I have had a problem for a while now (and never had the time to deal with it) with overly loud action scenes and very quiet dialog.  I have a Pioneer VSX-922 receiver, connected to a 5.1 Jamo speaker set (S605 I think?), and it doesn't seem to matter what I'm watching (TV, movies) or the source (streaming from iPlayer or locally from my NAS), but the sound is very poorly balanced.  Last night, for instance, watching John Wick 2 (ripped from my Blu Ray copy), the action scenes were so loud we were in danger of waking the kids, but every time somebody spoke they sounded like they were whispering (even when they weren't).  My wife notices this as well, so I don't think it's just my ears getting old.  It's getting very annoying having the remote in hand to lower the volume every time there's an action scene, and raising it when people speak.

Can anyone suggest an effective way to configure the receiver and speakers so that there is less imbalance between the loud and quiet parts?  I've played around a couple of times in the past but nothing seems to make a difference.