Speech Intelligibility issue with AppleTV and surround settings 5.1 and 7.1

[vic_20]

I am about to have another stab at improving speech intelligibility on certain apps and programs from my Apple TV.  This seems to have gotten worse with more programs being encoded at 7.1 – but has been something of an issue previously with 5.1. Acknowledging that this also might be some bad encoding from AppleTV+, Netflix et al.

I currently am set up with a BV-14, 4 x BL-18, and a Beolab2 sub. They are set-up in a speaker group that I use for all TV viewing (I might adapt this strategy – but I still need a speaker group that works for others in the house without them having to manually tweak it).  They assigned as per the Technical Sound guide guidance – as BL-14 Left = Centre, BL-14 Right = Centre. The BL-18s are Front Left, Front Right, Left Surround and Right Surround and the Sub.

The AppleTV is set to pass through the audio as if it is set to downmix (or up mix) to 5.1 it often collapses the audio down to 2.1. The TV is set to TrueImage

The current ‘solve’ is to drive the centre channel harder – but this sometimes feels like it is amplifying something that isn’t there. Adjusting the Stage Width sometimes helps a little. Speech Enhancement also has limited impact.

Does anyone else experience similar with Apple-TV as a source? Are there any workarounds / tips / settings / configuration that others have used that better balanced the audio between all the different apps and output modes?

• This topic was modified 1 day, 10 hours ago by vic_20.

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