I have two cheap speakers attached to my PC. I have the volume on the speakers as high as they will go, and the volume on the sound bar on the DVD as high as it will go, and the sounds setting in the control panel at high. But being herd of hearing, I still have trouble with dialogue in movies, more than when I watch TV. Is there anything else I can do?
StG
The short answer is to get better speakers. Get a three way system with two speakers on top and a subwoofer. Decent systems are not that expensive and are constantly going on sale at Best Buy and Staples or you can a get them online.
A $50-100 system on sale should get you what you need.
Here are some to consider. The newegg customer ratings and comments are quite useful.
PC Magazine reviews (mostly more expensive ones) Speaker Reviews and Lab Tests | PCMag
I’ve always been pleased with Altec-Lansing stuff. Logitech speakers not so much.
Just beware – if you have a really crappy sound card, a better speaker system will be amplifying noise and/or buzz at much as the sound track. It may turn out that the sound card is your problem and you’ll need to replace that. I haven’t looked at the technology for a while so I’m not competent to recommend a brand or model.
One other option to consider – headphones or ear buds. And you can get wireless headphone systems if distance is an issue. The ear buds actually seal your ear canals, so IMO the sound is superior as you are far less aware of other sounds in the environment. Of course, that’s not always a good thing.
**Thanks, Astro.
Boyo Jim** - How do I know what sound card I have, and if it’s decent? It’s just whatever came in my computer from Woot, so it’s probably not great. The PC is an HP.
StG
Open the Device Manager on your Control Panel, and you will see “Sound, video and game controllers” in the list. Open it and you should see what is installed.
How good is it? I dunno – Google around some and see what you find.
Most likely you have no sound card at all, but integrated sound on the motherboard. This isn’t really likely to be an issue these days. If you’ve got buzz or such it’s more likely to be an issue with the power supply or grounding than sub-standard audio decoding.
Make sure that you double click on the volume icon on the taskbar - you should see advanced controls: Master Volume/Wave/SW Synth etc
Turn them all up to 11
Yes, unless there is an actual problem the quality of the sound output won’t be an issue until you become quite critical of the sound. Difficulty with dialogue is a different issue.
Headphones can make a dramatic difference, and wireless ones are good for this purpose, since they afford freedom of movement.
A significant problem many people have with modern movie sound production is the dynamic range used. Some dialogue can be little more than whispers, whilst sound effects can be deafening. With a proper home theatre set-up, speakers and amplifiers with enough dynamic range, this can sound great. But dialogue can become difficult with lesser set-ups. A possible solution is a compressor - to squash down that dynamic range. I know little to nothing about what I assume is a Windows media set-up, but I doubt there isn’t, either in the sound manger somewhere, or available as an add on, a suitable software based compressor that could make a useful improvement.
For a high end headphone movie experience you really should look at headphones that use the Dolby Headphone processor. Not all that cheap. They take the 5.1 sound and synthesise the head related audio transform for the different directions and supply that to the headphones. This provides a very strong surround sound illusion. Dolby’s info Here.