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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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    Bsmithw6
    Lyricist III
    December 25, 2016
    Wait!? Does TonyDancer's solution (to change the EQ settings on the TV) work? I'm just about to buy a PlayBar, mostly to improve dialogue clarity for streaming (Netflix, HBO Now, etc.). My Samsung TV offers a "Clear Voice" EQ preset, which I just tried and it does, indeed, clear up the mid-ranges while sacrificing some bass. However, I do not see an option to set the Digital Audio output to RAW, so I am uncertain if the Samsung TV is going to output "Clear Voice." Here's a question: in a TV+PlayBar setup, what is processing the sound — the TV? The PlayBar? Both?

    The sound bar should be the only one processing sound. Sonos setup fails to instruct the user to turn off your TVs surround sound. Then change output to raw (mine says bitstream but I believe is same thing). Use Tonydancers post as the best way as it helped my sound bar tremendously.
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    jrniram
    Lyricist II
    March 3, 2017
    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.

    What do you mean turn off surround sound on the TV?
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    Bsmithw6
    Lyricist III
    March 3, 2017
    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.

    What do you mean turn off surround sound on the TV?

    Using your TV remote go in to the Audio and find "surround Sound" (If it has it, check your user manual) and turn it to OFF. What happens is the TV Processes the sound before the Playbar has a chance to process the sound and it mucks it up. The Playbar should have a RAW Bitstream coming into it. I thought I had a pice of shit Playbar. Then I saw this thread and it is awesome sounding now.

    Hope that helps.

    --Brian S
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    paulcrame
    Lyricist I
    August 13, 2017
    I have the same sound issue as previous people with TV / movies
    Sound is quite good for music, but it's awful to get a good balance between voices and other sounds
    I tried "night mode" or clear voice options but, as already said in previous posts, it does not solve anything
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    Bsmithw6
    Lyricist III
    August 17, 2017
    I have the same sound issue as previous people with TV / movies
    Sound is quite good for music, but it's awful to get a good balance between voices and other sounds
    I tried "night mode" or clear voice options but, as already said in previous posts, it does not solve anything

    Paulcrame, did you turn off your TV surround and then select audio output from the TV to be "bit stream" or "Raw". Do those if you have not yet. My Sonos Playbar sounds amazing after I did that.

    Let me know.

    --Brian Smith
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    Dr_Feelgood72
    Contributor I
    September 3, 2017
    Ok, friends, I have an answer!!! I own an RCA 55" Digital Television. I went in to my TV menu and adjusted the sound settings. I turned Surround Sound to OFF. I turned the Equalizer settings to USER. I adjusted EQ Settings so that the lowest bass is lower, midrange higher and high treble slightly lower. (Basically making a sound wave that I like) Then I set the Digital Audio Output to RAW. The result is CRYSTAL CLEAR SOUND in movies and music from my Sonos system. Use this idea and check the settings in everything that feeds the SONOS so that nothing else but the SONOS is processing the audio signal. THAT, my friends will improve your movie watching experience. Happy viewing!

    Great advice from TonyDancer! That should be included in the Sonos system set-up guide. In my LG 4K TV I turned off all the audio enhancement options as "smart audio", "ultra surround" etc. + set the TV EQ to flat level on all frequencies. Dialogue improvement is remarkable. Thanks much
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    Keithmac
    Virtuoso
    September 4, 2017
    Hello all, just ordered a Sonos Playbar so was a bit disappointed when reading the opening post!. Some great info in this thread, I'll be turning all the audio options off om my TV when it turns up and hope for the best..
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    BoredofBalham
    Prodigy II
    September 4, 2017
    Be a good time to become acquainted with your TV full manual and the settings menus.
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      Keithmac
      Virtuoso
      September 4, 2017
      I've got an EDID emulator on the way as well to see if I can coax 5.1 out of my TV optical out but not holding my breath..
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      krakus303
      Lyricist I
      December 23, 2017
      I have the same issue with voice sound. My optical is running directly from cable box and my tv speakers are set to OFF. The only option on the cable box I have is to run audio in PCM or 5.1. Dialog improves greatly when PCP (stereo) is selected but my Audio input in Sonos app shows Stereo now. Obviously. So either 5.1 or good dialogue volume.
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