How can I use my home theater ?

Question

I live in a nice suburb and have a large speaker 5.1 home theater. BUT, when DVD soundtracks go from a whisper to ear pain, how can you avoid noise complaints from the neighbors ?

Answer 1

The obvious answer is to turn it down.  If you cant turn the volume down further without losing dialog in the quiet bits then you have an unusual situation.

Possibly you have a lot of background noise in your house, look for the source and quiet it down.  Refrigerators, washer, dryers and even fluorescent lighting can add substantial background noise.

Another possibility is that your neighbors are either very close or very sensitive or both.  Not a lot can be done about this.  The only one I can think of besides moving, is to soundproof the theater room.  This takes a lot of labor and is quite expensive.  The results can be startling though.  It would mean taking up your carpet, and laying a rubber material on the floor, over all the walls and ceilings, with an extra layer of drywall on the walls and ceilings.  

The previous answer mentioned using night mode on your receiver.  This will help a lot as it cuts low frequency, and on my Denon it also reduces the vol of loud bits and increases the volume of soft bits.  I don't like it as this ruins the movie effect, but if the choice is flattened movie or no movie, I guess that is good.

Answer 2

Low frequencies travel further. turn the subwoofer level down. Some receivers also have a night mode, which basically takes care of bass. Your problem is kinda hard to fix and I know exactly what you face cause DVDs tend to do that. Sometimes when I watch movies at night, when everyone's sleeping... I just leave the center on, and turn all other speakers off, I know that destroys the 5.1 surround, but it doesn't wake anyone up and I can hear the vocals clearly.

Enjoy :)