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Yeh you can watch at lower volume with subtitles because even if you don’t conciously look at them it still helps your brain interpret the sounds and make up for anything you miss due to the reduced volume.
Maybe if Gen X had ever learned to level audio correctly with limited spectrum and inverse dynamics we could understand what people were saying between explosions.
You mean anything by Christopher Nolan? Actually infinite it really does depend on the film, some of them do have pretty good audio mixing but Tenant was terrible
I’ve used descriptive audio to re-“watch” my favorite movies while driving for work. It’s fascinating how the descriptions work with the time constraints to get the story across.
Here’s a great podcast episode about how they are made: 20,000 Hertz - Audio Descriptions
Well, at least they are reading something…
The sound is often so fucked up. Music, explosions, guns, cars etc are so fucking loud, but conversations are very dim, as if people are almost whispering. It’s often very hard to hear what people are saying, especially when eating crisps.
I always use English subs, even when watching stuff in my own language (Dutch)
If you have a soundbar or sound system turn the night mode or quiet mode setting on. It compresses the dynamic range of the audiotrack basically lowers the sound levels of the loud sounds
So, the solution to completely fucked up sound is to use a device to mangle that sound back into something which isn’t complete shit?
And yes, I understand it’s about the director wanting the loud sounds to be loud. But, when your art direction means that a major (if not majority) of your audience is going to have to “fix” your artistic direction, your artistic direction is the problem.p.s.: don’t mean to jump down your throat, this is just one of those things that grinds my gears. Along with the “let’s make everything too dark to possibly see” art direction which has become popular.
If you have a proper surround system than usually soft dialogue isn’t as big of a problem since the voices are on the center channel and don’t share the same speaker as the music and sound effects which are on the other speakers. The problem arises when you listen to a surround mix on a stereo system or a cheap soundbar. The center and surround channels then gets down mixed into the stereo channels. Which can drown out the voices by the loud sounds since now they share the same speaker.
The real solution is adding a proper stereo mix as an option. Which used to be normal in the DVD era.
I don’t have that. I’m an audiophile, I have a proper tube amp stereo sound system. I don’t want to have my sound compressed and filtered.
Well that might be the problem, you are listening to a surround mix on a stereo system. The center and surround channels gets downmixed to the L-R channels which could drown out the voices since all the voices in the center channel are now on the same channel as the surround sound effects and music. Maybe add a mixer in between to boost the center channel before the down mix.
Well shit. I hate surround sound haha
But subtitles work 🤷
that is also the dryest popcorn I have ever seen, where is the butter?
I turn on subtitles to subtley force my kid to read. He’s got ADHD like me, but mine made me read at a super early age, while he struggles with it. To me, it’s a way to expose him to words and the spelling as they come. My dad struggled with reading as well and basically just memorized most words and their pronunciation instead of actually learning to read. If that helps the kiddo, then I don’t mind it, but I secretly turn it off by myself, and turn it back on when I’m done.
basically just memorized most words and their pronunciation instead of actually learning to read
That’s pretty much the only option you’re Anglo anyway, there are basically no letter-> sound rules that apply over a non trivial vocabulary.
It’s perfectly consistent if you follow the 400 normal rules and 1300 exceptions.
The rules make sense if ya break it up into Germanic and Romantic groupings, if it’s Germanic in origin the phonetic spelling probably is right (weird accent shit not withstanding, I swap O and A sometimes) while if it’s Romantic in nature it’s either easy to spell because it’s just straight Latin or it’s a pain in the ass because it’s one of the French words. Tertiary lone words from other languages groups tend to be with Germanic in that it has probably had its spelling rejigged to be phonetic in English, Welsh lone words not withstanding.
For anyone who was as curious as I was about Welsh loan words.
See! All these dummies not holding a strong historical understanding of germanic and romantic languages. Didn’t you all learn latin primary school? So silly!
Gloria Latina Aeterna
Hell yeah par’nr!
It helps with the dialogue, but I also like it because I feel like it keeps my mind more active and involved in the story. It’s more like reading a book and watching a movie.
- There was this complete and utter hack with a couple fluke hits under his belt named George Lucas. He noticed that some theaters might not even have functioning audio sometimes, so he hired some engineers to create THX.
- Movie theater audio systems continued to go big blue baby boinking bonkers. Remember when the THX logo wasn’t survivable by children under 7?
- Directors, especially the self-important “my vision must be realized” scrotes, the ones who objected to a playback speed setting on Netflix, start designing their soundtracks to take full advantage of 90.1 channel 1.21 jiggawatt sound systems as found at the local umptyplex. They can make the sound of a dental drill sound like it’s in your mouth.
- While all of that was going on, TV technology changed significantly. We went from big boxes with CRTs and thus plenty of room for speaker cones inside, to a 2 inch thick LCD panel with down/back firing laptop speakers. Or people consume video content on laptops, tablets or phones instead of a “television.”
- Even with the increased popularity/necessity of external soundbars and surround sound systems, a home 5.1 system still can’t keep up with Dolby THX Atmos Skibidi Brushless Guarana Turbo Surround.
- Movie theaters have been closing down in droves.
- Television" the art form has converged a lot with movies. Since the 90’s there’s been a trend of making television shows more “cinematic,” wider aspect ratios, more dramatic lighting, more dynamic camera angles, longer episodes, overall plots that you need to watch in order. So television shows fall into the same engineering traps that movies do. Mix it for the theater, even though half of your audience is going to watch this on an iPhone 12.
- “movies” and “tv” are now mostly consumed on devices with poor quality stereo speakers, and yet the audio was designed for million dollar cinema systems, so the dialog is completely unintelligible.
- “Survey reveals most people under 40 use subtitles.”
Movie theater audio systems continued to go big blue baby boinking bonkers. Remember when the THX logo wasn’t survivable by children under 7?
There was a similar scene, I think in Rocko’s Modern Life, where they went to the theater, and the THX logo blasted and then said THE AUDIENCE IS NOW DEAF.
Back in the 90’s “Man that THX logo is uncomfortably loud, huh?” was comedy gold.
This kinda makes sense to me.
I have hearing loss, and from this thread I gather most of you have it too lol. Yeah, probably sound mixing is bad, but do yourself a favor and get checked. Your life quality can really improve if you treat this condition.
I got my hearing tested and it’s normal (for my age). I just have terrible auditory processing!
I have a slight hearing loss. If I play a movie with a sound designed for 5.1 on stereo, I will really have a hard time understanding the dialogue. If I switch to 2.0 (if available), I can hear almost everything perfectly.
What can they do to treat it? I thought once it’s gone it’s gone.
It’s true, but if you eyesight was shit you would use glasses. For some reason people don’t like to use hearing aids. Modern ones are really life changing devices.
I have minor hearing loss, I guess i’m just afraid it would sound more artificial. I’m an audiophile so the thought of music suddenly sounding bad scares me. Maybe I have it wrong though.
Hearing aides.
But what if I don’t want people following me around?
Hope all of you enjoy feeding the karma whore
what are you crying about
I swear, every time i see Angry Autist, he has either anger issues or is nitpicking whatever rubbed him the wrong way. Even if he sometimes has a good point, he seems like an insufferable person. Should block him, but like i said, sometimes he has a point.
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Audio levels are mixed horribly and go crazy loud with music but i cant fucking hear anyone talking. It feels like around 2010 or something tv shows and movies were like “lets just forget about voices and let everyone hear explosions and shitty driving music”.
Its not my ears because YouTube folks who can mix their audio properly are easy to hear. Anime is mixed well usually with voices.
Its the studios doing this for whatever reason unknown to us.
I use subtitles 100% of the time now.
Anime is very poorly mixed, a phone vibrates as loud as an explosion, there’s no dynamics. That’s not how real sound is supposed do work.
I agree that some shows like modern Star Trek exaggerate and while I can’t hear Michael murmuring the Spore Drive almost blows my woofers away every time Discovery jumps.
However needs needs to have dynamics so the viewer can have an emercive experience.
Mostly is because it’s mixed for 5.1
The center channel takes care of most of the dialog and the rest is distributed to 4 satellite (and usually smaller) speakers but when it’s down sampled to stereo everything has the same level
But even with a 5.1 setup, it is seldom audible.
For anything cinematic, the intent is usually to get more dynamic range. If you turn it up enough that the dialogue is audible, then the explosions will be as loud as an actual explosion. Fine in a movie theater, not so much in an apartment complex.
They should release dual audio, high dynamic range for ppl with good systems and low dynamics for ppl listening on computer speakers, but if that’s not the case I can always put a compressor on an HDR master, but can’t recover lost information on stuff like anime where a phone vibrates as loud as an explosion.
No, not dual audio. I want more Control. On my Peloton bike I can adjust the volume of the host and the music independently. I want that for TV and movies. Two volume rockers on my remote. One for voice and one for “everything else”. I know the technology exists, and it would not be crazy complicated to implement. Well maybe for broadcast TV… But for anything streaming, this should benrelativwly easy to do. I know that the voice and music and FX tracks already exist separately digitally. Let me mix it myself.
Some games do this - often called “night mode”. Seems like a lot of people would benefit from it in other mediums!
Elder millennial here, my T.V. often has subtitles on, but that’s because I only speak English but frequently watch content in other languages, namely Hindi, Spanish, Tamil & Telegu, and it’s still on when I do watch something in English.
That being said I turn the English off as soon as I find the remote, and one of the things I least like about visiting my brother is his wife insists on having English subtitles in large font all the time. Particularly annoying when watching something live like hockey.
