Whenever I play DVDs on my PS2, there seems to be a huge discrepancy between the volumes of the dialog and the music. The music gets painfully loud when it is featured, if the volume is turned up loud enough for the dialog to be discernable. Is this my PS2, my TV or something else?
My first though is that you have speakers wired out-of-phase.
What kind of sound system do you have? Are you using little computer speakers, with built in mini-plug connectors? If so, it’s unlikely to be this problem, since you really can’t connect them out of phase.
However, if you run your sound into a home theater where you hook up the speakers with bare wire connectors, a pair of reversed wires is a possibility.
Another possibility is that you’re playing the sound from tracks that your player is not equipped to decode properly, such as Dolby 5.1 or DTS. I have no real experience what happens in such cases, since my receiver decodes all that stuff. But you can try to change audio settings to Dolby 2.0 stereo, or mono, and see if the sound improves.
It’s a PS2 plugged directly into the TV, BTW the same phonomenon occurs with my other TV which is a different brand.
I have the same sound discrepancy problem with my DVD player connected directly to my TV. No extra speakers or home theater components. Videocassettes work just fine. Could it be the DVD discs themselves?
Some recent DVDs don’t have a Dolby 2.0 setting anymore, they just have Dolby5.1 or DTS, which means if you play it through a 2-speaker system, it doesn’t decode accurately, causing situations much like you describe.
But that’s only a few DVDs, not very many at all.
I’m gonna have to say that it’s more then just a few DVDs as I have the same set up, just a DVD and TV and sometimes the music is loud enough to hurt while the dialog is way too low. I find it to happen on most DVDs.
Having said that on my Panasonic there is a setting called Dialog Enhancer, or something similar, that sometimes seems to help. Mine is a button on the front, other people I have talked to say it’s a menu item. You should try and see if your DVD has something like that.
I have the same problem with a lot of my DVDs, and I have Dolby 5.1 with 5 speakers + a subwoofer, so it’s nothing to do with using 2 speakers.
I had always assumed it had something to do with the sound levels being balanced for a large theater with lots of acoustic wall materials and human bodies to absorb the sound vs. my living room with flat reflective walls and just a few people.
Like Fat Bald Guy, I often have the same problem with DVDs on my surround-sound home theater system. For me, I have the ability to independently increase the volume on the speakers, so I raise the volume of the center speaker which is where most of the dialogue seems to come from, and the problem is resolved.
This, of course, won’t help you unless you have this setup and capability.
I have an older (9yo) TV with “surround” (satellite) speakers. By design, dialogue comes through the TV set and only background sounds come through the satellites. This sometimes causes the effect that you describe. For me it’s especially problematic when watching something like The X-Files in which the characters often speak in subdued tones.
In a recent thread I asked about TV volume during commercials and received some excellent information about the technological background of the effect. The soundtrack may be similarly “punched up” compared to the dialogue, thereby causing the phenomenon.