Poor Sound Quality on Hitchcock DVD boxset

Bigfellalixnaw

I bought the Alfred Hitchcock, The Essential Collection boxset (featuring four films, Vertigo, Rear Window, The Birds and Psycho) at the beginning of the week. To my dismay the sound quality of Rear Window and the Birds was poor, for example the sound is perfect when they start talking but when the scene shifts to non-dialogue scenes the sound level decreases almost to the point of it being mute - the musical score accompanying such scenes also suffers the same problem. The problem usually doesn't rectify itself until the characters start to speak. Has anyone else experienced this problem? I don't suppose there is a way to solve it, asides from buying a new boxset.

johnny_ultimate

Do you have a surround sound setup? The tracks on those two films should be mono as opposed to stereo, so that could be a problem depending on your setup. I can only find details for the region 1 release, so don't know what the story with the Irish version. Have you tried changing the sound settings on the DVD itself or your own player / TV?

Bigfellalixnaw

I just played 'The Birds' on my laptop and the sound is perfect, must be a problem with the tv or player. I don't know if this would contribute to the problem but I use a PS2 as a dvd player - that said it only the said Hitchcock films that are affected.

Sad Professor

Probably because they are in mono, as johnny_ultimate said. I'd imagine it's a problem with your settings.

Bigfellalixnaw

What settings would you recommend?