Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Movie dialogue volume

Is it me? My equipment? My settings? Or is almost every movie I watch mixed with the dialogue at half the volume of everything else? I have checked all my settings and even boosted the center channel volume a bit trying to compensate but nothing seems to work. Last night we watched Tower Heist and I had to turn the volume way up to hear the voices and every time an action scene arrived with music it was crasy loud. Is this just the world of watching movies at home? We watch a lot of concert DVD's/BR's and dont have this problem. Current equipment is Axiom Epic Grand Master 175 on/in wall, HK AVR645, Samsung BDC6500 running 8 channel analog out to AVR

It's that every movie you watch is mixed with the dialog at half the volume of everything else.

Are you calibrating your system within the settings of your Samsung BD player in the menu settings? You are running multi-channel analog to your receiver which most likely is bypassing the bass management, trim levels for your center, distances etc. on the receiver end.

If you haven't done this, your combination of setup and settings is the culprit. Going into your Blu-ray player settings (the product literature will help you here) and making adjustments there will fix your problem most likely.

H/K 645 should (at least judging from the 525 be able to do bass management on multichannel inputs. There's a different input mode for that.

I calibrated each input on AVR using Disney WOW and SPL meter. Current settings in BR are confusing for me, they are as follows:
Digital Output=PCM or Bitstream Re-encode or Bitstream Audiophile currently set to PCM but since I'm using analog I'm not sure it matters.
PCM Downsampling=On or Off currently set to off
Dynamis Range Control= Auto or On or Off (Claims it will let you hear dialog better at low volume) currently On
Downmixing Mode=Normal Stereo or Surround Compatible currently set to surround compatible
DTS Neo 6=Off or Cinema or Music currently set to Cinema
Speaker Settings..All set to small
There are no analog output settings
I've tried changing things around but it dosent seem to make any difference, I think Ken is right it's just some idiots idea of how to mix a movie

What does the display on your receiver show (what is it set to) when you are watching movies? If your using multi-channel analog, it will have its own separate input.

Another thing is when you are adjusting the trim levels on the center (does it actually get louder)? If not then it it bypassed.

Do you have any other audio cables connected to your blu-ray player?

If the receiver is doing the processing turn off dynamic range control.

BTW since your blu-ray player has multi-channel analog out connections it will have its own bass management and setup in the player itself which you have not mentioned.

http://www.harmankardon.com/resources/Br...45om-LowRes.pdf

Here is the link to the manual. Lets try to to figure this out.

Look on page 32. It looks like you have a room correction feature and the channel levels can be adjusted. I would take a peek there first. The manual looks ok but the on screen interface looks clunky.

Page 36 has the details for the multi-channel analog and bass management information. 6-Channel/8-Channel Input Select: Press this button to select the device connected to the 8-Channel Direct Inputs. This is the multichannel analog input (above). From this there are two settings for the 8CH input select. 8CH Direct and 8CH DVD Audio. Which one do you have it set at?

The AVR is set to 6/8 channel, the choices are Direct or DVD Audio, there is not much difference, if any, between them. I set levels using Disney WOW for both options. I did set all levels in the BR itself using the spl meter. When I went through the levels using the disney disc I calibrated each component seperately, BR, DVD, Radio, Fios, on each corresponding input of the AVR. The center channel volume does increase when I tweak it but I dont want to have to do that every time I switch from movie to concert.
Thre only other audio cable connected to BR is an HDMI going to TV so that family can watch movies without AVR