Audio tracks

[mayhewda]

I have a question for home theater systems. Many people have problems hearing the voice or audio track when watching movies. For me, I am constantly holding the volume control, cranking it up when there is low conversation going on, then turing it down when loud parts in the move occur. It is a constant battle of turning volume up and down. I thought this would be specific to my hearing issues, but I am finding out it is quite common. My question: is there equipment out there that will let me separately control (raise / lower) the audio track ? Not sure if this is the right forum or even if its a stupid question, but I would certainly like to be able to do this if its possible.

thanks..

 

[mtrycrafts]

I have a question for home theater systems. Many people have problems hearing the voice or audio track when watching movies. For me, I am constantly holding the volume control, cranking it up when there is low conversation going on, then turing it down when loud parts in the move occur. It is a constant battle of turning volume up and down. I thought this would be specific to my hearing issues, but I am finding out it is quite common. My question: is there equipment out there that will let me separately control (raise / lower) the audio track ? Not sure if this is the right forum or even if its a stupid question, but I would certainly like to be able to do this if its possible.

thanks..

No, there are no stupid question, only unasked questions are stupid.

If you have a THX receiver, engage the dialog equalization feature.
If not, you could increase the center channel's volume a few dB's when level matching all your speakers. You did level match them correctly, didn't you? If not, do that first.

 

[tbewick]

I read an interesting article by Tony Spath of Dolby Laboratories which explains why this is the case:

www.ebu.ch/en/technical/trev/trev_293-spath.pdf

Basically it's to accomodate the wide range of playback devices, say a TV or hi-fi system, which have quite different abilities when it comes to their dynamic range. With PCM and MPEG audio, what broadcasters can do to try and give a wider dynamic range to some content, like a film, is to expand the dynamic range 'at the expense of quiet dialogue'. Thus you can still watch the film at a lower volume on a basic TV and still hear most of the dialogue clearly. Most people set the volume according to the dialogue volume.

The intention of Dolby Digital and dynamic range compression (DRC) is to allow the possibility of a wide dynamic range but still allow playback, through DRC, on a system of limited dynamic range, like a TV.

I still find though that most films are overbearingly loud throughout, and this is something that has been commented on on the Dolby website.

 

[mayhewda]

thanks for the responses. I am currently in the process of buying a new hdtv along with a new sound system. So currently i am cranking up/down the volume of just the tv. However i was over at a friends place (who do have a hdtv and HTIB setup) and was surprised that they also have to go through the volume crank up/down in order to properly (or more pleasantly) hear the softer audio dialog.

I'm looking at a Yamaha RXV2600B. This has the THX feature mentioned in this thread. (whats does thx stand for anyways?). It also has a feature called "night listening mode: with a description of :

"Enjoy explosions, music and sound effects without disturbing others. In this mode, sound effects will not overpower dialogue with sudden increases in volume levels"

I understand that proper sound calibration will help and that increasing the volume from the centre speaker will also help. (This is doable right? and this because most dialogue comes from the centre speaker?).

I you can guess I am new to this whole thing. I just assumed that with 5 or 6 or 7.1 audio that one of the channels would be for audio. If that is the case, then why are we not able to simply raise the voluming of the audio track?
It's a little frustrating to spend a fair chunk of change on a home audio system, yet still have the problem of not be able to hear the audio dialog.

Again , great forum and thanks for the information....

 

[MDS]

I believe THX stands for Tomlinson Holman eXperiment.

'night mode' is dynamic compression. In a nutshell, it reduces the peaks thus raising the average level (the ear responds to changes in the average sound level). So explosions and such are reduced and the lower level dialog is a tad louder. They call it night mode under the theory that you would mostly use it at night so as not to disturb others. I use it all the time.

There is no 'dialog channel', although the majority of the dialog is mixed to the center channel.

 

[tbewick]

I'd recommend either putting the volume up so that the quieter dialogue is clearer or use dynamic range compression (avavilable on Dolby Digital soundtracks). I wouldn't think raising the centre channel volume would be the best solution, as this would mess up the balance between your speakers.

Your problem could be an acoustical one and solutions for this are given on the main Audioholics site (THX calibration). You can ascertain whether acoustics are to blame by listening through headphones and then comparing this to listening through your main speakers.

Though this probably won't help you with dialogue clarity, you may find lowering the treble control (~5-6 dB) improves the overall sound quality of film soundtracks. This has the same effect as the THX equaliser. In addition to this the THX equaliser boosts the bass and super high-end.

DRC will only help if the soundtrack producer has decided to use it well. Some movies have dialogue that is difficult to hear thanks to poor mixing and excessive background noise (not distortion, but things like cars driving by and people talking).