[5.1] Sound effects making voice hard/almost impossible to.hear at times.

Thanks for the reply. Placement of the centre speaker isn't the best, it's on the lowest level of my TV stand, on top of a CD player, making it about 1 foot off the floor (if you measure to the centre of the drivers), compared to about 3 feet from the floor for the L/R speakers; however I do have the centre speaker tilted upwards (about 20°) to try and compensate for the fact that the centre speaker is sitting quite low both drivers and the tweeter work on my centre speaker.

I suppose the best way to test of the issue is the height is to watch a movie whilst sitting on the floor and see if things sound better; if they do I'll get a TV stand which sits a bit higher than this one and has 3 (4 if you include the top shelf) decently sized shelves, then put the centre speaker on the first shelf down from the top. My TV stand needs replacing ever since an extremely drunk friend collapsed into my left speaker, knocking it into the TV and landing on everuthing, luckily the TV stand took the brunt of the damage otherwise he would have been handed a sizeable bill, I'll look on Gumtree (a UK craigslist) and see if I can find anything; if mounting height is the issue.

I would consider wall mounting my TV then putting my AVR on but I wall mounted a TV for a friend as he isn't exactly the DIY type and wall mounting systems seem like a real pain when it comes to switching inputs and adding cables to the TV as (with that wall mount at least) the TV was so close to the wall that you'd have to take it off every time you felt like adding or removing something. Not to mention the inherent fear of dropping an expensive television.

Some receivers have a Dialog Boost, or similarly named mode. If the Pio has that option, try it.

Other issues:

- That center speaker placement is problematic. Place the speaker at ear level, in the open, for better dialog recognition.

- Often, exaggerated bass interferes with understanding dialog. If the sub level was increased after the Audyssey (or whatever Pio uses), this can increase the problem. If the bass is boomy, change the position of the sub, until it isn't.

- If you clap your hands in the middle of the room and you hear it echo, that means you need to add a boatload of soft furnishings and/or actual room treatments, in order to get clear dialog. Changing your speakers will be fruitless, if this is the case.

- Many times, users will try a lot of things in order to get better sound. All these changes often take you further away from a clean signal, as so many modes can interact badly. You might consider doing a factory reset on your receiver, to get back to ground zero. Then re-integrate the sub, run Audyssey, add modes, EQ, whatever.

- If none of the above are effective, then you may need to get a receiver with better processing, like Dirac, for instance. That said, the receiver can only correct so much. if the room conspires to ruin it. If the echo is present, the room needs work, before you spend a boatload on new equipment.