What settings control variable sounds on a sound system?

Factual Questions
1

I have a Yamaha later model TV surround sound system. It’s great.

My main complaint is watching movies or modern TV shows to control the volume level, especially late at night. When the movie is at a conversational level, I turn the volume so I can hear it. Then when a car crash, a bomb, or a chase happens, the sound can rock the walls and wake everyone in the house up.

So I turn it down to a reasonable level. Then when everything in the movie calms down, you cannot hear conversations so I turn the volume up. Rinse and repeat.

Is there a way to balance this out so I can leave the volume control the same?

2

ETA: Harry Potter movies are the absolute worst at this.

3

You need to find the individual channel controls and increase the volume of your center channel speaker relative to the others. That’s where the dialog is.

4

That did the job. Thank you so much.

5

This is a losing battle ultimately. I got headphones for those situations.

6

You might check the manual for “night mode” or something similar. Many home theater audio systems have a feature (whatever they choose to call it) that will decrease the dynamic range of the audio tracks. In other words, it brings the peak volume of the explosions closer to the conversation volume and vice versa.

It can also reduce the shoutiness of loud commercials.

7

While the center channel fix works, what you really want is Dynamic Range Compression or DRC. It’s easier to adjust, and more effective than changing the center speaker volume IME. And it’s easy to turn it off, when you want to get the full explosion effect from your movies.

8

also turn on close captioning to read the dialog if you can’t hear it.

9

I have a compressor pedal for my guitar but what is available that can connect to my Bose 3.1 audio system? The input from the TV is optical and the outputs to speakers are proprietary connectors.

10

Range compression is normally a feature of the amplifier, and goes by several names, as mentioned above. Barring that, some TVs (and even cable boxes) have a setting for it. Whether it will work for a setup like yours where you’re using external speakers instead of the TV’s built-ins, will depend on whether the TV maker set it up for that. Look for something that has settings like “wide,” “narrow,” “night,” and/or “normal.”

11

What model is the Yamaha?