Dolby Digital DVD's and Trouble with Dialogue - Help PLEASE?

[MCF]

but when watching TV, voices are coming from center, left and right speakers. When watching DVD's, all voices are directed towards the center channel and they are being overwhelmed by everything else that is coming out of the center channel...makes me think maybe tweeter for center is bad. Just curious...what is the frequency range for dialogue? The center channel has two crossovers internal - 250Hz for woofers and 2250Hz for tweeter. Where would normal dialogue occur??

[Quagmire]

I am having trouble understanding dialogue while listening to dolby digital DVD's. My center channel is a Klipsch RC-25 (two 5.25" woofers and a horn) and my reciever is a Harman Kardon AVR-635. I have the center channel set at small and the crossover set at 80Hz and have adjusted the gain to it +/- 2-3dB above and below all other speakers (all set at small and 80Hz) and that does not seem to help much. It seems like the other sounds coming from the center channel are making it difficult to understand dialogue - the dialague seems muffled or not very crisp. I do not have trouble understanding dialogue while watching tv, etc., just dolby digital dvd's. The reciever is connected to a Sony DVD player via an optical cable. The center channel is located above the tv in a built in bookshelf, but there is air space above, behind and on either side of the center channel and the front extends out beyond the shelft about an 1" to make sure the sound field from the center channel is not cut off. I have also 'angled' the center channel to make it point right at the seating area and that does not seem to make any difference. Are there any adjustments other than crossover and gain that will help boost dialogue or make it more crisp and understandable? Would adjusting treble, bass or delay's help any? Any suggestions/recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

MCF,
I think it is quite possible that you have mulitple problems effecting your setup. Woochifer generally gives great advice, and I think he is on the right track here as well. One of the things that I highly suspected upon reading your post was a wiring problem with some speaker(s) wired "out of phase". When you say that you have the center channel speaker bi-wired it makes me all the more suspicious of such a problem. First of all, what do you mean by "bi-wired" and how have you accomplished this? Some folks don't really know what bi-wiring or bi-amping are and can create a real mess trying to bi-wire speakers. Are any of the other speakers in your system bi-wired? For the purpose of troubleshooting this problem, I would suggest that you abandon all bi-wiring and create the most straight forward speaker connections that you can.

Having the center speaker offset as you do may be creating additional problems with intelligibility, especially if this setup creates a situation where you are seated more closely to one of the front mains than you are to the center speaker. Something you can try just to verify if this is a problem is to move the center speaker so that it is equidistant from the L & R main speakers or so that it is "centered" between them and then recalibrate your system. Do so without regard to keeping the center speaker near the video display, you are doing this solely for troubleshooting purposes just to see if this helps with sound. You can't correct a problem until you first identify it, and the first step of troubleshooting is always to "ISOLATE THE PROBLEM".

You MAY have a bad center channel speaker, but you always want to eliminate the basic stuff first because if you don't, you could go as far as replacing the speaker only to find that the problem has come along for the ride; and besides... you always want to optimize your setup no matter what speakers you have in the system, and frequently, these "basics" of setup and calibration make the most difference in overall system performance. It is certainly true that miscalibration and setup problems are the easiest way to distroy system performance, but for some strange reason, far too many people don't believe that it makes that much difference in creating good system performance when it is done right. I've always been at a loss to understand why.

One other point I would bring up is this... If you are moving from a Pro Logic sytem to a Dolby Digital system for the first time, it may take awhile for you to get used to the differences in sound processing. The old Pro Logic format created what I call a "Center Channel Bloat" where too much information was sent to that speaker. The discrete formats like DD and DTS do a far better job of spreading the sound out, but if you're used to how Pro Logic sounds, it can take awhile to get used to it.

Q