I found it difficult to encapsulate my question in a pithy title; sorry about that. Let me start over:
When watching a movie at home (via DVD or cable) I nearly always experience the same problem: I want to turn the volume down (or have to, if worrying about waking someone up) during loud action scenes (gun shots, explosions, screaming, crashes and objects breaking, etc), but I have to turn the volume up during scenes of quiet conversation in order for the meaning of the spoken words to be audible. I have repeatedly experienced this phenomenon on multiple (at least half a dozen) home entertainment systems I have lived with over the years, but have never had any problems whatsoever in an actual movie theater, and I have never had any such issue with television shows.
This can be exceedingly annoying. (anyone else? I hope so, because below I will assume that this is not an imagined phenomenon)
Now, I can surmise what the source of the problem is; audio engineering for theater audio systems and acoustics is not exactly compatible with home audio systems and acoustics. But what I don’t understand is: why don’t they re-engineer the audio when releasing the movie to home viewers? Would it really be that difficult/costly?
One, adjust the volume of the centre speaker, which is primarily used for speech, up. You should be able to do this on most home theatre surround systems in the setup menu somewhere.
Two, turn “night mode” or similar on. This is a feature some home theatre systems have that reduces the volume of the louder parts of the soundtrack and is designed to allow you to watch a movie at night without waking the kids with the explosions and shit.
What you want is called dynamic range compression. It makes the loud parts softer and the soft parts louder. There are devices called compressors that are used in pro audio. Some TVs and sound systems have a built-in compressor function that you can use, but they have different names for it like “night mode” and whatnot.
One compression algorithm that is implemented digitally in is called Audyssey Dynamic Volume. It’s a proprietary system developed by Audyssey and implemented in TVs and audio receivers by various companies, that’s claimed to be more natural than most traditional compressors. The Audyssey website has a list of products that have it. http://www.audyssey.com/technology/dynamicvolume.html
Though it might not always be practical, having a high dynamic range is a “good thing.” It allows the movie to have the intended volume on each sound. If you’re hearing people talking, and there’s an explosion nearby, it’s supposed to be loud. It makes for a more dynamic, realistic experience. I know that practical listening conditions at home can make it prohibitive though. TV shows often have very heavy dynamic range compression and it sometimes bothers me. In the theater, things are generally pretty loud and there’s no harm in having some loud noises now and then.
It’s also quite possible that it’s partially a characteristic of your speaker system. The frequency range where voices are may be quieter than the rest of it. I’ve heard this in many friends’ setups. It seems to be related to the unfortunate trend of having small, “modern” looking speakers.
Huh. I generally notice this most in movie theaters, and in fact I find the loudest noises in theaters to be almost physically painful, while in the same movie, at the same showing, I’ll be unable to understand what the characters are saying at normal speaking volume.
Maybe the same thing or not, but what drives me nuts is that the so-called “background music” is no longer background, but loud neough to drown out the dialog.
Any movie I watch, I have to constantly lower the volume when music is playing, and raise it again when people start speaking again.
I would love to find a way to correct this automatically.
Dolby noise reduction is a form of compression/expansion. If your system has it, try turning it off (or on, I don’t remember which way it goes). It probably won’t make enough difference for you, but it’s good for a first shot and if it works, it will save you from buying a compressor.
It’s probably the center channel, as said above. I experienced the same problem on a 2 channel system, the speakers were hooked up in reverse polarity.
I wonder if your home has a high ambient noise level, say from air conditioning, fans, appliances nearby, etc. If so, it’s possible that you have had to turn up the soft passages to drown out the noise, and that’s why it’s too loud when louder sounds come up.
Maybe the movies you watch have a wide dynamic range but the TV shows have already been compressed. Compression is certainly used in many places, like rock radio, but is less likely to be used on home DVDs. I think some old-time TV shows have degraded audio and they may be compressed, too.