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Sound

Make dialogue easier to hear

Inaudible dialogue is the single most common complaint about home cinema sound, and most of it is fixed in a menu rather than with money. The order below runs from free to expensive, deliberately.

By

Free, in order

  1. Turn on night mode or dynamic range compression. It narrows the gap between whispers and explosions, which is the actual complaint.
  2. Check the audio output format. A television set to output stereo to a surround system discards the centre channel entirely — the one that carries the dialogue.
  3. Move the soundbar below the screen, not above it. Speech arriving from above a face is the one placement error good equipment cannot hide.
  4. Turn off any “surround” or “virtual” processing and listen again. Some of them widen the sound by pulling energy out of the centre.
  5. Raise the centre channel level by one or two decibels after calibration. This is a preference, not an error, and it is a legitimate one.

Then, if it is still wrong

A centre channel. A 3.1 soundbar costs less than a 5.1 and solves the problem people actually describe, which is not a lack of surround.

What does not help

More power. A louder system reproduces the same mix more loudly, including the parts that were already too loud. The problem is the range, not the volume.

Questions people actually ask

Why is dialogue quiet but explosions deafening?

Films are mixed for a cinema, with a much wider dynamic range than a living room tolerates. A night mode or dynamic range compression setting narrows that range, which is exactly what a domestic room needs and what the mix does not assume.

Would a centre speaker really help?

It is the largest single improvement available, because most dialogue is mixed to the centre channel. A stereo pair reproduces it as a phantom image that only works from the middle seat; a physical centre speaker anchors it for everyone.

Last reviewed 4 September 2026

The equipment this assumes

Everything above works with what you already own. These are the products we would reach for, and each links to the full review rather than straight to a shop.