dafa83

Movie Sound Adjustments

I've been eyeing some HT systems under $1000 but one thing that really annoys me is having to turn up the sound to hear a dialog, but the second thats over theme music enters 10x louder.

Are there recievers out there that have some sort of 'compressor' so that it will adjust the sound level to be somewhat constant throughout?

Any models? Brands? Am I retarded?

Ennsio

Re: Movie Sound Adjustments

Yes there are. My Denon 786 has a "night" mode where you can turn on Digital Compression to reduce the dynamic range between the loudest and quietest parts of the movie to make it easier to hear dialogue when the volume is low. You can adjust the level of compression for low, medium or high. It only works on Dolby Digital tracks though, so it won't compress DTS.

I use it in the medium setting quite often as I watch movies in the evening when the kids are in bed but their bedrooms are right off the living room. I still have to have my hand on the volume control on the remote for the big impact parts of movies, but it is less work than with no compression on. I have not looked at other receivers to see if they have this compression function as well, but I'm sure many do. Look for a "night mode" or "dynamic compression" feature in their specifications.

JohnRice

Re: Movie Sound Adjustments

Are you certain the system is properly calibrated? If it isn't, you can get excessive variations of sound depending on what is happening in the soundtrack. You can also set the center a bit higher than "normal" to help reduce this by increasing the dialog volume. Then, there is the compression feature you asked about, and most receivers have. If the system is not calibrated properly, compression won't fix it.

They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.
Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost.

Jeff Gatie

Re: Movie Sound Adjustments

90% of the time, these issues are due to a non-calibrated system. "Night Mode" or dialog enhancement will just screw up the sound even more for an uncalibrated system. I will say it for about the thousandth time here - Calibration is the single most important step towards achieving good sound from a HT system. You can have the best components in the world, but if they aren't calibrated they'll sound like crap. I'd rather listen to a calibrated $500 HTiB than a non-calibrated $10,000 system that has levels all over the place.

JohnRice

Re: Movie Sound Adjustments

Jeff, I've been called a jerk for saying things like that. One person even recently accused me of taking all the fun out of HT because of technicalities like that.

They flutter behind you, your possible pasts.
Some bright-eyed and crazy, some frightened and lost.

Jeff Gatie

Re: Movie Sound Adjustments

I'm already a jerk. Doesn't really matter to me. The truth is the truth.