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Jimmy4915
Contributor I
January 7, 2019

Dialog/speech issues

Hello All,

I know this has been talked about before, but I still have not found anyone (sonos or user) who has come up with a definitive solution to dialog issues when using the playbar for movies and TV shows.

I have a Sonos playbar, Sub, and 2 Sonos one's in my living room to have a surround sound set up.
When watching movies or TV shows, the dialog is almost always very difficult to understand, music is just fine, but not movies and tv shows. I have tried both speech enhancement and night mode features, but these do not improve dialog clarity whatsoever. I have verified that my TV is putting out the right source to the sonos system. It is not as matter of how loud the sound is, it is simply not easy to understand what is being said. I have also encountered the seemingly common issue where dialog is very quiet but other sounds, ambient noise in movies, explosions, background sounds, etc. are very loud and you can't hear what is being said, so you are constantly playing with the volume to try and make things sound ok.

Has there been a true solution to these problems?
It's very frustrating because I Iove my Sonos system, but these issues are ruining my experience.

Thank you.
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      5 replies

      Airgetlam
      Airgetlam
      January 7, 2019
      Several things pop to mind, and some of them weren't clearly delineated in your post.

      1) When you're experiencing this issue, what does the Sonos think that it's receiving? Go into the controller app, and in to Settings, and choose About My Sonos System. I'm interested in what's after the "Audio In" line under your PLAYBAR.

      2) Have you tried adjusting the volume of your surround speakers? Again, go in to Settings, then Room Settings, then select the room that your PLAYBAR is in. Click on "Advanced Audio" and then select Surround Settings, and you'll be at a location where you can adjust the volume of your surrounds in relationship to your PLAYBAR.

      3) Have you run TruePlay on your PLAYBAR's room? Granted, there's only so much that the process can do, it might help, and certainly wouldn't hurt. If you don't have an iOS device, it's worth buying a friend a beer/dinner in order to borrow theirs.

      4) Some of this is on the sound director of the shows we watch. There's only so much that can be done with the software, if the source itself isn't mixed properly, then there's not much we can do.

      5) It might be worth it if you were to submit a system diagnostic within 10 minutes of replicating this issue, and either post the number here, or contact Sonos to discuss it. There may be information included in the diagnostic that will help Sonos pinpoint the issue and help you find a solution.

      6) It might be helpful to post what brand and model number of TV you have, too. Who knows, there may be a known issue with that particular one. Oh, and make sure that you've updated the firmware on it. There have been, over the last couple of years, some fairly important updates to the TVs which impact the way they process sound.
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      Bruce
        albert7707
        Lyricist II
        May 10, 2019
        Ok I’m having the same issue I ran a diagnostic here’s the number. 668072334.

        there’s a pic of the beam showing 2.0 Dolby. Same thing as the Playbar. When using the Playbar the same thing happens great ambient sound but terrible speech clarity. Any ideas? Thank
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        Airgetlam
        Airgetlam
        May 10, 2019
        What are you watching on the TV? My suspicion would be that whatever device is feeding your TV (cable box of some kind?) probably needs to have the audio settings adjusted. I'm guessing that right now, it's only feeding the TV a 2.0 signal, so the TV can only feed that signal to the Beam.

        Or, it's possible that the source you're currently watching might only have a 2.0 signal. Until recently, many of the news programs that I watched didn't use a 5.1 signal to send through....so when I checked that area during one of those programs, it would show the same as yours does, when I switched to a movie channel, it would show the expected Dolby Digital 5.1 indicator.
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        Bruce
        albert7707
        Lyricist II
        May 11, 2019
        Yes thank you I checked all inputs and you were right depending on what the source is putting out that’s what I get. Tried all different sources Apple TV fire cube and satellite and am getting 5.1 90% of the time now. But still having the muffled speech issues. Only on the Playbar the beam sounds clear n crisp. Besides getting an audio extractor is there anything else I can do. I’ve changed and upgraded all cords hdmi/optical etc... Anything I haven’t tried? And thank you for your help btw
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          Airgetlam
          Airgetlam
          May 11, 2019
          I'm now confused. Do you have a PLAYBAR, or do you have a Beam?

          There's not really a way to make a stereo signal into a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal. The Sonos (and pretty much every device out there) does what it can to interpret the signal, and make it as good as it can. But there's only so much that can be done. If the originating signal is only stereo, even an "audio extractor" can't help, since there's really nothing to extract.

          You may also want to double check your speech enhancement settings.
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          Bruce
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