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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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    bradleyk
    Lyricist II
    October 31, 2016
    Hey BradleyK.... (and others)

    Samsung TVs should have a PCM setting which outputs 24mbps that will send a clear signal to the SONOS Playbar. Look to see also if the Samsung has a Dolby Digital output. The transmission rate is lower, but should still be nice. If you have the TV outputting "Clear Voice" then the Playbar is processing an oversampled signal which it will then distort and create a problem in your final product. If you are outputting from the TV to the Sonos, you want the TV to be doing zero processing. Another alternative is to hook your source directly to the Sonos. This is ideal if you only have one source (Like an AppleTV or such.) If you have multiple sources, then try to make sure that the TV is sending a pure unprocessed digital signal for the Sonos to equalize. Best of luck. Let me know if you need any further help!

    Thanks for the detailed info, TonyDancer! This Samsung TV doesn't have a Dolby Digital output. But your second thought might be just the ticket: I think I could connect my AppleTV directly to the PlayBar (HDMI) — that's 95% of our viewing. And for the occasional DVD I could go from the DVD player straight to the TV and not use the PlayBar.
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    JJJMMM
    Lyricist I
    December 6, 2016
    Sonos staff, adding to complaints by many others - the speech sound quality on Playbar is dreadful and I'm surprised that Sonos is basically ignoring it. While I have tried to enhance sound following all the SONOS recommendations I haven't yet tried Tony Dancer's suggestion as it sounds like a lot of fiddling to fix a problem that Sonos should be resolving for all users.

    I hope someone at Sonos is doing something about it as because it is such black mark against an otherwise excellent product range.

    Joe
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    ChrisC29
    Enthusiast I
    December 6, 2016
    Definitely think the playbar needs a setting to adjust the volume of the centre channel. On my previous surround sound you could adjust the level of every one of the speakers depending on the distance it was from the seating area. This problem with the dialogue seems to be exaggerated when the seating area is quite far from the playbar.
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    bradleyk
    Lyricist II
    December 6, 2016
    I'm the previous poster who had pre-sales questions about setting up a Playbar and AppleTV — and concerns about dialogue clarity. I've now purchased a Playbar and must say that I've very impressed with the product and dialog clarity is very good, and enhanced significantly when both Speech Enhancement and Night Sound are turned on in the Sonos app. The Sonos Speech Enhancement approach might be technically more sophisticated than having volume control over the center channel?
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    jgatie
    jgatie
    December 6, 2016
    I'm the previous poster who had pre-sales questions about setting up a Playbar and AppleTV — and concerns about dialogue clarity. I've now purchased a Playbar and must say that I've very impressed with the product and dialog clarity is very good, and enhanced significantly when both Speech Enhancement and Night Sound are turned on in the Sonos app. The Sonos Speech Enhancement approach might be technically more sophisticated than having volume control over the center channel?

    Plus as of today, you get Trueplay for Playbar.
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    Benefitz
    Contributor I
    December 17, 2016
    Hi all - I've got mediocre dialog sound on the Playbar as well - I'm running it from a projector to a bridge... but the voices are muffled.
    As I'm direct out of a TV I seem to have different set-up. Can anyone direct me to the app based access to speech enhancement and night sound please?

    Thanks -

    I agree with everything said - I've been on the Sonos system a long time and I'm pretty galled by the lack of upgrades for the problems mentioned above. Hard to get the thousands of dollars out and feeling rather stuck to this system for my home theater setup as a result. I'd like to see Sonos oak-up and sort this stuff out.
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    BoredofBalham
    Prodigy II
    December 17, 2016
    The latest software update improved the centre channel considerably.if you think it is still bad then your hopes are truly dashed. You have updated the software?

    If you are unable to locate a basic feature why not take a look around the screen or use Google where you will learn a considerable amount to enable you to get the best out of your speakers amd how to use them. You may find one, or more, of your settings are causing your problems.
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    Benefitz
    Contributor I
    December 17, 2016
    Hey Boredo - Yeah, I'm up on the latest everything... in my questions above I requested help finding those settings. I am aware of google and I know how to "look around the screen." I was asking the community for help. Thanks.
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    Bsmithw6
    Lyricist III
    December 25, 2016
    Glad I found this thread. I thought I bought a POS sound bar. Sonos, you MUST put the instructions in the setup to turn off surround sound on the TV. Now my sound bar sounds awesome. I've had it for about 3-4 months and had to turn on close caption to watch movies, sports, pretty much everything. Now speech is crystal clear.
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      Bsmithw6
      Lyricist III
      December 25, 2016
      Hey Boredo - Yeah, I'm up on the latest everything... in my questions above I requested help finding those settings. I am aware of google and I know how to "look around the screen." I was asking the community for help. Thanks.

      If you need any help let me know. I'd be glad to send you screen shots of how I fixed my sound bar. Email me at bsmithw6@gmail.com
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