Because the fuckers producing the shows make the music and sound effects 5x louder than it needs to be but the dialogue half as loud as it needs to be.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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It's because they're mixing dialogue for the center channel speaker. Most people don't have a center channel on their TV or sound bar, but some "Dialogue Mode"s will exclusively play the center channel and drown out the sound effects. It's a trade off, but one that most manufacturers don't even give the option for.
I have 5.1 and still encounter tons of shows where I need to crank the volume for dialog and then hurriedly lower it during explosions or fight scenes. This wasn't much of an issue a few years ago on the exact same surround sound setup.
I have a 5.1 as well, and I use software normalization (Plex and through my Shield) to fix it. I know there's a way to tune it via hardware, but my setup is an ancient Yamaha receiver and I prefer the software normalization.
Mixing can be a mixed bag, as everyone uses different hardware to master their sound, but normalization or boosting center fixes it 99% of the time.
I should give this a shot too as my setup uses all the same hardware (including the Yamaha receiver). I've been hesitant to have Plex level audio since it can reduce quality, but mixes are getting so bad that it'd probably improve the quality above all else.
Hm. I’ve got a basic 5.1 setup via sound bar and have dialed center up to max. It sorta works, but it makes the “surround” a lot less impactful because of the disproportionate levels (eg explosions straight ahead still boom).
I always though this was a deliberate mixing decision for “immersion”
For me, at least, it's the fucking bad audio. So goddamn often the sound makes someone difficult to understand so I watch most things with subtitles.
I don't have to do that with games. Why? Because I get separate volume sliders for music, sound effects, and speech. Trouble understanding just means I need to adjust those to make the speech louder over music and fx.
Why in the hells tv and movie audio tracks don't have this separation I don't understand at all.
I find that I tend to miss words because of pronunciation, accent, or the character just basically not even verbalizing parts of some words.
When I turn on subtitles, I never miss a word.
Music loud as fuck, voices soft as fuck, turn volume down and put on subtitles
Yep the sound mixing is dogshit in 99% of movies and tv shows. Also where i come from everything was always subtitled anyway so im used to it
The audio is just really bad for movies and series that are in the original language. If it's dubbed the voice becomes much clearer. Or TV speakers might just be shitty, because with headphones everything is clear again ...
TV speakers generally suck. With the boom of flat screens they are almost exclusively rear firing.
They basically expect everyone to buy replacement speakers
There's a couple reasons why I use subtitles all time. Firstly I'm getting older and can't hear as well with background noise. If my wife is banging around in the kitchen I can't hear dialog from the TV. With subtitles on I don't have to mess with the volume.
Another issue is media producers (TV and film) have this idea they need to blast you out of your chair with sound effects and music. So if you turn up the volume enough to hear the dialog clearly, you're going to get blasted by everything else. Trying to manage that with the volume control is damn near impossible. Interestingly I've noticed "dialog boost" appear on occasion in sound track options from my streaming provider. I use it when the option is there. That kind of indicates a global problem.
An issue related to sound leveling is actors used to come out of theater where they learned to annunciate loudly and clearly. It seems actors don't get proper stage training anymore and now it's okay to mumble and fail to annunciate. A decent director should never allow that.
Interesting to hear people have the opposite experience as me. I have a home theater and love dynamic audio (loud when supposed to be loud, quiet when supposed to be quiet) but have noticed more and more that movies seem to be mixed for iPads and sound dead. Disney/Pixar is a great example of home theater enthusiasts finding their movies just aren't acoustically exciting anymore.
The only time I hate dynamic audio is when I'm trying to fall asleep
Film producers are intentionally mixing for theaters and refusing to mix for home devices.
Mumble mumble whisper EXPLOSION!
Are theaters still relevant today? I honestly don't know. Have not been in one for many years, everything is just way too expensive.
Because the mixing is usually ass on these shows
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/watching-movies-tv-with-subtitles/674301/
This article encapsulates everything I feel about the subject. I hate using subtitles, but sometimes I just have to in order to hear what people are saying due to streaming services messing with the actual sound mix using their stupid algorithms. As for reasons I hate subtitles: they distract from the actual film and can occasionally spoil things happening. If subtitles are on the screen, my brain forces my eyes down to read them, and I inevitably lose out on some of the nuances of the visual part of the visual media.
Additionally, if I'm watching foreign films, I get this urge to learn the language so I can stop using subtitles. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but I just can't stand them. I can't imagine watching Redline for instance with subtitles on. Yuck.
I started when I had a tiny house and we had a baby.
Seems like movies especially are mixed so quiet during dialog, but get so LOUD during action sequences, that I just had to turn it down and read the dialog to catch what I miss.
As I get older and my hearing isn't as great as it once was, I find it's just helpful
I always use them, otherwise I have to hold the remote the whole time and keep changing the volume. Watching Silo right now and there's so many whispering scenes I'd never be able to make out.
And a few minutes after dead silent dialog, movies start blasting explosions and gunshots loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.
I’m just deaf and happy y’all’re seeing the light. My father was annoyed with mom’s captions. My wife used them before we met
I'm also hearing impaired and am just really glad that captions are becoming so popular.
It used to be that YouTube was rarely accessible to me. There would be a tiny amount of content that had subtitles (sometimes baked in, like epic rap battles of history does), but the vast majority of videos just weren't fun for me because I'd miss too much. These days a good chunk of popular YouTubers have curated captions and another good chunk are clear enough speakers that the automatic captions work.
I've actually been watching more YouTube in recent times than ever before specifically because I've been discovering all this content I previously wrote off. There was recently a post somewhere that introduced me to Technology Connections. And from there, I figured I'd check out some other names I had heard about that might be interesting, Linus's tech tips and ElectroBOOM, and both had captions, too.
My wife and I actually just finished the newest technology connections video. I watched it enough that she got interested in what her dork wife was enjoying. But yeah I really love the rise of captioned YouTube. TC is extra great because he’s been captioning his videos explicitly to be accessible for the deaf/hoh community because he cares about accessibility and I really just want more people to seriously consider that.
I have a whole ass rant about how people think of hearing aid users as all old folks and that hinders my ability to get flashy ones both for style and signaling purposes. But it also comes into play in contexts like this where content aimed at 20-30 somethings will historically just not bother accommodating us as much as stuff aimed at older people.
Alec is a total bro. I have no particular need for subtitles myself, but recommend his channel to people learning English because I know we can totally trust the subtitles, they're not autogenerated.
He really is. Though I do warn people that if they watch him they will develop a firm understanding and appreciation of the refrigeration cycle
And strong opinions on car signal lights
I believe it's also psychological, it's easier to concentrate when there's written word matching the action. Our attention is diminished these days.
A striking example of how this trend is irreversible is japanese tv. You'll see words everywhere. It's used for emphasis but also the shows end up boring without them.
When I play films produced decades ago in stereo or even mono, it’s shocking how much easier the dialogue is to understand. I’ve resorted to spending a not insignificant sum on a 5.1 setup just so I can crank up the centre channel and make the dialogue a bit more intelligible. Even then it still isn’t perfect. The dynamic range just really isn’t suitable for home viewing. I’m still constantly riding the volume to keep sound effects from pissing off my neighbours/sleeping child…
Here’s a youtube video on the same topic I watched recently: https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8
I'm HoH and don't like to use captions. My wife hears fine and will only use captions.
You all now know that. You're welcome.
Thank you.
I've started turning on the Subtitles, as it seems as if newer shows and movies are harder to understand. At first, I thought my hearing is going, but not only can I hear the music in the shows just fine, I can watch old shows and movies from over 10 years ago and understand them just fine. In my opinion, it is as if they are putting less volume on the vocal tracks, or maybe using microphones or recording techniques that are not ideal for the spoken language.
It's actually voice technique for the most part. Traditional old microphones weren't as good at recording so actors were specially trained to speak and articulate well to get past the interference and background noise since filtering wasn't really done. As microphones and technological advances improved so did the microphones and the need for special articulation became less and less until somewhere in the 70s or 80s the culture in film shifted to normal voices to have better immersion between the audience and the movie scene. And it just went from there. Nowadays our microphones are so good that even whispered conversations in intimate scenes can be well recorded. So the actors basically just use their everyday voice or try to emulate a real accent which are often slurred.
Televisions with poor audio quality.
I have a 5.1 surround sound and even I notice that audio mixes are terrible. It's not just poor quality speakers causing this.
This. It’s also mixing that’s intended to be “immersive”; explosions are meant to make you shit your pants while conversations are meant to be at the same level as someone in the room with you.
Not ideal for apartment dwellers with no insulation in their walls or floors, like myself.
I think the majority of the time its the mix being designed for a cinema setup. It's annoying, but understandable.
Sometimes. Except for TV shows.
Also what happened to the “this video has been modified to fit you Tv screen” green warnings. They should do the same with sound mix imho. A TV screens speakers are much different than a theatre, or even home theatre.
I watch while my baby naps. Subtitles on, volume low because I swear to god if I wake him up.....
ADHD induced auditory processing disorder is why I use subtitles
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