Optimized Center Channel

Last night during my evening HT session, armed with the information graciously offered here, I listened with a more critical ear.  Overall, I have to admit the center speaker's output is very good.  Dialog is clear and generally intelligible. Enough so that I could turn off the subtitles?  No. 

Then why fix what isn't broken?  I spend an awful lot of time and money tinkering, tweaking and upgrading to improve sound, so why not try to improve upon the middling dialog we are so often served?

Reflecting on the day to day, I long for the ability to add subtitles to normal conversations (I wish there was a remote to mute some conversations, but that's a whole other story) and therein, methinks, lies the problem: aging ears.  My hearing is good enough, and a recent audiology test showed I am not yet a candidate for hearing aids.  However, I do find myself missing bits of conversation because someone's head is turned away from me while speaking, they don't speak loud enough, or ambient/ background noise interferes.  Thus, it appears the problem is me, not the system.

I sat on the floor for a time yesterday to have the center speaker pointing directly at me, and it helped somewhat.  Moving between the couch and the floor, the difference was very subtle, but it indicates speaker position could be improved.  With the addition of a new amp and change in the placement of one of the subwoofers, I have to run Audyssey again.  That will be a good time to experiment with the phantom center.  I also fiddled with the EQ and bumped up the enhanced dialog mode one notch, from medium to high, on Marantz.  @mswale , my volume is typically around 40 when watching.  Depending on the source, I might have to increase it to 35, but not much more (unless no one else is home).

Considering my recent purchases, getting a new center speaker is out of the question, particularly as mine works well enough.  A more logical investment is a new AV rack to provide more flexibility for equipment placement, particularly for the center channel.  And, in a few months when Black Friday rolls around, Dirac.  The Kscape is an interesting concept but I'm not ready to go that route.  Had I not recently acquired the Apple TV-X, I might have viewed it differently.

Robert

@traubr sounds like you are on the right track.  If it’s your hearing, the answers probably reside in speaker placement, room treatment and understanding what frequencies you have a harder time hearing along with what make it more difficult to hear.  Some great advice you received from others was to get Dirac and have a professional calibrate your HT for you.  That’s probably going to provide the biggest leap by far relative to replacing the center or other gear.  Hearing the dialogue is more about how to tailor your system to work around your loss of hearing, which is both about knowing what frequencies you have a more difficult time hearing and what frequencies you can hear that may make it harder, overall to decipher dialogue.

You’ve got great ideas and a great approach lined up.  
 

I am curious about the Apple TV X, what are your thoughts?  Noticible difference in picture and sound?  Is it as good as physical media?  I had never heard about it prior to this thread, I researched it a bit and was difficult to understand why the mods would provide such improvements, I read threads where the creator, engineer repeatedly talks about the quality of parts, time spent developing but then says he really can’t explain why it has better audio beyond less jitter and that he has even less of an explanation of why the picture is noticeably improved.  The mods all seem legit and inline with what you would see some do in audio with digital, removing noise, upgrading the power supply.  What’s different though is you can feed a DAC a variety of audio formats along with uncompressed, lossless files.  The time you put into removing noise, jitter, in an audio only set up in theory maximizes utilization of the lossless file in its purest form.  That’s not really achievable with the Apple TV which makes it all the more interesting in finding out if it provides the improvements it claims to.  Seems like the improvements could also highlight flaws in the Audio and Video due to compression that the algorithms used for both are designed to cover up. 

OP, Thank you for your thoughts after your listening session. 

Are you volume constrained? I often have to listen to our HT with my partner in a nearby room... and hence have to have the volume turned way down. So, sometimes I need to turn on the subtitles. But bump the voiume and all is clear. One of the issues with movies are the huge difference in volume between action scenes and dialogue scenes. Whispering dialogue and then crescendos of gun fire and music. Actually our sound bar in the bedroom HT has a setting to equalize the highs and lows so there are not as big a difference. 

The ability to pick speech out of a conversation, is a known thing... and one of the first challenges as your hearing gets worse I have heard. I believe the new Apple ear buds, do and audio test and then equalize and specifically try and improve the ability to highlight conversation. Perhaps this could help when you have to have the volume turned down. 

@ghdprentice, these days I listen at "relatively" normal levels versus in the days of yore when I would crank the system to get maximum surround effect and be "blown away" by it.  For example, when I listen to music or watch a series, I am around 70db.  I enjoy an action flick as much as the next person and will increase the volume to get sucked into it, within reason.  Setting the volume so the neighbors down the road can hear what's playing on my system is in my past.  I will admit to occasionally sticking my favorite music DVDs in (The Who Live at Royal Albert Hall and Cream's Reunion Concert at Royal Albert Hall) and letting 'em rip, hearing be damned.

The Marantz has Dynamic Volume, which adjusts playback volume automatically between loud and soft sounds.  I settled on middle ground as best/ least onerous.  It helps, but depending on the source, there will always be programs that are challenging.

I dislike stuff in my ears, far prefer headphones to buds, and when all is said and done, if subtitles are what allows me to watch, listen and enjoy, then thank goodness I can still see and read them in smaller font from across the room.

@mm1tt77 , the Apple TV-X is a conundrum for me.  It was disparaged above, but I appreciate it nonetheless, despite the price of admission.  How does it work?  Secret sauce.  The engineer is quite experienced in the video world and passionate in what he does.  He will not say what specific changes he’s made inside a typical Apple device, aside from a standalone power supply that is critical, and I don’t blame him.  His passion and expertise come across readily in the WBF thread, link here.  I pored over that lengthy thread before I invested, and was finally convinced to push forward, despite their no backsies policy—you buy it, you own it, no home trial, no credit cards.

I’ve been through many iterations of TV streamers: Roku, Fire TV sticks, Fire TV Cube and Nvidia Shield.  I’m not an Apple person and avoided the Apple TV devices.  My last streamer battle was the new Fire Cube versus Shield, and the Shield won due to its AI ability to slightly improve video, and menu.  Why can you spend tens of thousands for music streamers, but TV streamers are under $200?  Well, an opportunity to spend way more presented itself.

When I first got the ATVX, I was underwhelmed and kicking myself for being sucked in.  I reached out to both the seller and engineer, and they counseled patience.  It took a month, but during that time the ATVX composed itself in its new surroundings and finally showed its mettle.  I have a six-year-old Sony Bravia TV, and the picture has always been its strong suit.  The picture now is nothing short of outstanding, so much vibrancy, color and definition.  Clarity when streaming is better than 4K videos played on my 4K player (what a waste that was).  If you are familiar with The Bear on Hulu, a great deal of their episodes are close-ups of the actor’s faces.  The picture now is so clear, you can count every pore.  Per advice of the seller, after the month, I put the Nvidia Shield back into the system for comparison.  Yikes, what a difference!  Where I thought the Nvidia was excellent before, it paled in comparison to the ATVX, just no contest.

Sound is a different story.  Whereas ATVX gives video a significant boost, the sound is perhaps a bit better, but still does not compare to such as True HD or Atmos on a recorded disk.  As many here have pointed out, blame compressed audio when streaming.

Interestingly, the newest Apple TV iteration will debut in a month or two or three, and purportedly it contains an upgrade to pass native audio, rather than process it on the device.  This, according to the cognoscenti, will result in better audio quality.  I believe that change is a software upgrade, so Apple devices like the ATVX will benefit as well.  Btw, the engineer strongly cautions against automatic upgrades, as some wreak havoc on his modifications.  He wants to test them first, then will alert his user community when it’s OK to update the software.  He has not offered info on the coming upgrades, so the value of my investment is still unsettled.

The ATVX has improved my TV streaming.  Transformative?  No, but an improvement.  Note that I also upgraded my ethernet cable from the network switch to it, and that made a nice improvement as well.  Plus, I use a good power cord.  Beauty, and value, are in the eye of the beholder.  Glad to answer more questions, even via message, so as not to bore others.

Robert