Home Theater Set Up Question

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Aug 10, 2019
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Hi all, I had previously set up my home cinema system (Onkyo TX-NR905 amp and B&W 6 series speakers). I did the set up using the microphone based automated setup using the Onkyo.

My biggest problem is that when I watch a movie in either DVD or Blu Ray, I find the volume too low in quiet scenes (can hardly hear the dialogue) and way too loud (at least for my wife and kid) during the big action scenes. I find myself watching a movie with the volume control constantly being adjusted through my remote. I tried to compensate for this in the speaker setup by drastically increasing the volume of the center speaker - and this seems to have fixed the problem. However, I feel that this may not be ideal and I think I have lost a lot of that surround effect and the sound is now less involving.

By the way, this seems like a common problem for a lot of people's home theater set-up after speaking with a lot of friends. If I was living alone with no wife, I would just fix the issue by just playing the movie very loud anyway - but clearly my wife would not ablige.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers.
 
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Anonymous

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I have had the same problem. Make sure the effects are set to off on your Blu-ray/DVD player, and let your amp do the processing. This may help. I would not recommend setting your centre speaker higher, all 3 front speakers should be on the same volume setting.

Hope this helps.
 
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Anonymous

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Hey Catenaccio,

This was somthing i was worried about with a home theatre system. I was advised to get the biggest centre possible, 70% of the movie is played through the centre channel. It seems ridiculous to me.

The most expensive speakers in your system would be the two fronts, you think that you would want them doing all the work, but apparently not.

You could try doing a manual calibration with a sound pressure level metre?

Sorry i cant be of much help.
 

The_Lhc

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Oct 16, 2008
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This is a property of the increased dynamic range available with HD soundtracks on Blu-Ray (ie Dolby TrueHD, DTS HD Master Audio), the difference between the quiet bits and the loud bits is much bigger than with old-style Dolby Digital or DTS. You get a similar issue listening to classical music (especially in the car).

About the only thing you can do is have a play with the dynamic compression levels on the amp, normally you wouldn't touch this but with HD soundtracks it may become necessary. The "Night Mode" that someone mentioned is simply applying lots of compression to the dynamic range to make everything sound the same volume so you can hear everything at low volume.
 
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Anonymous

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This isn't the first post of this elk. Roger06 (hope I remembered his monikor properly) had a very similar issue with his Sony 2400 (I think from memory) amp. he even posted a video on youtube. In his case though the dialogue coming from the centre speaker was virtually inaudiable.

You might try searching for that thread and see if any of the many suggestions help you out.

I can't help but thinking it has to be a setting somewhere on the amp. Anyway good luck in your attempts to correct it.
 

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