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Would a soundbar help the situation or make it worse? With two kids 90% of the time I'm watching kids movies but I still turn on the closed captions. Any backgr

Would a soundbar help the situation or make it worse? With two kids 90% of the time I'm watching kids movies but I still turn on the closed captions. Any background noise and it's nearly impossible to hear the dialogue without cranking up the volume to an undesirable level.

lostlogin 4y ago
Many devices have a night mode to help keep the range of volumes small. The Sonos one is perfect for my use case. It changed my evening life when I found this.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I wish my Denon AVR had a usable night mode. Instead it has a setting called "dynamic volume" that makes it so all dialog right after an explosion is inaudible...
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    Unhelpful but probably accurate.
  - brokenmachine 4y ago
    I believe what you'd call night mode is called "Dynamic EQ" on the Denons. This basically adds more bass and treble as you lower the volume, due to the way the ear works - the Fletcher Munson curve. This still won't help with the terrible excess dynamic range that current movies insist on doing though. You'll still have to adjust the volume all the time, but it will make things sound much better at lower volumes.
vel0city 4y ago
I don't know your current setup, but I'd highly recommend external speakers with most modern TVs. Back in the day with CRTs and projection screens, the TV would be pretty big regardless. They didn't have to worry about bundling in some nice speakers with a TV, because hey the TV is going to be quite large and that cavity can be a nice resonance chamber if done right. Now, all TVs need to be super thin which can be a nice thing don't get me wrong. But their packaging means their speakers are often very compromised. Sure, they're OK in a pinch, but even a cheap sound bar will often out perform most TV's built in speakers. So unless you're using the TV in a space where you just don't care about the sound quality, you'll get a lot out from having at least a sound bar or some other external speaker setup.
boltzmann-brain 4y ago
It might to some extent, but it's not the perfect way to go. Speech reproduction gets muddled by distortion and by masking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking ). If you have one speaker reproducing both speech and other sound, this is what happens: 1. additional sound output means heightened distortion 2. when two sounds come from two places, our brains can separate them due to phase differences and spatial perception, so those two sounds mask each other less than if the same two sounds come out of a single speaker, even if it's perfect, with no distortion etc 3. the speaker is made for broad range reproduction and not voice reproduction, so it'll de-emphasize speech frequencies, which are exactly those frequencies that also make music sound like it's coming out of a cardboard box. ultimately the applied eq (equalizer) curve will create speech that's slightly muddy, like someone talking from behind a blanket. 4. sound bars use tiny transducers which are woefully underpowered compared to the SPL (sound pressure level) they're tasked with producing. This is done by using multi-band compression and limiting. This sometimes creates situations where the limiting might be recovering after a slightly louder sound, and the very next syllable will be muted. However, having a dedicated speaker for the center channel is none the less way better than not having one at all. If that's all you can try, you can try your luck. But be aware that getting a cheap one will probably not get you where you want to be - you'll have to spend a pretty penny. At that point if you have the space you might want to get a 3.1 bookshelf speaker setup. They don't have to be very large to provide great value-for-space-used.
- arh68 4y ago
  FWIW, adding a Center channel to my former 2.0 seems to have really helped me hear dialogue.
- nogridbag 4y ago
  I've had a few 5.1 systems in the past (energy, Polk audio speakers) but I found while the center channel quality is excellent there's just too much bass. Even at low volumes the bass disturbed others in the home (even after playing with eq, boosting center channel, and enabling night mode on the receiver). Currently I have an LG Gallery TV. I like the ease of just using TV for audio and even after raising the volume it doesn't vibrate the whole house.
throwawayForMe2 4y ago
A Bose sound bar with an “enhanced dialogue” mode helped me greatly.
aidenn0 4y ago
I have a 3.1 setup and the center channel helps, but it's still really bad with many mixes. If you happen to use an ffmpeg based player, and are targeting a stereo, this audio-filter helps a lot (I stole this from someone somewhere on the internet). I use it for encoding movies for car-trips (where there is both no center channel and a lot of background noise). aformat=channel_layouts=stereo, compand=0 0:1 1:-90/-900 -70/-70 -30/-9 0/-3:6:0:0:0

lostlogin 4y ago

Many devices have a night mode to help keep the range of volumes small. The Sonos one is perfect for my use case. It changed my evening life when I found this.

aidenn0 4y ago
I wish my Denon AVR had a usable night mode. Instead it has a setting called "dynamic volume" that makes it so all dialog right after an explosion is inaudible...
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Unhelpful but probably accurate.
- brokenmachine 4y ago
  I believe what you'd call night mode is called "Dynamic EQ" on the Denons. This basically adds more bass and treble as you lower the volume, due to the way the ear works - the Fletcher Munson curve. This still won't help with the terrible excess dynamic range that current movies insist on doing though. You'll still have to adjust the volume all the time, but it will make things sound much better at lower volumes.

vel0city 4y ago

I don't know your current setup, but I'd highly recommend external speakers with most modern TVs. Back in the day with CRTs and projection screens, the TV would be pretty big regardless. They didn't have to worry about bundling in some nice speakers with a TV, because hey the TV is going to be quite large and that cavity can be a nice resonance chamber if done right. Now, all TVs need to be super thin which can be a nice thing don't get me wrong. But their packaging means their speakers are often very compromised. Sure, they're OK in a pinch, but even a cheap sound bar will often out perform most TV's built in speakers. So unless you're using the TV in a space where you just don't care about the sound quality, you'll get a lot out from having at least a sound bar or some other external speaker setup.

boltzmann-brain 4y ago

It might to some extent, but it's not the perfect way to go. Speech reproduction gets muddled by distortion and by masking ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_masking ). If you have one speaker reproducing both speech and other sound, this is what happens: 1. additional sound output means heightened distortion 2. when two sounds come from two places, our brains can separate them due to phase differences and spatial perception, so those two sounds mask each other less than if the same two sounds come out of a single speaker, even if it's perfect, with no distortion etc 3. the speaker is made for broad range reproduction and not voice reproduction, so it'll de-emphasize speech frequencies, which are exactly those frequencies that also make music sound like it's coming out of a cardboard box. ultimately the applied eq (equalizer) curve will create speech that's slightly muddy, like someone talking from behind a blanket. 4. sound bars use tiny transducers which are woefully underpowered compared to the SPL (sound pressure level) they're tasked with producing. This is done by using multi-band compression and limiting. This sometimes creates situations where the limiting might be recovering after a slightly louder sound, and the very next syllable will be muted. However, having a dedicated speaker for the center channel is none the less way better than not having one at all. If that's all you can try, you can try your luck. But be aware that getting a cheap one will probably not get you where you want to be - you'll have to spend a pretty penny. At that point if you have the space you might want to get a 3.1 bookshelf speaker setup. They don't have to be very large to provide great value-for-space-used.

arh68 4y ago
FWIW, adding a Center channel to my former 2.0 seems to have really helped me hear dialogue.
nogridbag 4y ago
I've had a few 5.1 systems in the past (energy, Polk audio speakers) but I found while the center channel quality is excellent there's just too much bass. Even at low volumes the bass disturbed others in the home (even after playing with eq, boosting center channel, and enabling night mode on the receiver). Currently I have an LG Gallery TV. I like the ease of just using TV for audio and even after raising the volume it doesn't vibrate the whole house.

throwawayForMe2 4y ago

A Bose sound bar with an “enhanced dialogue” mode helped me greatly.

aidenn0 4y ago

I have a 3.1 setup and the center channel helps, but it's still really bad with many mixes. If you happen to use an ffmpeg based player, and are targeting a stereo, this audio-filter helps a lot (I stole this from someone somewhere on the internet). I use it for encoding movies for car-trips (where there is both no center channel and a lot of background noise). aformat=channel_layouts=stereo, compand=0 0:1 1:-90/-900 -70/-70 -30/-9 0/-3:6:0:0:0