Question Help with my home theater system

[juaanmolero]

So 6 months ago I wanted to buy a 2.1 home theater setup for my living room I wanted to use to listen to music and watch movies, I had about 600$ for my budget at the time and I couldn't decide between a cheap bose soundbar and one their subwoofer or a polk setup that I found on the internet. I went for the latter, I bought a pair of polk s20 bookshelf speakers and a klipsch subwoofer mainly because it was the same price as one of the polk one's, but had higher output power (100 vs 150w i believe) along with a Sony STR DH590. So I have 2 questions about this.

First, was it a good decision to go for the polk and the subwoofer instead of a regular soundbar?
Second, is this receiver good for my setup? On amazon it says that it has 145w per channel and it's 5.2 no dolby atmos or dts x.

Now, about a month ago I realized I needed a center channel for dialogue, so I bought a polk s35 center channel but now my whole home theater system is quieter and don't know why, the background music on movies is a lot quieter and details like, people walking on grass and stuff like that is almost unaudible at low volume, it's like, the only thing I can hear now is dialogue and that's not what I wanted, I lowered the volume for the center channel but then loud sounds on movies like explosions and stuff sound waaaay too loud compared to the dialogue, it's the small details that I can't hear.

Sorry for my bad english, I hope you can understand everything I tried to say haha.

 

[doolittle]

First, was it a good decision to go for the polk and the subwoofer instead of a regular soundbar?

yes absolutely

polk s35 center channel but now my whole home theater system is quieter and don't know why

Sounds like 5.1 is being decoded but only using the 2.1 with center as output.

I lowered the volume for the center channel but then loud sounds on movies like explosions and stuff sound waaaay too loud compared to the dialogue

make sure your input is "direct" and not using stereo with Dolby or DTX decoding, could be it is using a decoding method like "Movie", "Game" or "music" modes that is built in to the unit.

 

[juaanmolero]

yes absolutely


Sounds like 5.1 is being decoded but only using the 2.1 with center as output.



make sure your input is "direct" and not using stereo with Dolby or DTX decoding, could be it is using a decoding method like "Movie", "Game" or "music" modes that is built in to the unit.

Hey, thanks for your reply.

Ok, so I always keep my av receiver on "Direct" since I think it's the best one but nothing changes, I set the pattern on the av receiver to 3.1, everything on the back is the way it's meant to be, i have my 2 front spkrs and the center channel connected plus the sub out.

Also, what about the receiver? You think is good enough?

 

[doolittle]

Yes the Sony STR DH590 should be decent, I had an old STR model that lasted me over 2 decades (replaced with a Onkyo a few years back when it died), unfortunately no experience with it directly so hopefully someone who does can chime in.

Curious about that 3.1 mode, I wonder if the system is trying to compensate the missing rear speakers somehow and that is causing an issue?