No Stupid Questions

I see this question a lot and the answer is always highly specific to what equipment you have. It looks like turning up the center channel was a solution for you.

Another thing to try would be setting the crossover on the center channel so that it doesn’t play anything below a certain frequency. Most center channels aren’t made for bass so trying to make them play it muddles them. The room correction should be doing this but they’re weird sometimes. Some let you choose the exact frequency and others have a small/large designation for each speaker. With ‘large’ being able to play lower so you might try ‘small’ if that’s a thing. I’ve also found that using the room measurement/correction feature locks you out of certain settings sometimes. So that’s a pain…

My center channel is a massive quad woofer, dual tweeter monster…dialog isn’t an issue for me. It’s actually turned down 3dB. I also suspect part of this is D+…cause I own that movie on Blu-ray and the 7.1 DTS-HDMA track there is fine.

Let the system do it's calibration thing and then boost the center speaker by like 5dB or so. Maybe more if you like. That's where the dialogue comes from.

Unless you're watching Interstellar, in which case God help you...

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.

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.

A bunch of reasons:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• Poor mastering. Some movies are mixed in such a way that it makes dialogue difficult to hear.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.,

Either adjust audio levels or invest in a better system that allows you to limit the range of audio with better resolution.

There was this vid talking about it I've stumbled upon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8