Hulu - Sound Effects too Loud, Dialogue not Loud Enough

Question

Whenever I watch things on Hulu, I am always adjusting the sound because the sound effects are extremely loud and the dialogue is way too quiet. At first I thought that the issue was with crappy speakers, but I later tried watching something on YouTube, and there was no problem with the sound whatsoever. I researched the issue online, and found that many other people are complaining about a similar issue on both Hulu and Netflix. Various forum posts about the issue received responses suggesting that the poster adjust the sound card's audio equalizer. I have found where the settings for my equalizer are, but I do not know how I should change them so that everything is balanced when watching Hulu, but remains as it is, if not improves, when watching YouTube. Here's a screenshot of my sound card settings screen.

Solution 1

I have found that by setting my computer volume to 70, changing the audio enhancer to movie mode, and then changing the dialogue setting from 30 to 75, the audio sounds exactly the way I want it to.

Solution 2

Link: HowToGeek

Enabling this option fixed my sound issue. I am streaming Hulu from my laptop to my TV using HDMI. I am passing audio through HDMI to my TV directly.

Below is the walk-through provided from the link above:

Windows Loudness Equalization

Windows includes a build-in Loudness Equalization feature, although some sound drivers may not support it. The loudness equalizer keeps sound output from all applications on your computer within a consistent volume range.

1. To enable the loudness equalizer, right-click the speaker icon in your system tray and select Playback devices.

2. Select the sound device you want to enable the equalizer for – for example, your speakers or headphones – and click the Properties button.

3. Click over to the Enhancements tab and enable the Loudness Equalization check box in the list. If you don’t see the Enhancements tab, your sound hardware isn’t supported.

If an application is currently playing sound, you may have to restart playback for the changes to take effect (I did not have to restart my web browser, the sound adjusted automatically after applying the above settings).

Comments

[Synetech]

You said that videos on YouTube are fine, but what videos are you comparing? Most videos on YouTube are simple, stereo home-videos made by people with their cellphones and cameras videos on Hulu and Netflix are TV shows made by professional studios. That’s a bad comparison because home-videos usually only have a single audio track, while TV shows and movies have numerous audio tracks with different volume levels. It seems audio-mixer work has been getting worse and worse over the past several years so that loud background music and effects and low, inaudible dialog are becoming commonplace.

[DaveTheMinion]

@Synetech On Hulu, I watched an old episode of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", along with "Saturday Night Live." Both of these had the same problem. Later, I tried "Perry Mason" and another episode of "Saturday Night Live" on YouTube. Neither of these had the problem.

[cybernard]

If have seen something like this before. My sound card had switched to 5.1 speaker mode and I only have 2.1 speakers. As soon as I switched it back to 2.1 it was fine. The missing audio was going out speakers I don't have.

[jlehtinen]

@DavidB There's an explanation of sound settings further down in this thread that might prove useful for you: reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/vdrlq/… Probably will depend on what settings your audio control panel allows you to tweak...

[DaveTheMinion]

Yeah. At the time that I wrote this post I did not realize that my sound card is as good as it is and was not aware that I could balance things such as dialogue volume. Every time I watch something I always have to mess around with these settings because the sound is never perfect.