Appreciating that all peoples rooms, speakers, accoustics and even the owners hearing will all be different, do most people go with what has been set in calibration as gospel so to speak? I ask because after doing a calibration for about the sixth time everything sounds good with regards to the front speakers, surrounds, sub and the atmos up-firing modules I have just added. But when it comes to the speech in most movies from Netflix etc, it`s fairly quiet. So is the answer just to up the volume level in the menu for the centre speaker to a level I find good enough?
The
majority (but not necessarily all) of the dialog will come though your centre channel, conversely
most (but not necessarily all) of the soundtrack/effects will come from your L&R and surrounds. You can test this by unplugging all but your centre channel and
most of what you hear will be dialog, conversely if you unplug your centre your unlikely to hear much (if any) dialog.
So while you shouldn't (on paper) be raising or lowering channels manually post calibration (if you want to keep to how the movie was recorded) raising the centre channel will 'roughly, give or take' simply increase the level of the dialog above the rest of the soundtrack. Which in many situation is what is required esp. if you don't want to turn everything up louder.
As mentioned above many AVR's also include a dialog or late-night mode which will compress the peaks outside of the mid-range. By reducing the level of frequencies that
aren't likely to contain dialog, you're in effect increasing the level of the frequencies which do. Which may result in a better overall response at everyday listening levels. Worth trying that as well and see what you prefer.
If it sounds better with the centre increased then go with it. No point in having a system that is (on paper) setup perfectly if you can't hear the dialog clearly.
Also due to the effects of the room (first / second reflections etc.) you may find that the dialog is getting muddied (our ears are very susceptible to dialog so it's the first hating we notice) and so a slight increase to the channel that deliver most of that dialog, above what your AVR has set, could prove useful. It's a trade off, as any content on the centre channel that isn't dialog will also get boosted — which isn't ideal, but life is full of compromises.