how to fix movies that are really quiet, then really loud

WSJ's Michael Hsu offers 4 tips to help you improve the clarity. Photo/video: Drew Evans/The Wall Street Journal.

Q: When I'm watching movies on my TV, I often have trouble hearing the dialogue. My ears are otherwise fine. Any suggestions?

A: One culprit could be a phenomenon known as "masking," said Brett Crockett, vice president of Sound Technology R&D at Dolby Laboratories. DLB -0.11% When a film's sound effects or score are played through the same speaker as the dialogue, your brain can have trouble discerning the two.

Short of setting up and calibrating a home-theater sound system, the best way to counteract this is to use a soundbar with a center-channel speaker, said Mr. Crockett. With most movie soundtracks, a majority of the dialogue will be played through this center speaker, while other sounds come from speakers to the left and right. Just be sure not to sit too far back; with a soundbar, you'll get the biggest boost in dialogue clarity when you sit relatively close, said Mr. Crockett.

Another cause could be the way the movie was mixed, said Richard Welsh of the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers. "With action movies, the explosions and sword fights have been made very loud as a creative decision," he said. "But if you turn down the loud stuff, you also turn the dialogue down." If your TV has an audio setting called Night Mode (designed to help your housemates sleep), try turning it on. It flattens out the volume, so explosions aren't drastically louder than the talky parts.

And if you're OK using wireless headphones, consider Sennheiser's RS 195. This $400 pair can be set to boost various frequencies that people with mild-to-moderate hearing loss often struggle with. It also has a speech-enhancement mode that brings out voices while reducing background noise.

Incidentally, this same problem can also plague movie theaters, according to Lora Hirschberg, an Oscar-winning sound designer at Skywalker Sound. Trailers are mixed to be as loud as possible, she explained—louder than the movie itself; the problem is, the theater will often lower the volume so "the audience doesn't scream and run out" when the trailers come on, leaving the feature film quieter than it should be.

If you're in a theater and can't hear the dialogue, don't be shy about asking them to turn it up. "It's a huge problem," she said.

—Have a lifestyle problem that a gadget might fix? E-mail us: thefixer@wsj.com