BioLinks® Audio

Is the dialog muddy and sometimes unintelligible coming from the center channel in your home theater system? Does your spouse or significant other say, “Turn it up” or, “What did he say?”

Several audio discussion forums have addressed questions like,

• “I hated how I had to crank up my speakers to be able to hear dialogue in one scene and then have to turn them down in an action packed scene so they wouldn’t be blown out.”
• “Dialogue on movies is unintelligible and you cannot hear a thing people are saying. I have to put English language dialogue on the screen in order to follow the movie when I can’t completely crank the stereo.”
• “The sound is a bit ‘muddy’. Dialog doesn’t seem as clear as it could be, and I sometimes feel like I’m missing part of what is being said. I even had my hearing checked to see if I had a problem. I didn’t, thank goodness…”
• “I can’t hear speech that well. No matter if it is Dolby Digital, DTS, or whatever. The speech gets washed out by the surround sounds (not necessarily the surround speakers themselves). I thought all I needed to do was to increase the volume of the center speaker and that would take care of it. NOPE! It didn’t. I even checked and calibrated all surround speakers to be exact with a sound level meter and pumped the center channel even louder. No good. I checked my connections on the back of the receiver to make sure each speaker was hooked up correctly and all is correct. When I get close to the center speaker, it sounds like it is also letting sounds other than voice/speech come through. I thought the center was supposed to only have speech coming through it. What can I do to remedy this problem? Many thanks in advance!’
• (My center channel speaker): “It’s not good enough to really be happy with it, but not bad enough to replace it. I’ll wait for some divine intervention.” Read on… it is here already!

Suggestions for solving the problem are all over the map:

• Purchase a better center channel speaker (how much better will solve the problem?)
• Purchase a better receiver (same as above)
• Check the front speakers’ polarity (that is not the problem)
• Try room treatments (they’re expensive, fail the WAF test and won’t solve the problem)
• Increase the volume in the center speaker (that’s neither the problem nor the solution; it also fails the WAF test)
• Engage the “Midnight Mode” if you have a modern receiver with that feature (that monkeys with the dynamic range and compromises the overall sound)

Now some deny the muddy dialog problem exists in their high end systems; well, if you can spend thousands of dollars on speakers, then maybe not.  But even Dolby admits the problem exists and has introduced a so-called “midnight mode” to overcome the problem.  The following was lifted right off of their website:

“Midnight mode allows low-volume listening with high-volume benefits, reducing the volume on just the loud effects of a program, increasing the volume on quiet sounds, and maintaining dialogue at a consistent level. A Dolby Digital feature applies dynamic range compression that preserves low-level sounds, prevents dramatic passages from getting too loud, and keeps dialogue intelligible during lower-level listening.

The amount of compression is not arbitrary, but is decided in advance by the soundtrack’s producers and coded right onto the soundtrack.

Some Dolby Digital decoders let you select various amounts of the available compression (for example, 50, 75, 100 percent), while others provide only 100 percent when the compression mode is selected.”

But this begs the question: if there is an acoustic problem with one’s center channel loudspeaker’s dialog clarity, should we try to overcome that with further manipulation of the signal with compression and equalization algorithms that effect the overall sound?  Or, put another way, why can’t you hear everything at the volume you like - low or high?

What if you could add a simple dialog augmentation (corrective/clarifying/enhancement) device that…

• could be wired in parallel with the existing center channel speaker
• was a passive module that required no additional power supply or amp
• is “discreet” – passes the WAF test
• creates crystal clear dialog using any receiver or speaker
• smooths out speaker response of all front channels
• is so inexpensive that it would fit anybody’s budget

Does this sound like another “Mission Impossible” task for audio engineers?

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