Volume when watching apks

Hi troy/Brett and fellow members, I don’t know how common this is or is it me. When I am watching an apk eg cinema/cyberflix etc, when watching the music seems very loud compared with the dialogue. Are there any tweaks can I do to make it more of a balance. Thanks. Jimmy.

Unfortunately, I think that’s just the way the movie industry mixes their audio tracks. The more action on the screen, the higher the volume. They believe it sounds more impressive!! No matter what I watch the same movies on, which you’re referring to, it’s just like you described! Grrrrr! It does sound impressive though, if you have a subwooffer on your system.

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Hi, thanks for your reply, however it does not happen when watching normal TV, ie sky/videos/kodi etc, just apks, seems strange.

I’m not the expert, but, I believe the movies you watch, via your apps, have a higher quality sound, than just streaming them through a normal source, like IPTV. Many movies use such sound settings as “surround sound”, and other enhanced settings, to “boost” the movie experience. I’ve read about devices that you can use with your system, to balance normal talking with the action scenes, but they have mixed reviews at best. Lot of sound experts say they’re not worth messing with.

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I believe MaverickCoast is correct! My experience is that it’s not the apk that’s doing it…it’s the way that the music and verbal soundtrack are recorded. Whenever I’m watching TV through our Bose sound system, we’re constantly noticing that the volume would increase during a musical interlude (especially if we had turned the volume up so we can hear the dialogue).

I think it’s just something that you’re going to have to learn to live with (just like how the volume increases whenever they go to commercials on TV…I thought they were supposed to stop doing that years back, but it’s still happening!)

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Thanks guys, I thought it was just me

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Hello @jimmy.royle. You know that @MaverickCoast and @iwhite52 both are so right about the production of movies. I see you’re concerned about the playback of those movies.
I have a degree and work history in radio and TV engineering on the east coast.
One important piece of equipment in broadcast and recording studios is a Compressor/Limiter.
They are used to even out and contain the wide dynamic range of recordings. They are mainly used at the end of the chain to compress the wide dynamic range of speech and music.
A single voice is a lot softer than an entire orchestra. Like @MaverickCoast was explaining about the loudness of planes, fast cars and a large army. They are louder because in reality they are louder.

I searched in vain for a consumer Limiter/ Compressor. They rarely exist and the ones that do aren’t up to the task of solving your/our problem. Then after talking with some radio/TV engineers they told me what to look for.
I found what I was looking for in higher end receivers that were 5.1, 7.2, 9.2 and 11.2 systelms!
They a loudness setting which increases lows and highs at at lower volume levels. That in conjunction with a Midnight setting will get you the volume leveling you seek. Especially if you have a center channel speaker where voice can be turned way up and front speakers and satellites can be turned down so that the dialogue is louder through the center channel and the music is softer. My Samsung TV has a Midnight setting and my Denon 9.2 4500H also allows me to adjust the volume for voice up.
If you use Plex Media Server you can Optimize the movies and let Plex do it’s volume leveling.
These things will achieve all we seek with balanced levels.

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