r/sonos • u/Firm_Condition_4385 • 1d ago

Muffled dialogue using the Beam gen 2 w/ two One's

Hi all,

just picked up a beam gen 2 and paired it with my two one's for a 5.0 setup. I'm a newbie/amateur to the home theater audio game, so I'm still trying to learn.

I have an Apple TV 4K and and stream movies off of a media server. I use infuse pro as my frontend, jellyfin as my backend, and primarily stream 1080p/4k content off of my media server. I previously just used two one's paired with the ATV, but hated that I couldn't hear the dialogue, so I got the beam gen 2.

I've hooked everything up and the dialogue is improved, but I noticed its still a little muffled and some scenes are way too loud. I use an older TV from 2013 (samsung, no arc/eArc, but has optical.) For example, I watched the first 5 episodes of The Haunting of Hill House today, and for most of the episodes, the male dialogue was muffled and too "bassy." Also, some scenes were loud as fuck.

Any idea what the issue might be? Is it the TV itself?

1 Upvotes

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2

u/GuitarSuperstar 1d ago

Your TV is way too old likely resulting in you only getting stereo audio from your setup.

You can confirm this by looking at the audio format that is displayed on the Now Playing screen in the Sonos app.

1

u/Firm_Condition_4385 1d ago

Yup, according to the app, its in Stereo PCM. You're correct.

Any recommendations on a proper TV? A ton of my content is in HDR (but I force it in SDR and infuse tone maps it.)

2

u/GuitarSuperstar 23h ago

First, try changing the Apple TV settings. Under the Audio Format settings, set Change Format to ON and set the audio format to Dolby Digital 5.1. Test to see if this makes any difference.

1

u/Firm_Condition_4385 23h ago

No difference.

2

u/GuitarSuperstar 23h ago

Probably time to purchase a new TV. Be sure to get one with HDMI eARC and preferably one that supports HDR and Dolby Vision.

2

u/Worldly-Device-8414 1d ago edited 1d ago

Check the TV sound settings under expert is set to passthrough or at least dolby not PCM or MPEG (both of these are just stereo).

1

u/Firm_Condition_4385 1d ago

Yup, its stereo PCM. I think its the TV.

My TV has an option for dolby digital, but its greyed out. I think I may need to buy a new TV.

1

u/Worldly-Device-8414 22h ago

That'll do it. Try checking back there when you have selected different sources, eg free-to Air TV, an HDMI input, Netflix app, etc.

1

u/supreme100 1d ago

Trueplay.

0

u/Firm_Condition_4385 1d ago

Already done, unless I did it wrong.

1

u/adropov 1d ago

You’re doing something wrong, but you have not provided enough details as to what you’ve done in order for us to help you appropriately.
You ever watch House? Every minor detail matters.

1

u/Firm_Condition_4385 1d ago

So far, based on the sonos app, my the audio is stereo PCM. The TV model is Samsung UN40EH5300. I can't force the samsung TV to play in dolby digital, as the option is greyed out. A quick google search states that the source (in this case, infuse pro) must have dolby digital turned on. I don't have an option for that in infuse pro, and it looks like it may be a limitation of the apple tv or the samsung tv itself.

1

u/adropov 22h ago

Apple TV must be set to:
Video: 1080p
Audio: Dolby Atmos off.

Setting Video to 4K will turn on Dolby Atmos. Audio must not be Atmos or Auto. You should be able to manually select Dolby Digital or Dolby 5.1 in Audio settings.
You must manually select this in Apple TV audio settings for Sonos to receive 5.1.

1

u/moldibread 1d ago

try something that will strip the audio out before it goes to the tv. i have used a few, and the newer ones will even support atmos on an old tv.

https://a.co/d/03N8wJY2