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cadd
Contributor I
October 25, 2015

Sonos Playbar sound issue? Dialogues in movies/shows are not easy to understand fully.

When my wife and I are watching TV, we are noticing that we are having some difficulty fully understanding what the people in the show are saying. It's as if it's not fully clear or as my wife would describe it, it's a volume issue where the dialogue is being overwhelmed by other sounds perhaps.

It's gotten to the point that we need to turn on sub-titles at times. We don't notice this issue with other TV's/watching TV on a computer, so I think this is isolated to the Sonos playbar.

Also, I've noticed when watching movies that the sound fluctuates a lot, in which in an entire movie I have to hold the remote to adjust the sound up and down. It's like the explosion scenes are way too loud but the speaking scenes are not loud enough so we turn it up to try to hear what they are saying and then something loud happens and it's somewhat jarring to us when we are watching the show.

Is this an acoustics issue? Calibration issue?

We have 1 Playbar, 2 Play 1's as surrounds, the Playbar is wall mounted right beneath our Samsung 55" LED Smart TV.
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    91 replies

    Josh D
    Josh D
    Virtuoso
    October 25, 2015
    Have you tried turning on Speech Enhancement in the SONOS app (the square speech bubble on the right of the TV now playing screen, TV has to be selected for it to show up)
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      Josh D
      Josh D
      Virtuoso
      October 25, 2015
      As for the fluctuating sound, try the night mode which is on the left of the now playing screen.
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      - SONOS user since 4th September 2010 - Report innapropriate posts using the flag in the bottom right of the post
        caddAuthor
        Contributor I
        October 25, 2015
        I haven't tried either one of those. How exactly do those features work? I read about it on their site so I will heck it out but does anyone have any experience with them?
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        ratty
        ratty
        October 25, 2015
        https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1959
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        japes
        Lyricist I
        October 26, 2015
        We have the same issue with our PlayBar + Sub + 2xPlay:1 setup.
        The playbar muffles the dialog.
        Turning on speech enhancement / night mode doesn't help.
        Turning down the level of the surround speakers HAS helped a little bit, but we still have issues.

        Subtitles are the way forward. It's a frustrating problem.
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          The LHC
          October 26, 2015
          I haven't tried either one of those. How exactly do those features work? I read about it on their site so I will heck it out but does anyone have any experience with them?

          Wouldn't it be easier just to try them to see what happens?
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          Chris
          Chris
          Lead Maestro
          October 26, 2015
          japes - do you have issues on all sources? Like DVD has issue, TV doesn't etc.

          if tv trouble have your tried hooking toslink direct to cable box to rule out tv processing.
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          Respect the Queue (2)Move (3)Beam (1) Era100 (2)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1) Roam (2) Ace (1)Connect:Amp (4)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings; (2)Play)
          caddAuthor
          Contributor I
          November 1, 2015
          I tried the enhancements and the night sound and I did a few things with the surround sound but it's still kind of unclear. Any other solutions?
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            Chris
            Chris
            Lead Maestro
            November 1, 2015
            Did you switch cable to Direct from source vs through tv
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            Respect the Queue (2)Move (3)Beam (1) Era100 (2)ARC (1)SonosOne (1)Playbar (4)Play5 (4)Play1 (3)Play3 (1)Port (2)Connect (1) Roam (2) Ace (1)Connect:Amp (4)Sonos Amp (1)Sub + (9) Echo + Smartthings; (2)Play)
            Crossing
            Lyricist I
            November 23, 2015
            Have exact same problem and have tried the Night Mode, which seems to make little if no difference, and the Voice Mode seems to make it tinny. I constantly have my finger on the volume key to adjust sound up and down. Very disappointed so far. My wife prefers an old Bose 1-2-3 which, despite its age, produces far better sound, good voice clarity, and very even sound without (enhances quiet sounds and cuts loud booming sounds extremely effectively). But I like Sonos and really want it to work! I read an old Sonos Playbar review and the reviewer mentioned having a Sub really helped with this situation. Does having a Sub cause the Playbar to accentuate dialog and reduce the Playbar's base because this is now handled by the Sub? While I would like to try a Sub to solve this issue it would be a very costly experiment. While I don't think the TV is enhancing sound (Samsung and the sound types are disabled when External Speaker is selected) it was last on Standard Mode which one would think just passes sound through. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
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