TV Sound profiles - What do they mean?

achapman

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I have been having problems hearing dialogue in movies lately. While sorting this out I discovered the role of TV audio profiles. I was routing the sound direct to a stereo amp and speakers from my Virgin box, which has little control over how it handles sound. As I understand it it just converts from 5.1 sound to PCM stereo in a single particular way.

Now I'm routing the audio via the TV; HDMI to the TV, and stereo out from the TV. The TV allows me to choose sound profiles; Standard, Movie, Music, Sport etc but I've no idea what they do apart from guessing given their names. At the moment I'm using standard, and that is a massive improvement on Virgin's stereo as I can hear the dialogue without the sound effects being uncomfortably loud.

I know each manufacturer is likely to be different, so I'm sure that there isn't a definitive answer to this, but what are the differences in these profiles and why?
Does Movies de-emphasize the sound from the front centre speaker? Is Sport doing the opposite, so you hear the commentator? What is Music likely to do? In fact do they alter how multi channel sound is converted to stereo or just fool around with treble/mid/bass balance?

I've seen comments that say just try them, but it would be nice to know what they are attempting to do as I have no desire to waste hours of my time doing comparative tests with different sources.

Finally my TV is a Blaupunkt and I have read the manual, which says nothing other than there are different sound profiles and how to change the one in use. The question is a general one though - I don't expect anyone to have detailed knowledge of my TV's audio specs.
 
The sound profiles are really just presets from an audio equaliser to emphasise dialogue, midrange, treble etc.
What you are hearing is the PCM from your VM box processed and converted to stereo by your TV.
Everyone’s TV, hearing and seating distance from their TV's is different so there are no specific settings we can recommend, you just need to experiment and set it to what sounds good to you...that setting should be memorised under “User” if you have the option within the TV's sound settings.
 
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