I was gripping about this last night. Actors practically whispering. Had to move to headphones. Many times i wonder why the industry can’t seem to properly mic the scene or pick a decent cohesive/compatible decimal range.
There is a lot that goes in to sound engineering in order to make a movie going experience really good. Basically the sound is engineered to sound really good on the 100ish channels that movie theaters have, but when going to a home they have to crunch all that down to work with a 2.1 or 5.1 etc and there is inevitably loss due to overlapping frequencies and even immersive aspects. How can a voice seem to be as loud as an explosion for example.
On top of those difficulties you have directors like Christopher Nolan who has said that he doesn’t care about home audio and that his movies are made to be seen in a theater.
They can. You’re listening to the incorrect audio stream on your device. Your device has to request the stereo stream from Netflix or whatever, otherwise it’ll just send you a surround stream and then your TV will downmix it badly… resulting in quiet dialogue.
/work in the industry, we have to hit specific loudness averages and ranges for both dialogue and overall mix. -24 LUFS, if you’re curious.
You preparing yourself for Oppenheimer?
It’s actually the way the sound is remixed these days. I’m not going deaf😮💨. Old movie dialogue is loud and crisp as fuck. Just watch some TCM.
That’s because old movies were mixed stereo or mono, not surround, and your TV can naturally handle stereo or mono.
The problem most people in this thread are having is a result of their TV crappily downmixing a surround signal to a stereo signal. You have to set your streaming device to request the stereo stream from your streaming service if you don’t have a full-on home theater. Devices by default request the surround stream.
Any time this comes up in conversation at someone’s house, I set their device to request the stereo stream, and it’s fixed. Every time.
Tvs with built in decibels limiter when?
In my experience, this is intentional. You’re watching a thing with full dynamic range sound. Honestly, the intention is for you to have a decent speaker system and to turn it up so you can hear the dialog comfortably. The loud parts will be loud and that is the intent. Why would they make the loud parts quiet? An explosion isn’t supposed to be quiet. They shouldn’t make it quiet for the sake of you listening to it through your TV’s built in speakers at 2 in the morning while the rest of the house is asleep. If you need the dynamic range to be compressed for your purposes you can do that yourself. Many devices have this option these days. My Roku has “leveling” and “night” modes which compress the dynamic range so there’s not such a difference between the quiet parts and the loud parts.
A lot of us live in apartments and choose not to be obnoxious assholes to our neighbors. Wheres the sound mix for us?
If you have to keep changing the volume throughout the movie, the audio engineer did a bad job, period.
Dude you can just turn on the “night” mode on whatever device you’re using and completely solve your problem. You don’t blame the sun for being too bright, you just put on sun glasses.
Or, and I know this sounds crazy, the highly paid professionals at the top of their field can do their job properly for the majority of their consumers.
Request the stereo stream in your streaming device’s audio options. Your tv/headphones are downmixing a surround stream, and doing a shit job of it. The “highly paid professionals” have made a separate stereo mix just for this purpose.
/one of the “highly paid professionals”
And ruin the experience for those with good equipment?
Should music be mixed in mono so quality is the same for those who listen to it on a base cellphone and those who listen to it on 1k$ speakers?
Blame your TV, not the content. Or, blame yourself if you like for not buying a soundbar or soundsystem.
A lot of TVs these days have Night Mode or the like. That’s the fix!
PS Downvoting me for… What exactly? Because I told you two solutions and neither of them are what you prefer? TVs are literally paper thin and physically can’t have good speakers except for special cases in the high end. Buy a soundbar, even though they suck and apparently people these days are scared of plugging one more cable into something, or get a stereo system for the same price and plug in two more things (speakers) that can fit anywhere on your wall or whatever.
Looking at you, Dune.
i’m seeing oppenheimer in a week; i’m beyond excited because of the hype and loving historical drama but i cannot stand chris nolan. i watched the prestige recently and they made the electricity sounds 1000x louder than the dialog [and cut the movie intentionally to make it a pain in the ass to follow instead of just telling the story straight, because that was the thing to do in 2010]
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Be sure you’re listening to the stereo feed and not the surround. You’ll need to tell your streaming device to request the stereo feed.
KIRYU-CHAN
Then comes a commercial break and all hell breaks loose with the sound levels.
What are commercial breaks?.. I stopped watching TV many moons ago. I stream and sail the seven seas.
