5.1 speaker system needed?

[DezGalbie]

I know pretty much nothing about audio setups, so please be gentle with me and be prepared to get the crayons out to draw me the bigger picture if there's something I'm missing!

I've always just used the (presumably) pretty crappy included internal speakers on my TV since I bought it around 9ish years ago. I've mostly just been happy enough with that. But I find myself getting more and more annoyed when I try to watch a movie and get that kind of experience where you can't make out the dialogue, so you turn the volume way up, but then all the other sounds are way too loud and you still can't quite make out most of the dialogue.

I remembered reading somewhere online that this is caused by playing video files with 5.1 sound through a non-5.1 audio setup (such as the internal speakers on my TV). Is this true?

If it is true, then does that mean I should get a 5.1 speaker setup and it will fix the problem?

If so, will any 5.1 speaker setup do?

It really doesn't need to be top of the line or anything. As long as I can hear the dialogue at a reasonable volume, I don't really care too much about audio quality.

[Constantin]

Plugin a 5.1 speakers and using the classic  Realtek software will give you the capability to manage each speaker separately, very handy in movies to increase the center speaker

[DezGalbie]

1 minute ago, Constantin said:

Plugin a 5.1 speakers ans using the classic  Realtek software will give you the capability to manage each speaker separately, very handy in movies to increase the center speaker

Is the centre speaker the one which handles the dialogue then? Or does it vary?

[Constantin]

1 hour ago, DezGalbie said:

Is the centre speaker the one which handles the dialogue then?

Yes

[.Apex.]

20 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

I've mostly just been happy enough with that. But I find myself getting more and more annoyed when I try to watch a movie and get that kind of experience where you can't make out the dialogue, so you turn the volume way up, but then all the other sounds are way too loud and you still can't quite make out most of the dialogue.

Yeah TV speakers are really awful, I too have a really hard time understanding dialogue from TV speakers
 

21 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

I remembered reading somewhere online that this is caused by playing video files with 5.1 sound through a non-5.1 audio setup (such as the internal speakers on my TV). Is this true?

Hard to tell unless we hear how it sounds like, and you can always disable 5.1 Audio if it's enabled, if your TV and whatever Video Player you have are both set to stereo, then it will play 5.1 Audio files in Stereo mode, which is not an issue

is the dialogue muffled? or is it way lower than other sounds? if it's muffled that's just the speakers fault, and you can try playing Stereo files and see if you get the same problem
 

25 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

If so, will any 5.1 speaker setup do?

If you want a 5.1 setup then sure, but if you think you can't play 5.1 Videos in Stereo, that's not the case

 

[DezGalbie]

4 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

is the dialogue muffled? or is it way lower than other sounds? if it's muffled that's just the speakers fault, and you can try playing Stereo files and see if you get the same problem

Hmm. I find it hard to answer that. Because it sometimes sounds a little muffled. But I would say that mostly the issue is that the dialogue is just way too quiet compared to the rest of the audio. But this is only on some video files. Others are fine.

 

7 minutes ago, _Syn_ said:

you can always disable 5.1 Audio if it's enabled, if your TV and whatever Video Player you have are both set to stereo, then it will play 5.1 Audio files in Stereo mode, which is not an issue

Well I almost always use Plex for my movies. I don't specifically see an option in there to disable 5.1. Would that option be in my TV menu? Or would it be turned off using the Realtek software on the PC which is running Plex and is connected to the TV?


I just had another thought. If I was to buy just a single extra speaker, would I be able to connect this to the PC or TV, use this for just dialogue, and adjust the volume of that one independently of the TV speakers to get the balance right? Or is that stupid?

[.Apex.]

20 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

Well I almost always use Plex for my movies. I don't specifically see an option in there to disable 5.1. Would that option be in my TV menu? Or would it be turned off using the Realtek software on the PC which is running Plex and is connected to the TV?

Oh you're using a PC, that makes it much easier, make sure you have Stereo set in Realtek, and if the TV is connected via a 3.5mm jack then the TV is playing Stereo, but if it's getting Audio through HDMI then you might be able to find some settings in the TV menu, if there's none then it's playing stereo as well
 

20 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

I just had another thought. If I was to buy just a single extra speaker, would I be able to connect this to the PC or TV, use this for just dialogue, and adjust the volume of that one independently of the TV speakers to get the balance right? Or is that stupid?

You can, but it's an expensive solution to a simple problem, I have been using Stereo since forever and i've never had any issues playing 5.1 Audio files, they will always be converted to Stereo if your audio device is set to Stereo, and the conversion is not problematic

https://www2.iis.fraunhofer.de/AAC/ChID-BLITS-EBU-Narration.mp4
 

Here's a test you can run, I double checked that it is in fact 5.1 Audio
If you can hear Front Left, Front Center, Front Right, Right Surround, Left Surround then you're good, try also playing that through Plex, maybe its the issue

 

 

[DezGalbie]

@_Syn_

Great. That all sounds promising then. I'll need to sit down and check these things out. Probably won't have a chance until next week though. I'm working 12hr shifts for the next 4 days and I never have time for tinkering or watching stuff when the work schedule is like that.

Thanks

[Derkoli]

2 hours ago, DezGalbie said:

I know pretty much nothing about audio setups, so please be gentle with me and be prepared to get the crayons out to draw me the bigger picture if there's something I'm missing!

I've always just used the (presumably) pretty crappy included internal speakers on my TV since I bought it around 9ish years ago. I've mostly just been happy enough with that. But I find myself getting more and more annoyed when I try to watch a movie and get that kind of experience where you can't make out the dialogue, so you turn the volume way up, but then all the other sounds are way too loud and you still can't quite make out most of the dialogue.

I remembered reading somewhere online that this is caused by playing video files with 5.1 sound through a non-5.1 audio setup (such as the internal speakers on my TV). Is this true?

If it is true, then does that mean I should get a 5.1 speaker setup and it will fix the problem?

If so, will any 5.1 speaker setup do?

It really doesn't need to be top of the line or anything. As long as I can hear the dialogue at a reasonable volume, I don't really care too much about audio quality.

The TV will downmix the 5.1 into stereo, otherwise you would only hear the front two channels, and basically 0 dialogue. For this i would get a soundbar (unless you have a decent budget for proper surround sound) and connect it with optical/toslink, some soundbars come with a dialogue enhancement button which boosts the frequencies of human speech. The center channel plays most dialogue, but it can come from surround or overhead channels if its mixed that way and you go for a dolby atmos 5.1.2 or however many numbers you want to go for (i used to run 15.2.5 so i know quite a bit about surround)

[DezGalbie]

18 minutes ago, Derkoli said:

For this i would get a soundbar (unless you have a decent budget for proper surround sound) and connect it with optical/toslink, some soundbars come with a dialogue enhancement button which boosts the frequencies of human speech.

Thanks for your input. So for this, would I be connecting the soundbar to the PC that's running Plex through the TV? Or would I be connecting it to the TV itself? And is there any more setup after that? Or does the PC just recognise that there is now a soundbar and adjusts accordingly?

Sorry, I really have zero experience with this stuff.

[Derkoli]

26 minutes ago, DezGalbie said:

Thanks for your input. So for this, would I be connecting the soundbar to the PC that's running Plex through the TV? Or would I be connecting it to the TV itself? And is there any more setup after that? Or does the PC just recognise that there is now a soundbar and adjusts accordingly?

Sorry, I really have zero experience with this stuff.

if the pc has optical out, i would connect it to that, but if its more practical and the tv is connected with hdmi or displayport i would plug it into the tv as it will turn the built in speakers off.

[DezGalbie]

3 minutes ago, Derkoli said:

if the pc has optical out, i would connect it to that, but if its more practical and the tv is connected with hdmi or displayport i would plug it into the tv as it will turn the built in speakers off.

My motherboard is the B350 Mortar Arctic from MSI which has an "Optical S/PDIF OUT connector". Is that the one we would be looking for?

The PC is connected to the TV via HDMI.

Are these audio optical connectors all a standard size? Like, if I was to go and buy a soundbar which is advertised as coming with an optical cable, would it be guaranteed to fit? Or do I need to be make sure of which particular cable and connector it is on the unit?

[Derkoli]

1 hour ago, DezGalbie said:

My motherboard is the B350 Mortar Arctic from MSI which has an "Optical S/PDIF OUT connector". Is that the one we would be looking for?

The PC is connected to the TV via HDMI.

Are these audio optical connectors all a standard size? Like, if I was to go and buy a soundbar which is advertised as coming with an optical cable, would it be guaranteed to fit? Or do I need to be make sure of which particular cable and connector it is on the unit?

All optical is 100% standard. Its sometimes called "toslink" as toshiba originally used it to link its products together, before it became used on an absolute tonne of products. And yes it is the one you would be looking for, it goes by many names. But the most common are S/PDIF/toslink/optical.