AustinAg2K said:
I don't remember ever having an issue understanding dialogue in a theater, but it happens quite often at home, so I've always chalked it up to my home theater set up.
Acoustics in a home can be bad. Especially if your listening position is against a wall. What happens is that instead of having a sound arrive at your ears all at once that sounds bounces off of walls/ceiling/floor/etc and instead arrives in multiple at slightly different times. This results in muddiness and lack of clarity.
Easiest solution is to add some broadband sound absorption at the primary reflection points in your room. This could be side walls, ceiling, and back wall usually. It's a complex topic, but simple steps can be taken to get some improvement. Note that a rug on the floor does not count as it absorbs a fairly narrow freq range - robbing your system of high freq detail while doing nothing to the mid range.
Here are some sound absorbers I built for my 2 channel listening system (would apply to home theater listening as well):
4" mineral wool is what these have in them and is a good start for most problems. They won't do much to reduce low bass problems but that's not usually a problem associated with hearing voices clearly.
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