Need help with figuring how to set up audio on tv and soundbar

[corneileous]

Just wondering if there's any audio settings I can do on my Samsung TV and soundbar so that like, when watching an action movie or something, the dialogue isn't so quiet that you have to turn the volume up so much that when a loud scene comes up, it blasts the whole room. My TV is a 2017 Samsung 65' QN65Q7FAM and the soundbar is a 2017 Samsung HW-M550/ZA.

I read somewhere where you can turn on the TV's auto-volume setting or put the audio in a night-mode but unless I'm just not looking in the right spot, I don't think my TV or my soundbar have any kind of settings like this. Im using the ARC function to connect the soundbar to the TV if that helps and I do have an equalizer on the TV but I haven't the slightest clue how to properly set that and I currently have the audio set to "movie". It does have a "clear voice" setting but I haven't tried it.

Thanks.

 

[a417]

A lot of it will depend on what you are feeding the TV with. They will attenuate the highs and accentuate the lows so that you're not mashing the volume buttons all movie long, but that takes effort that doesn't immediately get them more money...so it may not be something yo uget.

If you watch a ripped DVD or a transcoded movie from a computer, that tends to go by the wayside and you will give the volume button a workout. Your quiet scenes will be a whisper and the first gunshot in the chase will blow your eardrums in...it's the price you pay unless you actually do audio processing to prevent it.

Is it from a cable service? Fiber? OTA TV? computer? media center?

 

[corneileous]

A lot of it will depend on what you are feeding the TV with.

I don’t seem to have this problem with my non-pro PS4 but I guess I haven’t paid much attention to what all it does this on but last night while watching a movie on Hulu-live, it was pretty bad. Dialogue was fairly quiet but action scenes were louder than hell. Other sources, don’t know. I can’t remember right off hand what the other sources were that makes this really noticeable.

They will attenuate the highs and accentuate the lows so that you're not mashing the volume buttons all movie long, but that takes effort that doesn't immediately get them more money...so it may not be something yo uget.

I kinda get what you’re saying here about “they”….. I’m assuming is the audio mixers fixing the sound but I don’t understand what the rest of what you said means.

If you watch a ripped DVD or a transcoded movie from a computer, that tends to go by the wayside and you will give the volume button a workout. Your quiet scenes will be a whisper and the first gunshot in the chase will blow your eardrums in...it's the price you pay unless you actually do audio processing to prevent it.

How do you do that? Is there a certain way my TV’s audio equalizer needs to be set? I currently have the incoming audio format set to PCM and being that the sound is a little louder this way, I have the other audio setting- can’t remember what it’s called but it’s set to Neo 2:5 or whatever it is.

Is it from a cable service? Fiber? OTA TV? computer? media center?

Last night it was a movie played on FXM on Hulu Live. Incoming internet speed is 200Mbps.

 

[a417]

I don’t seem to have this problem with my non-pro PS4 but I guess I haven’t paid much attention to what all it does this on but last night while watching a movie on Hulu-live, it was pretty bad. Dialogue was fairly quiet but action scenes were louder than hell. Other sources, don’t know. I can’t remember right off hand what the other sources were that makes this really noticeable.

Hulu has to pay for all that bandwidth to deliver to everyone, at all times, so they probably compress the audio down and then it loses many of the finely crafted details (quiet conversations and loud shootouts) and comes across as a hot mess. You may have a 30 bazillian per second internet connection, but Hulu Live may only be pushing a couple of megs a second to you, and in that you have a high def audio picture and sound. The sound usually always takes the bigger hit.

I kinda get what you’re saying here about “they”….. I’m assuming is the audio mixers fixing the sound but I don’t understand what the rest of what you said means.

attenuate means make quieter, accentuate means make louder

How do you do that? Is there a certain way my TV’s audio equalizer needs to be set? I currently have the incoming audio format set to PCM and being that the sound is a little louder this way, I have the other audio setting- can’t remember what it’s called but it’s set to Neo 2:5 or whatever it is.

playing with the EQ on your TV will do little. Your TV and soundbar can only present the audio they get from the service. If they're sending you a crappy stream of audio, they can only do what they can with it...and that's play it.

Transcoding has to do with taking an AV source (like a blue ray) and then converting it to another format either for broadcast (with permission!) or storage as a backup (as long as you own the orig, of course). Probably shouldn't have brought it up in this convo, but it is what they are doing . They have an original file that they break down into a stream and send to you...when they do it poorly, you get issues like that.

Last night it was a movie played on FXM on Hulu Live. Incoming internet speed is 200Mbps.

So it's probably not your internet connection, but it's the crap stream that Hulu Live sent to you. I'd get at their customer service and tell them the audio is terrible, maybe you can get a refund or credit, or at least clue them in that it was an unpleasant experience due to the audio going from deafening to quiet.

 

[corneileous]

Hulu has to pay for all that bandwidth to deliver to everyone, at all times, so they probably compress the audio down and then it loses many of the finely crafted details (quiet conversations and loud shootouts) and comes across as a hot mess. You may have a 30 bazillian per second internet connection, but Hulu Live may only be pushing a couple of megs a second to you, and in that you have a high def audio picture and sound. The sound usually always takes the bigger hit.

So then what causes it even on DVD playback or even Blu-Ray? Its been awhile since Ive spun one of my 4K UHD bluray movies but I wanna say it doesn't do it as bad...

attenuate means make quieter, accentuate means make louder

I figured that, I was talking more so about how its not in their financial interest to I guess try harder to make it so the "loud" wasn't so loud and the "quiet" wasn't so quiet.

playing with the EQ on your TV will do little. Your TV and soundbar can only present the audio they get from the service. If they're sending you a crappy stream of audio, they can only do what they can with it...and that's play it.

Transcoding has to do with taking an AV source (like a blue ray) and then converting it to another format either for broadcast (with permission!) or storage as a backup (as long as you own the orig, of course). Probably shouldn't have brought it up in this convo, but it is what they are doing . They have an original file that they break down into a stream and send to you...when they do it poorly, you get issues like that.

I just wish I knew how to do that or could find a guide.

 

[a417]

I just wish I knew how to do that or could find a guide.

If you don't have a media source that doesn't do it, transcoding won't help you. It's only used if you are trying to do something like take a 4.7 gb DVD disk and store a smaller backup copy (usually around 2 gb) on your computer ... for a legal backup, of course. You are taking a giant media source that is unwieldly, and transcoding it to a smaller format for transport or storage. You are not doing that, so it probably would have been better if I never mentioned it at all. Should you want to find out more, you can feed words like "video transcoding" into the Googler and see.

If the sources that you are having the problems with are streaming services, unfortunately they're the only ones that can usually fix it.

I don't have the documentation for your devices, nor the current settings to look thru to see if you have something messed up, sorry,

 

[GregOH]

I've tried soundbars for a solution and they didn't work for me. If you don't have a home theater system, that's the way to go. I have a 5.2 system and I'm using three amps. My main amp is providing sound for front and rear speakers and a powered sub. The main amp has the bass adjusted down so I don't get the overpowering volume when action occurs. My second amp is connected to the center channel of the main amp and is used to power one speaker positioned at the listening area. Since the center channel of an avr is where most of the voice dialogue comes from, having that channel amplified to a speaker works much better than any soundbar will. My third amp is a cheap class D amp that I got from Amazon and it gets it's signal from my powered sub via an RCA splitter and it's connected to a bass shaker mounted to the bottom of my sofa.

It's another great hobby to get into and if you pick up the pieces cheap from places like Goodwill and thrift stores, you can end up with something that sounds really good, all sound can be adjusted, and not have a bunch of money invested.

 

[corneileous]

Switching my provider from Hulu Live to DirecTV Stream seemed to help tremendously and after keeping my TV’s incoming audio signal set to BitStream, the output audio format will change to Dolby Digital automatically from PCM when it detects the proper signal. For the most part I can use the “Movie” sound setting without having to constantly raise and lower the volume between the quiet scenes and the loud scenes but changing the TV’s sound setting to “Clear Voice” seems to help, too. I haven’t played too much with the Apple TV’s dynamic range reduction.

But yeah, I realize sound bars aren’t the most preferred and believe me, I would love to have something else much better, I just don’t have the room for it and after buying the rear surround sound speaker accessory for the sound bar, for a sound bar system, it sounds pretty good especially after I took an old RCA brand powered subwoofer and grafted it in a way to the tiny powered subwoofer that came with the sound bar, I have a pretty good sound system for what it is.