The fix for me has been surround sound. I have the center channel bumped several steps louder than the others on my receiver. This makes a world of difference

The fix for me has been surround sound. I have the center channel bumped several steps louder than the others on my receiver. This makes a world of difference over stereo mixes. (I will admit the voice sound can be more uneven - wind noise etc starts to show through) Hmm, thinking out loud - I bet a multichannel mix could be calibrated on your system to bump the center channel, even if outputting to 2 speaker