Denon Receiver - tweak settings to improve dialogue

[bodean]

My setup is
Denon ABR-X2400H
4 Triad InWall Silver/4
1 Triad InRoom Silver/4
Triad OmniSub 12

Ran Audesssey, set center speaker cross over to 100 and the rest at 80.
multEQ XT Reference
Dynamic EQ on
-Reference level 0db
Dynamic Volume Light
Run volume at 35-45 setting

find the surrounds overtake the room sometimes (especially watching live football games) and can barely hear the commentary and hear too much of the surround.

I set the receive to Pure Auto. Although sometimes I have to switch to stereo to avoid the too immersive surround and low dialogue with again football games.

anything I can do to tweak this annoyance? It’s a decent system that my wife tells me our upstairs sound bar sounds cleaner and easier to hear dialogue then my home theater

 

[isolar8001]

How is it with normal mastered audio ?

Football games are just a bunch of mikes shoved around wherever the action is and are not providing any kind of controlled sound mix.
Weird sound issues are kind of the norm with a live sporting event, and AVR sound processing is going to introduce all kinds of goofy anomalies....which is why switching to stereo works for you.

 

[highfigh]

Maybe using a different surround mode for sports would help.

 

[ski2xblack]

Agreed w/ the others, sports are a real mess compared to a movie or other more appropriately produced content.

Hilarious typo in thread title. I was expecting something far more demonic.

 

[bodean]

Agreed w/ the others, sports are a real mess compared to a movie or other more appropriately produced content.

Hilarious typo in thread title. I was expecting something far more demonic.

Ha fixed it thanks.


Maybe I’ll try without dynamic EQ. Bump up the , 1 to 2dB and lower surrounds down maybe 2dB to start.

 

[ski2xblack]

Dynamic eq is just loudness compensation. Sports simply has too much going on with rear channels, and changing DEQ settings won't fix that.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Dynamic eq is just loudness compensation. Sports simply has too much going on with rear channels, and changing DEQ settings won't fix that.

Actually it might. While deq does boost bass and treble at volumes below -0, it also boosts surround levels. One of the reasons I don’t like it. I also don’t like Dynamic volume but can have its uses. Sports does have too much going on in the background though.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Ha fixed it thanks.


Maybe I’ll try without dynamic EQ. Bump up the , 1 to 2dB and lower surrounds down maybe 2dB to start.

Personally, I can’t stand dynamicEQ because of how it raises surround channels. It also does this with rear tops(atmos). While it can be nice for bass with lower volumes, I’ve found that my own house curve works just as well since I usually listen fairly loud.
If I were you, I would try without deq and bump the sub a few db.

 

[-Jim-]

Personally, I can’t stand dynamicEQ because of how it raises surround channels. It also does this with rear tops(atmos). While it can be nice for bass with lower volumes, I’ve found that my own house curve works just as well since I usually listen fairly loud.
If I were you, I would try without deq and bump the sub a few db.

We had this same issue with our Atmos System for Football. I turned off Dynamic Volume as well. I'm surprised with all the $$ they get from Football, they couldn't afford to spend a few $ getting the audio correct. Get it right for the big game next Sunday!

 

[lovinthehd]

I wouldn't use a football game as an indicator of correct surround. If the surrounds are too high try trimming the levels a bit (and you could use a memory function to just use it for certain type of content). Why use Dyn Volume? Does your model of avr have the the dialog enhancer option? Volume level of 35-45 seems very low (on the relative scale I have my gear start up at a low volume of -40, which is about middle of your range....but I don't find that particularly listenable, just don't want it too loud on start up).

 

[bodean]

I wouldn't use a football game as an indicator of correct surround. If the surrounds are too high try trimming the levels a bit (and you could use a memory function to just use it for certain type of content). Why use Dyn Volume? Does your model of avr have the the dialog enhancer option? Volume level of 35-45 seems very low (on the relative scale I have my gear start up at a low volume of -40, which is about middle of your range....but I don't find that particularly listenable, just don't want it too loud on start up).

I’ll turn dynamic volume off too. It has dialog enhancement

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

We had this same issue with our Atmos System for Football. I turned off Dynamic Volume as well. I'm surprised with all the $$ they get from Football, they couldn't afford to spend a few $ getting the audio correct. Get it right for the big game next Sunday!

Would be cool if they did a “mix” from the sky cam. Like when it’s behind the QB and the O line is in front of him, with the whole stadium around. Not sure how they’d do it, but could be absolute Atmos gold!

 

[Mr._Clark]

We had this same issue with our Atmos System for Football. I turned off Dynamic Volume as well. I'm surprised with all the $$ they get from Football, they couldn't afford to spend a few $ getting the audio correct. Get it right for the big game next Sunday!

I remember watching a football game during covid with almost no fans in the stadium. Someone at the network apparently decided it would be a good idea to add some canned fan noise but they didn't bother to ramp in the volume level. It came through my surrounds and subs at such a startling (and instant) volume I about jumped off the sofa.

Fan noise seems to be highly variable from one game to the next and I often adjust the surround volume down compared to Blu Ray levels.

The video signal can also vary quite a bit. I've watched a few games in which the the players looked like they were zombies. As much as I dislike frogging around with the color settings on the TV I will sometimes adjust it for a particular game if it's too annoying.