PCFormat Forum Archive

I am sure I read this question somewhere here before but can't find it

I have a DVD player, game console, blue ray player. When watching any movie format on any of the systems, I can barely hear the speech. But when some in-movie music starts playing the volume amplifies by 200%. It doesn't matter if the sound is routed through the TV speakers or through the surround speakers, the result is the same.

I asked my brother-in-law the question as he considers himself an audiophile. He has the latest and greatest Harmon Kardon something. He said that is the way they compose the movies and we should deal with it.

What gives?

Sounds like a channel thing. Do you have an amplifier? How specifically is everything connected?

Your sound should have a centre channel that might be muted, or the system is set to something other than what your hardware is, i.e. set to 5.1 when you only have 2.1 speakers.

Alternatively (and I fell victim to this once), somehow the karaoke function might have been activated.

I'll have to check the channel settings, did not realize that it could have an effect... The TV and DVD system are 2 channel but the surround speaker system is 5.1. What's your favorite karaoke song Kalster?

Radiohead - Creep, High and Dry, Fake Plastic Trees, Just, Bones and a few others. Yours?

Good luck

Also, building on the channel issue, your systems may be wired up to use the correct channels, but just check the menu settings to see that the correct audio format is chosen.

Are u using an SPDif connection or RCA?

senile wrote:I am sure I read this question somewhere here before but can't find it

I have a DVD player, game console, blue ray player. When watching any movie format on any of the systems, I can barely hear the speech. But when some in-movie music starts playing the volume amplifies by 200%. It doesn't matter if the sound is routed through the TV speakers or through the surround speakers, the result is the same.

I asked my brother-in-law the question as he considers himself an audiophile. He has the latest and greatest Harmon Kardon something. He said that is the way they compose the movies and we should deal with it.

What gives?

I have the exact same problem. Playing a DVD through my LG surround sound system, the speech (that does indeed come through the front center speaker) is soft, so I put the volume up and forget....then suddenly there is an explosion, the dogs jump up, I crap my pants and the wife gives me a backhand from the fright.

The only remedy I've found is to put the volume up higher on the centre speaker and lower the other 4 a bit. That kinda helps and I can put the volume on one setting for the whole movie.

The other downside is that not all the movies volume levels on speech ect is the same. So next movie I need to adjust all the volumes again.

So I also want to know, why is the speech soft-ish and then the action bits super loud??
I always also tell the wife, it's how the make it, live with it.
But why this is, I dunno. It seems fine in the movies though.