[polysmartypants]

I have 5.1 surround logitech speaker system.. plugged into MB's 5.1 generic embedded sound card. I have fiddled with the pre-amp settings in kodi to get more volume. But this is the problem..
quiet speaking parts are way too quiet.. so I turn up the sound, only to get blasted by the score of the movie especially in an action movie. Its deafening loud.
What hardware can I purchase to have better control over audio for all 5 channels?
Is this even possible based on how the logitech is wired?

[polysmartypants]

Some more details... Kodi latest version running on OPENELEC, motherboard is XFX 780i.

[mshady]

get a decent amp to control the volume further

[joelbaby]

quiet speaking parts are way too quiet

Speech comes through the center channel. There are a couple of workaround, and the first thing you should check is hardware based:

1. Often the tweeters in the Center speaker get blown (broken) frequently in cheaper speakers. You should play some higher pitch sounds (or just people talking) through different speakers with tweeters. Remove the fabric covers if possible, and hold your ear to the tweeters to determine if sound is coming from them.

2. IF there is nothing wrong with your center speaker, then you need to increase the volume of your center channel. With a dedicated AMP, you can do this. With logitech, you can probably do it through software.

3. The reason it doesn't happen if you switch to 'stereo' sound (instead of 5.1) ... is the voice audio will go through your L+R speaker tweeters.

4. If you play sounds too loud to compensate, you can just end up blowing more speakers.

I think if you google 'no sound center speaker logitech zXXXX' you will find various hardware/software solutions too.

[lmyllari]

quiet speaking parts are way too quiet.. so I turn up the sound, only to get blasted by the score of the movie especially in an action movie. Its deafening loud.

This is because of wide dynamic range. What you need is dynamic range compression.

Dolby Digital audio tracks include data that the decoder can use to control the dynamic range. I think there is a setting in Kodi, but it's called something else (the common terms are dynamic range compression or night mode). For other audio types you'll need a different solution - the new ADSP addons may have something.