dts audio control panel got quieter issue

#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE HOW TO#
#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE MOVIE#
#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE TV#

If you have a multi-speaker system hooked up to a receiver, it’s on you to set it up correctly. Other times, you have nobody to blame but yourself. Sometimes you can blame overzealous audio engineers, and sometimes you can blame cost-cutting television engineers. Your Media Center Isn’t Configured Properly

That’s a perfect recipe for way-too-loud action and way-too-soft dialogue.

#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE TV#

Many cheaper TV sets just smash the channels together and push them out the speakers with little to no adjustment. Organizations like Dolby publish ratios that provide the ideal downmixing configuration with proper balance, but that doesn’t mean the people who designed your TV set followed the guidelines, or that your TV even has proper downmixing algorithms in the first place. When you watch media encoded with 5.1 or greater channel audio (which is pretty much any DVD, Bluray, streamed source from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) on a 2.x setup, it falls on the TV to perform a task known as “downmixing” to blend the channels together and re-balance sounds so that the 5.1 configuration sounds normal coming from a 2.0 system. They’re watching TV with the simple 2.0 channel speakers built into the TV and maybe a 2.0 channel soundbar with a subwoofer added in for good measure to boost it up to 2.1. Most people are not watching TV with extensive home surround systems. Your TV Isn’t Downmixing CorrectlyĪlthough we can point the finger at maniacal audio engineers in many cases, sometimes we can blame your television itself. In 2009, for example, audio engineers released a paper highlighting how movies such as The Matrix had a range of 25 units from the loudest to the quietest moments where as sitcoms like Friends had a range of only six units. The phenomenon is radically more pronounced in action films and practically nonexistent in sources like sitcoms (aside from annoyingly loud commercials). You’ll note that we’ve made a lot of references so far to action movies. (That doesn’t mean you can’t fix it though-keep reading.) This is called dynamic range, and it’s what makes those films so immersive. The audio engineers expect you to turn it up to hear the dialogue and then get rocked right out of your seat when that unexpected car bomb goes off.

#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE MOVIE#

(As a fun aside, you can unplug the wire to your center channel speaker while watching a movie or sporting event and the voices of the actors or announcer will vanish.)Įven if your home media center is set up perfectly and adjusted for balanced surround sound, it’s distinctly possible that you’ll still experience the super loud special effects and explosions and super quiet dialogue simply because it was originally mixed that way. In a 5.x, 7.x, and 9.x configuration, the sound effects (everything from the big booms to the faint creak of a door in the distance) are pumped through the front and rear L/R channels (depending on where in the “soundspace” the engineers want the sound to appear to the listener).ĭialogue is pumped through the center channel, labeled with a (2) in the above diagram. And if you’re using an advanced system like Dolby Atmos, you might even see an additional decimal point followed by a digit representing the number of in-ceiling or upward-firing speakers-something like 9.1.2. Some systems feature an additional pair of directional surround speakers, resulting in 9.1 channel audio. Add in two additional side surround speakers and you get 7.1 channel audio. Add in rear surround speakers and a center channel front speaker, and it becomes 5.1. So, if you add a single subwoofer to 2.0 channel audio, it becomes 2.1 channel audio.

Many can combine to create an annoying TV viewing experience. Let’s first take a look at of the issues that can cause this volume variability before we jump into what you can do about it. Why does it seem like so many TV shows and movies-especially action films-swing so wildly in volume levels? Unfortunately, it’s unlikely you can narrow down a common source of variable volume in different content to a single issue. Everything is perfect and you can hear their conversation clearly and then BOOM-a car crash, explosion, or sudden shift in action blows your eardrums out as the volume level skyrockets relative to the quiet conversation to which you were just listening. You can’t hear what they’re saying very clearly so you turn the volume up until you can. You’re sitting there watching TV and suddenly the characters are talking in hushed tones about something important.

It’s a situation nearly everyone can relate to.

#DTS AUDIO CONTROL PANEL GOT QUIETER ISSUE HOW TO#

Why is the dialogue so quiet and what can you do to fix it? Read on as we show you how to tame wild swings in TV audio output. We’ve all been there: the characters on screen are talking and it’s way too quiet so you crank up the volume only to be blasted by a loud explosion two seconds later.

Dts audio control panel got quieter issue