Yes, I know what you mean, I have the same problem. Some movies, everything is OK but some others, when it's just dialog, I can barely hear it and then some effects come and the hole house rumbles. At first, I only had the M80s so I thought that it was because I had no center channel, then I bought the VP150 and nothing really improved. So far, what I used to do was to turn Dynamic Volume ON and that way the volume of the dialog is raised. The down side of that is that now the volume of the effects is lowered.
As other suggested, I tried increasing the volume of the center but I find myself having to increasing by +6/7/8 dB. Is that normal. Also Do you guys change the level every time when the movie is poorly mixed and then change it back? I find this a bit annoying.
I seat about 7/8ft from the speakers and after running Audyssey, the channel levels are set as FL -5dB, FR -5.5dB, Center -8dB.
Why is the center set by Audyssey much lower than the mains? Shouldn't it be actually set the same or higher since it cannot produce the same SPLs? In some movies, I find that I have to set the center sometimes up to 0db,
Another question is do these values seem correct or should they be closer to 0dB? What is for example the -5.5dB referenced to?
My prediction is Audyssey raped your system. You should double check those numbers with an SPL metre for an accurate calibration of your system. If you are too lazy to do that, disable auddyssey, and re-calibrate everything by ear, try boosting all the numbers relative to each other to start or start each speaker at 0 and go from there. I suspect the readings are off.
