Hey everyone,

Recently hooked up my first HTS.

I have noticed the right and left fronts can drown out the center speaker especially dialogue.

Thunder and gun shots make everyone in the house jump even if there on the other side of the house.

But when I turn down the dialouge gets drowned out somewhat.

I have a HK AVR 247 and 5 polk rm67's and sub. PS3 via HDMI is my movie source. (Should I also be using optical)

My layout is left and right speakers mounted in the four top corners of 15 x 17 room and the center setting on the about ear level under the mounted display (samsung 52" B550) on a TV/ component bench. Perhaps not the best layout but one my wife was aestically pleased with.

Using both the auto and manual configs with the HK I notice no real differece when adjusting the decibles of the front left and right speakers. They go from -10 to 10.

Also the rear speakers seem to offer more ambient sound (very subtle) and raising the decibles on these seems to not raise the volume level. I have read a lot of newbs try to raise the level of the rears for a wow factor and this is not always good.

Any words of wisdom for a newb?

Thanks.

Your system is clearly uncalibrated. At the listening position, all speakers should be equal in loudness when the calibration test signal is played. You need to read your owner's manual and properly calibrate your system.

You also might invest in an SPL meter from Radio Shack. Not too expensive, and most helpful for setting your speakers using the test tones.

But, many movies are mixed with a lot of dynamic range (that is, there are sounds that are just much much louder than the dialog). You may still experience some need to "ride the volume control" during such movies with your receiver.

Certainly you would want to calibrate your system properly but I suspect that that is not the root of your problem. Based upon your post it seems you have auto-calibrated your setup. Your complaint is a common one. It is usually due to (among others) a couple of things.

An inadequate center speaker relative to that that is being used for the L and R speakers and/or poor placement of that center speaker can provide for very poor center channel performance. Make certain your center speaker is not boxed in by shelving and that it is pulled to the very front of any shelf that it may be sitting upon. If it is too close to the floor or ceiling, you can have issues.

Your other speakers' output is being reinforced by their placement in the corners. Even though it may be properly calibrated, your center speaker is not benefiting from this reinforcement.

Another issue is that your smallish speakers just may not be adequate for your room. So, even though it seems that at times you are able to get reasonable output from the 4 other speakers, your center speaker, when asked to reproduce stuff on its own, just can't do it very well in your room.

Movie soundtracks can have a very wide dynamic range. As you noticed, very loud scenes in movies are............well, very loud. And if you turn your volume down to compensate, you find that once the soundtrack goes back to normal dialog, the volume is usually too low. Most AVRs have a feature called "night mode" (or named something similar). What this setting allows you to do is compress the dynamic range of the soundtrack so that there is not such a disparity between the loud and soft portions. When this setting is used, at any given volume setting the loud scenes will be less loud and the soft scenes will seem louder. You may want to try this setting.

Your center channel handles approx. 75% of dialogue. Experiment by manually cranking up the dB on center & knocking back the left/ right speaker dB's.

Even after Audyssey auto calibration, I regularly increase center channel volume due to certain source material...

Thank you everyone for your input. All great things to consider.

I certainly notice the disparity more on certain movies (Watchmen comes to mind).

I will continue to experiment.

Thanks all.