Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dialog Inteligibility with VP180

My brother is having issues with dialog and I'm looking for a few suggestions.

His setup:

VP180
M60s
4 QS8s
SVS PB13 Ultra
NAD T765

He's having trouble hearing dialog, particularly during movies. With the system set up and calibrated properly, dialog seems quiet and hard to hear, but when the bullets start flying, the overall volume in the room gets quite loud. I can't turn up the overall system volume to hear voices because action scenes get overly loud.

He's resorted to turning up the center volume. He's at +4 now. We calibrated it to +2 and even that was a tiny bit higher than the measurements showed. At +4, the sound stage collapses to the center channel.

His seating positions are off-center a few feet since he wanted two love seats so I am wondering if I'm getting too much combing from the VP180. It's particularly hard to hear female voices.

Or I was wondering if I should enable Dynamic Range Compression in order to bring up the low volume scenes, and knock down the loud scenes. I'm not even sure if his NAD can do that since it tends to leave out extras that nobody uses.

room turned out awesome. what are the other speakers calibrated to? It is common to run your center a little "hotter" than the fronts.

The mains are at 0 and the rears and sides are in the +1 range. I can't remember exact #s on those since they don't draw attention to themselves. The QS8s are AWESOME and blend in seamlessly.

At +2 the center was already a little hot.

Which surround mode is problematic? If another is available on a disc, is the other also bad?

Are all discs bad?

First off beautiful HT room!

If the system is properly calibrated and you don't like the idea of turning up the centre channel volume there is not much else you can do. Does flipping the VP180 cabinet angle the speaker up a tad like with the VP150? What is the crossover point set on the VP180?

If voices are that difficult to hear coming out of the centre channel you should check to see if all drivers are operational as well.

Again, that room is crazy cool.

He runs it in DTS Cinema to mix the 5.1 into his 7.1 system.

He complains on most movies, but it isn't all movies. We watched The Road which has lot of whispering and a few loud scenes. We then watched Piranha 3D and had no issues with it. Though, admittedly Piranha wasn't getting our main attention since we were setting up his new Harmony 900 remote.

"If voices are that difficult to hear coming out of the centre channel you should check to see if all drivers are operational as well."

Good call. We got one bad QS8 driver and his EP800 was DOA so the QA wasn't too good.

Center crossover is 80hz. Mains are 60hz. I didn't do the calibration. He had some local guy do the measurements and setup. I went in later with a handheld meter and some test tones and it measured pretty flat to about 20 Hz where the SVS fell off like a rock.

I'm with Dr. House, that is a crazy cool room ... freakin' NICE!

My normal setting for the 180 in our room, which appears to be much smaller than yours is +2 db and then I'll bump it up on some of the less than well-mixed sources.

Nothing to add but FREAKING AWESOME ROOM!

I also find that in a lot of movies the dialog is mixed too low and I need to bump the center channel a few dB. If it still bothers him, dynamic compression might be what he's looking for, worth to give it a try. Checking that all drivers are working is also a good idea. Try playing with the crossover setting, I like mine crossed at 60 and even 40Hz. And yes, BEAUTIFUL room!