J2UDIGI
55361
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Jan 3, 2024 8:38 PM
J2UDIGI
55361
1430
13
Twinklepot
This is so true!
instanoodles
Christopher Nolan needs a fucking slap or two, his movies are terrible to watch if you like hearing the actors
Nomestoo
Thanks for this, I have been trying to adjust the sound on my TV without any luck, then I thought it was my hearing and was going to book a hearing test. Glad it isn't just me.
Sorrontis
yep. the love to whisper and then have loud bass for ambience. great fucking fun
pocsaclypse
MrStealYourGiF
One thing that helps is to dig into audio settings, might be per device, i.e. separate for internal speakers, audio over hdmi and so on, might be advanced settings, regular panel may not have it, keep going deeper, look for "loudness equalisation" checkbox which is what windoze calls it, or "compress dynamic range" or similar, or uncheck "expanded dynamic range". That will knock you from an extended range of loudness down to just the middle, so extremes are closer together. Then if you have 1/2
MrStealYourGiF
2/2 equaliser controls, boost up treble, or midrange, or 1-2khz area, as that is typical human voice frequencies, maybe knock the bass down if it makes for nasty wall vibes, now maybe you might be able to set main volume level that isn't bad for hearing normal voice and not being blown out of chair by explosions. Might still need subs if they go whisper to explode a lot. Audiophiles and audio engineers will say "ewwww, this makes it wrong", but they fuckwits caused the problem so flip them off.
miserycones
I think the people approving the sound mixes live in nice big houses by themselves. Those of us in apartment complexes can't hear the dialogue without the music and sound effects shaking the walls and pissing off our neighbors
PleasantPeasantPheasant
I got myself some nice noise cancelling headphones to solve this problem my neighbours don't hear me, and I don't hear them.
HashMaster9k
Similar to how auteur directors seem to be tone deaf in terms of movie length. Scorsese and Cameron shit a brick over putting in Intermissions. You don't think 3h25m is too long and people watch for longer at home, Scorsese? Sure, BECAUSE WE HAVE A PAUSE BUTTON. We can go PEE when we need to and not miss anything. Let's load up your 81-year-old bladder with a large diuretic soda, and see how long YOU last in your own movie before having to excuse yourself.
Bunch of entitled motherfuckers.
LexiconDul
The films that do 'atmosphere' by making everything too goddamned dark to see what's going on can suck it, too.
GiftedMagnet
‘man batman’s gotten dark..’ really? it didn’t seem that demoni— “THE WHOLE SCREEN IS BLACK!”
Xecryo
More to the point it's either too fucking loud or two fucking soft. I get that the characters are whispering but I still need to know what they're saying without holding my ear to the TV.
HsuDoNihm
three fucking soft, sometimes.
Ironbunny
you know what would be really cool during this whisper dialogue that I turned up the TV to hear? an explosion that blows out my eardrums and wakes up my neighbors.
henofthewoods
Or like make it so i can see the dark scenes, too. I'm not going to watch your shit if I can't see it. LOL
Tomadzo
Not to mention the directors of photography making every night scene so fucking dark
azimir
Yeah! WTF is up with that? More and more night scenes are now just a smear of black shades that I'm supposed to translate into some idea of what's happening.
kailithnir
Maybe it's the same issue folks in other comment chains are taking about regarding dialogue - they're designing the scenes for higher-end hardware capable of greater light/dark contrast than their customers actually own.
Quessir
Don't tell Christopher Nolan that. He doesn't want to hear it. And so I'll never watch another of his films in the cinema again. Oh no the cinemas are dying, it's a mystery as to why...
chemicalBagel
Good video explaining this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
Noodlesocks
Mumble acting is also becoming increasingly popular with actors for some reason.
MileysVirus
Recently I got my mom to watch Oppenheimer and I think she could audibly understand maybe 2 words the entire film.
MiloBloomm
Was it the terrible sex scene dialogue?
MileysVirus
Nope she didn't get any of that shit, I'm pretty sure the only one she couldn't understand was Matt Damon.
MileysVirus
*could
bog015
Wait, other people are experiencing this problem? I seriously thought my ears were just screwed. Do people really have this problem as well!!!!
CraftyGiant
Its all balanced for in home theaters with full surround sound. Only most people don't have those.
HashMaster9k
Nope. I have a very professional setup, and it's still garbage. It's a lack of standards and proper downmixing.
sadurdaynight
I thought it was just my tv. Like maybe my tv just sucked. Human speech is always soft, so we turn up the volume. Then sfx are booming, so we turn it down. We've dicked around with tons of audio options in the tv, but nothing helped.
sunnytater1
As an audio engineer, I can say that there are a multitude of reasons for this, far too many for 500 characters... but ultimately yeah, they're not mixing for your TV speakers / phone / laptop, they're mixing for big professional setups
Aaronb1138
I would argue the opposite on TV and movie mixes and mastering. TV is mixed for crappy TV speakers and soundbars. Movies are downmixed from the theatrical mix to 5/7.1 near field and are missing most of the theater dynamics and soundstage. That said, yes the mastering is on professional studio setups, but a well chosen mid tier home 5.1 setup will sound as intended (crappy near field) in the home.
sunnytater1
Separately, commercials are done by a separate intake process, so they're only *sorta* brought to an appropriate level, but its not something much time is spent on
henofthewoods
YOU MEAN THE COMMERCIALS THAT ARE FOR SOME REASON 30% LOUDER THAN THE SHOW I WAS JUST WATCHING AND NOW WE'RE ALL BORED AND YELLING?
Jimmah1
Idk. Mine isn't professional, but it has atmos...I can't hear dialog still without cranking it up just to go deaf in the next scene. I'd if I should be using volume leveling or what, it's great for when you can have it full blast, but not so much for low volume.
AllTheGoodOnesWereGone
And they're all 7+ channel mixes that have to be converted to probably 2 channels somewhere, very likely in your TV/computer which is not properly set up to do it. Problems are more typically crap client presentation than anything fundamentally bad with the source material.
DianNaoChong
Audio balancing should change when the media changes format for distro and it rarely happens because it costs money. Also some directors absolutely don't want you to hear the dialogue.
Lontri
I hate it so much, why are the sound effects and music blowing off my eardrums, but I can't hear the characters speak?!
gorgeousninja
Love Christoper Nolan movies but trying to hear the mumble of words before accompanying BRRRRMMMM is tiring
PrinceOfWhales
Microphones have become more sensitive, allowing actors to nearly whisper their lines. Also, people listening via flat-screen TV speakers might as well be stuffing their ears with candles. But there are certainly some bad mixes out there.
quietwalker
I remember getting a hold of a pre-release copy of the matrix, before they added in the music and did much of the sound work. You can hear footsteps as they walk. The incidental creaks when they sit in a chair. The squeaks when they move when wearing tight leather. The extras in the background pretending to talk and accidentally touching the plate with silverwear. They record these things in silence and add that noise in later. It's insane.
rex314
*silverware
niooes
So I was watching a free movie on Amazon recently, and under the Languages UI they not have a few different levels of dialogue audio boosting. It was pretty helpful for me. I hope more companies follow suit.
niooes
they have* my hands are cold and I can’t type well
amp99
Related: 'Why You Can't Hear The Dialogue in Tenet' by Thomas Flight: https://youtu.be/SIgznB0-ICo
HashMaster9k
This was an excellent breakdown in what broke down on the Tenet Sound Mixing process.
MCNewYorkLives
I made a comment before about "why can't they auto correct the sound levels to be at specific levels", so dialogue it always at a certain level and music at another. Or hell, even allow the sound to be controllable between music and dialogue. And I was met with "that's too much work" or "but then that ruins audio for audiophiles who have home theatres" and a variety of other bs...as if we don't have "ai" that could auto do it FOR us
kirmokum
that's not how it works.
MCNewYorkLives
You're saying they don't have ways to separate vfx and dialogue? Or a way to record them separately and then have specific settings for each (like video games)? Or a way to at least have two modes, the "normal" mode and then have a setting with dialogue being normalized to relatively similar levels? I feel like there HAS to be a way to fix it and saying "nope, can't happen" seems really limiting
kirmokum
there are solutions to dialogue being too quiet but all you suggestions are basically untenable (or is already the case). audio, especially multichannel audio, requires a lot of bandwidth and is much more complicated than you seem to think. no film maker or audio engineer is going to relinquish control of the mix to the public either. also VFX has nothing to do with this. completely separate dept.
kailithnir
Everyone knows AI isn't allowed to improve people's lives: AI is meant to automate art and other creative endeavors so we can focus on the drudgery of wage labor, as the bright-eyed futurists of the prior century foretold.
mrthewhitee
I generally don't have this problem, but there are definitely some movies and TV shows that have completely fucked audio mixing and bury their dialog.
Shaodyn
When you finally get the dialogue to a reasonable level, the commercials are screaming at you.
Shaodyn
All of a sudden, there's some guy on an infomercial shouting about how awesome this new product is at fixing a problem nobody really has. "WANT A NEW WAY TO CLEAN WAX OUT OF YOUR EARS? STOP PICKING IT OUT WITH COTTON SWABS AND SUCK IT OUT WITH WAX VAC!"
Shaodyn
And he's doing this only slightly quieter than the unholy love child of a chainsaw and a jet engine.
Shaodyn
By the time your frantic scrambling manages to get the remote in your hand and you turn it down to something more reasonable, there's blood coming out of both ears and your teeth feel a little loose.
brianterrel
Vox did a pretty good explainer on how it got this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
TL;DW - directors want a wide dynamic range so the booms sound boomy on fancy theater setups, but that makes dialog too quiet on everything else.
dinosaurzoologist
Thanks for posting this. I knew I saw it on VOX but I couldn't find it
ksa55bizmarck7
Like, this is a thing. I read somewhere (probably here) that stuff is mixed for fancy surround systems and that they often don't put much, if any, effort into mixing the sound for plain ol' stereo speakers.
DaddyChillWhatTheHellIsEvenThat
I doubt it. Anything that comes on streaming changes the audio track based on the system you have. Also most of these movies/shows have terrible mixing. stereo people are not happy, atmos people are not happy as well. I don’t know who is happy with their sound system
sniggly5212
This. Its been the issue since blue rays started.
Mithi
Since DVDs, but yes.
3Davideo
Interesting. Would it be possible to have a software layer or something that takes in the 5.1 formatted sound (or however it's formatted) and outputs a nearest-equivalent stereo sound? Like, you can do similar to squish stereo sound into mono (useful when my headphones are wearing out and only one ear works).
znuff
It's called "Dolby Atmos" and it does "fix" that issue. Unfortunately you also need the proper hardware to play it (most TVs in the last 2-3 years have it).
steazyae
Thats not what ATMOS is. Atmos is Dolby’s proprietary 11.1, meaning it requires 12 speakers arranged around the viewer to work properly. Some soundbars will emulate it, but a TV by itself simply can’t play ATMOS correctly.
znuff
Mine does. It emulates it? Sure. Do I give a fuck? No. It sounds better and that's all I care about.
marsilies
You have to go into your TV or audio receiver and pick "midnight mode" or similar name for dynamic range compression. It does what the name says, it takes the dynamic range of the audio (the difference between the quietest and loudest parts) and compresses them so all the sound is closer to the same volume. It helps, but it's not a miracle worker.
marsilies
Looking it up, some possible names on home theater systems are: Audyssey Dynamic Volume (Denon, Marantz and Onkyo) Midnight mode (Pioneer), Adaptive DRC (Yamaha), Late Night (Onkyo).
steazyae
I do mastering for tv. Pretty much every show ships to platform with 5.1 2.0 (stereo) wrapped in. Your TV is supposed to play whichever is right. If you were playing 5.1 content on a 2.0 set up it would be very, very noticeable.
3Davideo
Soooo there's no way to squish the 5.1 channels together the way squishing right + left together makes a mono channel?
Also what the hell does "5.1" even mean? How can you have a non-integer number of speakers?
Mithi
Is that a joke? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.1_surround_sound
3Davideo
Ohhhh so the "." isn't a decimal point. I've never had such a setup so I never knew.
steazyae
Well, definitely not without losing audio for 5.1 to 2.0 conversion. The first number counts the standard channels, after the decimal is the LFE, or bass, channel. So 2.0 has no bass output. Also the center channel has to go somewhere. It gets complicated. When people say their set up downmixes what they really mean is it automatically plays the fallback channel.