I think I understand what the OP is getting at. In my HT I use a Denon receiver with 2pi mains and a 1pi center. My surrounds are some crummy speakers from an old Pioneer set up. My wife's and my main complaint is that you have to have the volume VERY loud to hear whats being said. But at that point, the volume of the music portion of what you are watching is to loud for comfort. Its like the voice volume needs to be turned up separately. I have yet to figure out how to accomplish this but its like my center channel needs to be louder as I believe that is where most voices come from in multichannel material such as DVD's. Perhaps this is a failure with proper mic placement when I run Audesy.