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Comment by whywhywhywhy | Hacker News Reader

Turn it up to hear the dialogue, then rapidly turn it down when music, explosion, just basic background noise is often the volume that would annoy your neighbors, then turn it up again to hear the dialog.

Dunno if it's because it's all mixed for cinema or 5.1 and then badly turned to stereo but something they're doing is trash for 99% of those watching.

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This has pretty much ruined TV for me. I watch with a remote control and constantly turn it up and down. It breaks the immersion.

If I didn't have neighbours, I would keep it at the higher volume. I want the explosion to be much louder than the dialogue.

Most home cinema receivers have a 'dynamic range compression' option which is meant to solve this problem.

I'm running a 3.1 speaker setup at home and even with the center channel boosted it's difficult to hear dialog at times.

It’s not that it’s “badly turned to stereo”, it’s a physical limitation of the speaker diaphragm. Media producers would have to invent an entirely new mode of media playback that could detect your speaker setup, and then load an entirely different audio mix made for stereo, say, lacking some of the background noises, music, etc. when dialogue was more relevant.

The center channel is generally devoted to the spoken track. Adding a center channel is one of the best upgrades you can do for a home theater system.

I have a center channel. I have the same problem. It’s irritating.

It’s not like people have invented some newfangled thing in their living rooms. Most people have super vanilla audio setups and tuning the audio in a way that sucks for nearly everyone is simply a mistake.

Making excuses for people who make a bad product doesn’t do anyone any favors. We can calmly and clearly call out the error and request that people who make the error cease.

Same here, I've noticed that mostly since the point Atmos started becoming mainstream, movies just aren't mixed like standard films from the late 90's to 00's. Sure, we didn't have overhead sound sources or admittedly fantastic imaging for the few films that do it right, but overall, everything sort of feels like a narrow, bland tunnel tuned for soundbars / TVs, for which neither Home Theatre nor Soundbar owners enjoy ironically.

The "Enhance Dialogue / Reduce Loud Sounds" feature on the Apple TV has been amazing for helping to rectify this, but I would prefer to leave the dynamic range of the track alone.

Older movies sound better on exactly the same setup. Dubbed shows are easier to understand on exactly same setup. It is a bad mix.

> Media producers would have to invent an entirely new mode of media playback that could detect your speaker setup, and then load an entirely different audio mix made for stereo, say, lacking some of the background noises, music, etc. when dialogue was more relevant.

Object-based audio (MPEG-H, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) can do this, and lots more.

That’s very interesting, I didn’t know those codecs had this capability. Thanks for sharing.

Running these codecs can still be quite challenging, however. A third channel is almost certainly a better solution for the widest possible compatibility.

Why did speakers work fine for the first few decades of my life then and suddenly the "physical limitation of the speaker diaphragm" matter and "invent an entirely new mode of media playback" needs to be done for the last 7 years?

Unfortunately I only have two ears and usually listen on headphones...

It sounds like it would be very useful to include a virtual mixer where you could adjust center (or dialogue) channel volume separately from side channels.

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