I am having a hard time hearing spoken dialogue with my new system unless I have the volume turned really high. Is there a setting I can adjust besides just turning up my center channel?
I use a Yamaha RX-V667 with Energy Take Classic 5.1 ...
In the receivers speaker setup menu there should be a level adjustment for the centre channel. ..
I used to use a Yamah AX861 and an
awful centre speaker. I had a similar problem. Turning up the centre channel helped in the amp menu, but for me additionally voices still sounded boxy (for want of a better word).
The three improvements for me were
* Getting better front and centre speakers : AE Radiance 1 in my case. Pretty low - mid end I guess by the standards here? Were about $750 equivalent in total as factory 2nds from their shop on Ebay. Tiny imperfections in the veneer.
* Getting an amp with better room correction. (Fitting in with one of the other posts on page 1). The old YPAO in the 861 messed with the stereo image and didn't solve bass problems well. I've got an Anthem mrx-300 now which has tidied things up. I checked it using REW. Not perfect in measurement of overall bass response, but much better.
* Putting the speakers in places that fitted my compromises (off the floor) but measured better using REW (about 12" away from wall on small TV arms)
Results: So far I've not needed to change any settings about speaker levels etc. on any of the movies I've watched : I've not had problems hearing dialogue. Really enjoying the quality of music reproduction too (as well as the music itself). Things sound punchy and clean. My sub doesn't go very low, so I can't comment on how that changes things, but this is a lot better already.
My room was particularly bad for resonance I think as it's small and because of the speaker placement. I don't play stuff loud (typically below -30 on the amp). Hope this helps, though maybe your symptoms are for different reasons.
Some things to try:
* If your room is mostly hard surfaces, that can make the sound unclear. So the more soft furnishings the better, up to a point anyway.
* If you've got flexibility to move the speakers around, that might help. Can you turn YPAO off and play a movie with a good dialogue track (and nothing else going on at the same time) and get someone to move the speaker around while you listen (or vice-versa)? Does one place sound better than another? Even better if you can put the time in to learning how to use REW, but it might not be worth it. If speech in the centre speaker always sounds bad you might want to try a different brand / model at least for it. That was the 1st problem with my system.
* Once the centre speaker is in the best place, try running YPAO if you've not used it yet, and then turning up the dialog channel.
Hope this helps.