So, just reading my daily news and came across this:
I wasn’t sure if this is something that could be implemented into Plex. My wife and I constantly have this issue with various movies and shows. Our surround system booms during sound effects and scores, but we’re constantly adjusting the volume back and forth when dialogue comes across. We eventually give up most of the time and turn on subtitles instead.
Thanks!
Depending on the used client device, you might actually have something like it already available.
Look for “night mode” or similarly-named options in the settings of your AVR or TV.
I know for certain that the nVidia Shield Pro has something similar available.
If you are using an HTPC for playback, you can extend the player software “Plex HTPC” with an optional compressor An on-demand audio dynamics compressor for PMP and Plex HTPC
Interesting. I’m using a Shield Pro with my Samsung surround system. I’ll have to look through the settings. I always thought “Night Mode” just lowered the volume across the board.
A properly implemented night mode brings the volume of the quietest and the loudest moments closer together – i.e. is applying dynamic compression.
It is possible, that the night mode of the Shield only works if you’re not “passing through” the audio stream. In which case you need to look in the settings of your Samsung sound system whether it has a night mode available.
Awesome! I will check both of those out! Thanks for the assist!
I bet Night Mode solves your problem but if not entirely, you might be able to make the dialogue more intelligible by boosting the center channel.
Also, check the position of your center channel speaker. If it is set too far back, it can really make the sound muddy.
And lastly even when everything is dialed in perfectly… Some movies just have a bad mix, and everyone mumbles like Bane.
It seems like an easy enough thing to implement, since most surround audio mixes have the dialogue primarily through the centre channel. Just increase the centre channel volume relative to the others. It would be great to have an option in the player right next to the subtitles and audio channel options. This could also be done in stereo downmixing to make the feature work everywhere Plex works. Like subtitles, it could be handled by any player which supports it and could instead force transcoding on players where it isn’t supported to “burn in” the audio mixing.
You can make dialogue a bit more audible with an equalizer, but that makes other things (especially music) sound weird. Lifting the centre channel level seems like the best way. Maybe on stereo files an equalizer version of the feature could be implemented.
