Question about DVD audio -- off topic

[cooljoe666]

I was wondering...........

why is it that the sound effects and the music on a dvd are too darn loud over the speaking.....it makes it annoying for a person to have to hold the remote and turn it up and down all through the movie.

This started happening to VHS before dvd's where so common. Am I the only one to complain about this issue or are there groups of people who are protesting this?

I have seen boxes to hook up to the tv to normalize and compress the audio for this reason.

[Craig Tucker]

Well if you have a 5.1 speaker set-up, you can increase the volume of the centre channel (the dialogue is on this channel). Or reduce the volume of the other channels.

I personally don't find the sound effects too loud on most discs, but then my ears are still fairly young. I believe as you get older it becomes more difficult to filter out surrounding sounds and noise which makes listening to a conversation in a noisey room more difficult.

[vivisimonvi]

Because of the dynamics of DVD audio and multichannel, some passages are meant to be loud (for special effects), and some meant to be low. It recreates a more theatrical effect which were the intention of audio engineers.

If you have a multichannel receiver, most have a function called "Night Mode" or Dynamic Compression (it's used not to disturb anyone across the room, your neighbors, or in this case yourself!). This compresses the dynamics of the audio so loud passages are low, and the softer passages are louder so all sounds are basically the same level. Craig's suggestion works as well if you do not have this option.

I have no complaints of this, as I like a few suprises from my Cerwin Vega speakers which can put out serious power =]