is. I feel lost without them if they are missing. I very regularly look at them to catch missed words and such. They also reveal a lot I would not have never heard in the first place anyway. My kids grew up with them and also get irritated when captions aren’t available. You just sort of come to rely on them without realizing it.
Thank the asshole directors for choosing to make sound so crappy any more (my opinion, I think all movies have crap mixing, with too much focus on sound effects so even when voice is brought forward it’s still hard to hear clearly).
Part of it is the movie audio is mixed for a theater that has multiple channels and speakers, so the output is the better separated and voice can be delivered better. It would need to be remixed to sound better at home, and since all homes are very different, what would you target? (Plus they simply don’t want to pay extra for mixing which doesn’t contribute to seats in a theater). Yea, they could probably use a generic mix, but again, it costs to do so, and some home users would still (justifiably) complain.
The other is some directors intentionally crapify the mix because they want a certain experience while watching the movie in the theater. One director recently even stated he wanted dialog to be difficult to understand in certain scenes (I forget what movie). I get the director’s intent, even if I disagree.
The only solution for home that I know is to have a sound system that can manage the separate channels. Many systems now have a sound bar just for voice, so this is already happening to some degree, but I rarely see discrete volume controls for the channels.
One director recently even stated he wanted dialog to be difficult to understand in certain scenes (I forget what movie).
It was Christopher Nolan with Tenet.
Yes, I’m still salty about it, and no, I won’t watch another of his movies in the cinema.
I have a 5.1 system. With a decent receiver . Even by controlling dynamic sound it’s still unbearable at times.
In the movie I’m watching in one scene the speaking is soft so I turn up the volume, in the next scene the singing is LOUD AS HELL. I don’t get what the point is.
But thank you for taking the time to respond.
I turned up my center channel like 5db, (mostly) solved the issue for me
Yeah another commenter suggested the same. It helped quite a bit
Yea, crappy mixing. It may technically be “excellent” mixing, but only works in a theater.
Even that isn’t true, pretty much every movie I’ve seen at the theater in recent years, the dialog is hard to hear.
Stop using the dynamic sound. That will help.
Not sure how you got two down votes for that
Emmerich and Zemeckis
?
Turn dynamic volume off. At first it will seem like that makes it worse. It’s not. Turn the volume up after disabling it. That should give you a better dynamic range. This may take some getting used to.
Dynamic volume raises quieter sounds, which makes dialogue louder but also makes other background stuff louder, which can overpower and muddy the dialogue. Think of it like a contrast slider but for audio.
Also try boosting your center channel volume (if you have a center) by around 2-3db on the receiver. That will also help and might solve your problem. It’s a pretty popular tweak. Some movies/shows just have very low dialogue volume and loud effects.
Increasing the center channel helped.
Had to turn dynamic sound off to get to that setting
You should be able to boost it regardless. You want to boost it in the speaker settings. Should be called channel volume.
Denon (on my receiver) won’t allow it. The option gets greyed out.
Oh ok. I have a Denon too but i don’t know what dynamic sound is. Not sure if i have it
There’s a mismatch between how many audio channels the broadcast/stream is sending vs how many your equipment is set up for. You can change the setting on the TV, but will likely run into a similar issue with a different broadcast at some point.
Honestly? I just force-set my tv to mono sound. I don’t mind not having stereo sound, and it forces the volume to be normalized.
This is news to me. It really balances it out for all services and media types (e.g. over the air, streaming apps)?
The number of channels should not be the issue. However, the conversions involved might be bad at translating expected relative volume.
Another thing is that in the movie theater they might tweak volume independently per channel to boost stuff like speech while at home you’ll watch with default volumes
Simple solution: turn on closed captioning.
You can still curse the morons that balance sound for movies/TV etc. while still getting all the dialogue in a movie.
We enable CC on everything because my partner is not a native speaker. Turns out I’m hooked on it now for anything where any characters have accents. I catch all kinds of little details that I used to miss without quite realizing it.
I love when CC includes details that you would not be able to normally hear
If subtitles or captions are on, I can’t help but read them. It’s fine for most things. Terrible for standup comedy, though. The captions spoil the delivery.
I prefer always having CC off because I end up reading every sentence and it distracts me from actually watching the movie. I only use them for british/foreign films or for movies with bad sound mixing
Same! My wife speaks better English than she hears. And like you, I’m hooked on CC.
It’s optimized for people with 90" televisions and $5000 surround sound systems. I forget how I did it, but I turned off some surround sound setting on my Roku and it helped a lot.
Probably true.
I spent over $600 on just the receiver and then some more in the 5 speakers plus the subwoofer. Yeah I’ve spent quite a bit.
Sad that I still can’t fix this.
Since you have 5 speakers, one of them should be the center speaker, which is focused on dialog. Some Denon receivers have a ‘dialog level adjust’ or ‘center level adjust’ setting that you can turn on and then turn up the dialog level. If you don’t have that setting the solution is to try to turn up the center speaker (or turn down all the other speakers) some way, such as using a mixer or some such (may require some research for specifics).
Thank you that helped
Not prefect but definitely better
I have a sound bar/subwoofer combo that I got for free from work lol it sounds great now though! I think it had to do with turning off 5.1 surround which I think was in the advanced sound settings
Some devices have sound leveling or something. I can’t remember what it’s called. It’s so annoying when movies are like this. The most recent one I watched that was this dumb was the dark knight. I recently figured out how to connect my headphones to my tv and that makes this way easier
My older Yamaha receiver has what they call Surround AI. It automatically boosts or lowers sounds proportionally to counter every movie having shit mixing. It’s amazing, many times I’ll see a movie in theater, and once it’s done I realize I’ll need to rewatch it at home to understand like half of what was said and I missed.
Either adjust audio levels or invest in a better system that allows you to limit the range of audio with better resolution.
Bought a $600 denon receiver. Thoughts on a better one?
Run the room correction
Did. When I first bought the receiver
I have a denon 2700, it has a lot of the settings and adjustments as the higher models, but at a better price. I think it’s a gen or 2 old at this point. Unfortunately, most receivers under a grand are missing some features to really customize the sound. Most will add a feature to measure the sound in the room and adjust accordingly too.
For watching movies, there aren’t really any. Most any receiver is going to be more than capable of handling film surround sound. Don’t get the “upgrade fever” lol.
Your issue seems to come from mixing. Do you have any EQ? That could help a lot.
No. Guess I should look into one
I have an Anthrm receiver and I’m pretty happy with it. I had a 2.1 system (L, R, sub) and was happy for a long time. Moved into a different space and dialogue got harder to hear so I added a center channel and it’s awesome again.
There was this vid talking about it I’ve stumbled upon:
Link without unnecessary tracking bits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
Thank you, I was on mobile and didn’t pay attention. I edited my comment without the tracking, too. No need to have that garbage in there
Turn off the sound and used closed captions.
