Have you ever been watching a movie or TV series on Netflix and found yourself straining to hear the dialogue being spoken over the booming music and sound effects?
Don’t worry, you’re most likely not going deaf but rather the audio settings on Netflix may need changing to better suit your setup.
The Netflix setting you need to change if you can’t hear dialogue
Technology content creator known online as Matty McTech (aka @SetupSpawn) recently posted a video to Instagram highlighting this issue and showing viewers how to fix it.
“It might be because Netflix thinks you have surround sound,” Matt explains to his 2.1 million Instagram followers.
If you don’t have a surround sound setup or a soundbar for your TV, to find the audio settings, pause whatever you’re watching and you’ll see a selection of language and subtitle options at the bottom of the screen. If you scroll over into ‘Other…’ you’ll be greeted with the audio options menu you need.
“You can see the default audio is ‘English [Original] (5.1),’” Matt demonstrates. “That means Netflix thinks you have 5 speakers and one subwoofer.”
“If you don’t, you want to go down to ‘English [Original]’ and hit enter,” he instructs. “And now the background music and sound effects are a little quieter and I can hear him [Liam Neeson in Taken] talk.”
Viewers react to helpful hack
While it may seem like a simple solution, it’s one that many weren’t aware of and Matt’s video has received plenty of comments from grateful viewers.
One Instagram user wrote: “I thought I was going deaf 🤦♂️ thank you.”
A second added: “Bold of Netflix to assume I have surround sound when I deliberately bought the cheapest subscription with ads.”
This commenter noted that you may need to change this feature each time you use Netflix as the streaming service will default to 5.1 audio: “The worst part is you have to do it EVERY SINGLE TIME! I hate their default setting.”
“They should let the user pick their default audio,” added another. “The worst is when watching multiple episodes of a show, every time a new one starts it goes back to the 5.1 default which has to be changed manually.
“I just learned what the 5.1 means,” said a fifth.
And finally, this commenter knows what the true answer is to this problem: “I’ll still use subtitles.”
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