[ronaldyang]

When watching movies, I find that I have to fiddle with the volume whenever a loud scene comes on. Does this mean that my room isn't dead enough or, conversely, that it's too dead at dialog frequencies? The room has a huge rug and a couple of bookshelves.


What are some variables I can play with? speaker placement, crap on walls, ... ?


Thanks,

Ron

 

[Jeff Beaver]

Ronald,


The dynamic audio range (low to high volume) of some DVD's is so great that many listeners respond by decreasing the volume to a comfortable level during loud passages. This leads to an inability to understand softly spoken dialog and constant fiddling with the remote. Check to see if your receiver and/or DVD player support "Dynamic Range Compression". DRC reduces the volume of very loud passages and makes some DVD's much more pleasant to listen to. Check it out. It may solve your problem.


Jeff

 

[pjenkins]

One thing many people do is to raise the center channel by a few dB over the L/Rs. While not 'balanced', it *can* help the dialog a bit since it is generally from the center, while the loud music parts are *generally* out of the L/Rs. In my theater, I was doing this for awhile before getting a better center. Now that I have a better center speaker (NHT VS2) the center dialog seems much 'fuller' and understandable, so the levels are back in-line. It seems in my case, that how good my center speaker is drives how often I adjust the volume.


YMMV of course http://www.avsforum.com/ubb/smile.gif

Paul