Movie dialogue has gotten more difficult to understand
slashfilm.com
slashfilm.com
Part is the too many audio tracks being mixed in, that the article talks about. Also, I've noticed American actors seem to mumble their lines a lot, I dont know why. British actors (usually) speak clearly. Maybe its a cultural thing, like Americans prefer method acting more?
Also, I've noticed that stage actors like Patrick Stewart , speak clearly, maybe because on stage you have to enunciate properly.
The end result is: If a movie doesn't have subtitles, we don't watch it. (And havent been to a cinema for 2+ years, obviously, in cinemas you rarely get the option).
On an unrelated note: I dont know why so many movies are shot in the dark. It might make sense when viewed in a theater, but when viewing at home, I can't see anything. The last few scenes of Edge of Tomorrow were impossible to understand because of this.
My impression is: The "arteestes" have taken over Hollywood, and making stylish movies take precedence over making movies that are easy to watch and hear.
My Apple TV has a "tone down the explosions" setting, which helps a lot.
Even still, at times I wish I had a volume knob on my remote to swing one way or the other as the scene change in the thing I'm watching. The remote is too slow.
But it's annoying to have these wide ranges. Then you watch a news or talk program or something like that, and the voices are front and center and everything is peachy.
Later, we can talk about how dark things have become on screen as well.
> ... when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ...
Yes, I want it somewhat squashed up! Please do that! I understand the artistry and desire for dynamic range, but when the character is whispering some critical plot detail, you can zoom in for a feeling of intimacy/privacy and have the actor stage whisper so everyone knows what was said. It shouldn't actually be a whisper that people a few feet away can't hear. When you follow it up with an explosion, sure, make it a little louder, but not real-life loud! That would you blow out your speakers and wake the baby.
And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not everyone has plasma or OLED displays (though the latter are becoming more available), nor watches in pitch black. And when downconverted from 10 bits to 8 bits, streamed through compression algorithms, and displayed on average TN displays...no, you can't see what's going on. Tom Scott did an excellent video on this subject a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. Game of Thrones in particular was unwatchable for me because of this.
The goal is to sell. They probably get paid by TV manufacturers (like a product placement).
> Game of Thrones in particular
That confirms, they definitely get paid ;)
This would be an excellent idea! Oftentimes I'll watch something, then in the middle turn on the subtitles and learn that I was misunderstanding the name of someone/something.
Even if I hear it correctly the spelling may be different and can give better context and cultural flavor.
In movie theaters, they'd show English language films with Danish subtitles and, often, I'd miss a comic piece of dialog because the subtitles let the audience in on the joke before I could hear it spoken, and then the audience laughter would drown out any chance I had of hearing the joke.
It was a bit frustrating.
I just noticed this trying to watch Amazon's new Wheel of Time series. It doesn't matter what the volume on the TV is - the background music and effects are so much louder than the dialog that I can't understand what people are saying.
> But it's annoying to have these wide ranges. Then you watch a news or talk program or something like that, and the voices are front and center and everything is peachy.
I've often thought a lot of these problems could be solved just by adding a "minimum volume" knob to all the "maximum volume" knobs we currently use, allowing users to forcefully reduce the dynamic range in an easy-to-understand way (while still being loud enough to hear dialogue). I remember "large dynamic range" being advertised as something you want for home theatres/etc, but in general I think it's more a misfeature/antipattern.
EEs, correct me if I'm wrong, but the amplifier circuitry is digitally-controlled now, no? So hypothetically could be rapidly adjusted with low latency?
Having said that, it turns out that I'm reasonably deaf in one ear. It's considered "Mild" hearing loss but wow is the effect substantial. My wife listens on videos on her phone at the same volume level that is literally me being able to JUST hear it. Moderate-Severe hearing loss must be impossible. And one of my ears is totally normal... only one ear has "mild" hearing loss.
Anyway long story short, consider getting a hearing test :)
Until the last couple of decades, most British movies/TV tended to use a lot of “Received Pronunciation” English (the Queen’s English) which has very crisp enunciation. Other accents were usually relegated to very specific character roles that highlighted the rustic “cockney” or “Yorkshire” character.
More recently, other British accents have been used more and many of them are the opposite of crisp enunciation. Some seem to be talking with marbles in their mouths. This seems to represent a greater democratization of the characters represented with less of an emphasis on upper classes.
This has been accomplished in a number of ways - opening more regional TV production studios, commissioning more content from regions outside London, hiring presenters/actors with regional accents etc, the net effect of all of which has been to broaden BBC talent pool beyond the usual cadre of “Received Pronunciation”-style presenters.
As one example, I personally find the presenter Freddie Flintoff to be almost impossible to understand on any BBC show he appears on, but he has exactly the sort of accent you would never have heard on BBC 40 years ago.
I've cut back tremendously on my listening in part on this basis. (Overall quality of coverage also seems to have flagged, also often with an eye toward popularity over significance. I'm aware that there's been a war against the BBC by political elements within the UK, I disagree strongly with it, and feel that also has a large role in these trends.)
But as with online content: if your design and/or presentation are getting in the way of your message and ability to communicate ... please stop doing that.
Some US programs used British actors to "raise the game" for their US co-workers.
Examples: The Americans, The Wire, Homeland, Deadwood, etc etc.
And as a side-effect, the dialogue was generally more understandable.
In all seriousness, Baltimore has a pretty heavy accent, especially in the inner city & Dundalk. It's rather comical to say that they got English actors because they were more understandable, to then turn around and make them less understandable.
Thank you. I've been in England for 8 years now and I've become fluent with any type of accent, yet I've still been watching movies with subs at home and it's been a crutch hard to get rid of; it made me second guess my ability to understand spoken English.
I have no issues in real life, or when watching YouTube, but movies, man... there's times I miss some words or I don't understand what's going on and I am unsure if I missed some kind of plot-crucial idiomatic joke whispered 30 minutes ago. And let's not speak of Tenet. Nolan is one of my favourite film-makers, but I hated that movie because I couldn't understand half the dialogue and the plot.
I'm happy to know it's not me, nor my ears failing.
On top of that, said explainer will complain that their work is "super difficult" and "hard to explain", but then, if by some miracle I can get them to sit still long enough and get up to speed, "miraculously" I'm able to onboard others.
I swear it's not a super-power! I just don't assume a ton of context!
This one is definitely not just you... I'm not sure Christopher Nolan himself understood the plot beyond "Inception, but for time machines".
But since we’re talking about it… it didn’t help understanding the plot that it was by far the poorest sound mixing I’ve ever heard. I had to watch it a second time with subtitles on, only to confirm it wasn’t any better when you could understand them.
Do you genuinely believe films like Edge of Tomorrow are works directed by a genuine auteur with full control? That is almost certainly not the case. The director is Doug Liman. He's not a bad director by any means but if you look at his filmography—Mr & Mrs Smith, Jumper, Bourne Identity—he's not exactly Francois Truffaut.
Besides, artists do not behave consistently. Some may care less about comprehension, while others may care deeply. Lumping them all into one category and making a false dichotomy between style and comprehension are both vast oversimplifications.
Netflix has been slowly pushing more international content in the US as many of Americans are starting to become more comfortable with reading subtitles.
I do think there is some room for improvement though in that subtitles should absolutely have standardized options for how they display on screen. Some people really like the yellow, others find that much more distracting compared to a bold white lettering on a semi-opaque black background. Let the viewer decide which one they are most comfortable with unless you have some specific art directed reason why they need to be formatted a certain way.
I should try delaying the subtitles so I can only read things that I've missed.
There's a baseline assumption with a lot of "high quality" movies and television that every member of the audience has perfectly working senses. The sad fact is "low quality" reality TV is much more accessible. Sporting events are also a lot easier because you can hear the people talking clearly.
For a more concrete example Star Trek: Discovery is difficult for me to hear and follow everything, whereas the older TV series and the new the animated ones are much easier.
The other nice feature of subtitles is sometimes there is helpful metadata there, like identifying the song playing in the background or some words not intended to be heard like a whisper or voice coming from a phone receiver.
Though I could see full "yam yam" being hard - that's the rural dialect from the black country.
One of the many alleged origins for the term is a German director (which director varies according to the story) declaring that a scene should be shot "mit out sound".
Why do you say it looks utter crap then?
Based on what? In my experience, most of the worst audio experiences are middle-brow action movies (such as Edge of Tomorrow and Nolan's movies), not auteur.
I can't recommend OLED TVs enough. Worth every penny.
But I agree that way too many movies nowadays are too dark.
If you care about it, Blu-ray and OLED should give you excellent dark scene detail.
If you want to have a bad experience or don't care, buy a shitty TV.
I agree lots of shows nowadays are too dark overall, but I don't agree that they shouldn't have dark scenes at all because some people bought shitty TVs.
1. I thought movie firms were paid to sell more modern screens with contrast ratios 3000:1, so they made it look pitch black for everyone with an older screen. Didn’t occur to me that it could be for art.
2. Oh, in terms of unwatchable shooting style, there was the hype of shoulder cameras in the 2010s, with its apogee in Bourne Legacy (4th). Most shots were 0,5s to 1 second for 20 minutes in a row, unbearable. Especially when it’s a dialog with someone expressing feelings, feels like the director is surfing on the view selectors.
The actual article content here about the reasons for dialogue getting worse is interesting. I'd have suspected it's mostly about the actors no longer being predominantly stage-trained, but apparently that is part of it but a small part. I don't really notice it personally, though, since my wife is deaf, so ever since marrying her, I've watched everything with closed captioning on.
That's great for people with TV's capable of that type of playback, but for everyone else, tough luck unless you have a blacked-out home theatre room to watch all you casual TV in.
I saw a great example of this in a recent LTT video[0] of a cheap "HDR" TV. The shadows all blended together and the highlights just looked like a flat white instead of a very lightly shadowed sparkle.
Actually after re-watching BladeRunner 2049 on my q95t I came to conclusion that I like watching dark scenes on my TV as much or even more then in cinema.
I often watch movies on my OLED and think, "this is so dark it only just looks OK on this TV - it would definitely look like crap if we were at the cinema".
Honestly I'm surprised that there are so many dark scenes in movies for that reason alone.
>For me-- I rarely watch movies without subtitles nowadays; can't understand half the dialog. try enabling dynamic range compression on your TV/Sound Receiver. Many movies are mastered for Cinema, which means voices are whsiper quiet and other sounds are loud af, this compresses it down to a more reasonable range for a home setup.
You also have to control the ambient lighting around the TV which can be a pain in the ass.
If directors want movies to be seen, they should consider the home viewing environment. Just as the article says many films consider the home sound environment and mixing for non-pristine environments.
The entire battle of winterfell was just mush.
Needless to say nowTV get no money from me.
"I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'"
I've been in a meeting where a third-party vendor was explaining how I was incorrect about how some particular functionality in an application worked, and I had to stop him and inform him that I was the one who developed that functionality and knew exactly how it worked.
Your average Catholic, for example, isn't going to be especially knowledgeable about liturgy, much less theology. Ask your average Catholic what the mass fundamentally is and chances are he won't be able to tell you in any "academic" sense. So the situation isn't quite analogous. Now had she contradicted Jesus about the meaning of the last supper...
Someone who is supposedly has a Masters in Religion and talking about Christianity should have at least heard about Martin Luther if they are going to speak with any authority.
I wish I was exaggerating. I really do. She didn't get good reviews and I don't recall seeing her after that semester.
Note: She was white and spoke with a native midwestern accent.
This is the writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Kataev
This is the granddaughter: https://www.facebook.com/tina.kataeva
This is the book: http://www.sovlit.net/sonofregiment/
The story is that Tina's friend got help from Kataev on the school essay about his book. The essay was graded 3 (C) by her teacher. Kataev was very amused.
Also, a correction to my initial post: he was girl's grand grandfather.
I'd be really surprised if sound engineers working in film never bother to listen to a cut of the movie in a theater. But then again the number of times I've seen "you didn't try compiling before committing did you?" crop up in chat while discussing a broken build that maybe they don't :)
I stopped watching movies because it seems new movies are missing any interesting plot in them. It is like people making these movies and paying for these movies focused all on special effects and forgot that without an actual interesting plot these are just completely hollow.
So if your job is to "make a movie" and you forgot on a point on the TODO list that says "make the plot interesting" then I am not surprised sound engineers can forget "make it work in end user setting".
If you had no previous exposure to Star Trek and watched any single episode of Star Trek DS9 it might not be very compelling. What makes it compelling is the attachment to the characters and the knowledge of the backstory the episode is embedded in.
This you? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fx4kmM0tqpQ
I'm into it. Sounds a bit like Silent Majority (Long Island band), who I believe would have been your contemporaries although this is all before my time so I'm speculating.
So it should sound the same, or very similar to, his sound lab.
If the quality of the sound in the cinema is bad, that's the cinema's fault.
It’s apparently industry standard to have the cinemas set their volume to value 7. The sound engineers then prepare the soundtrack with the expectation it will be set to 7. This particular theatre was set to 5.5 (perhaps to compensate for a previous movie that didn’t follow the standard and was mixed “too loud”), and hence the movie was significantly more quiet than the sound engineer intended.
This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written.
Here's more:
> Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades:
>> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor.
> The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1]
> "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'"
> When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward:
> "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that."
There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet.
[1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.
What they’re apparently doing is hitting the exceptional case, changing the volume, and then leaving it there forevermore — so effectively picking the lowest common denominator. So every movie is screwed, except the movie with the most egregious violations
What they should be doing is running their sound through a volume normalizer. A system that might be set at "7" or "4" is the problem. Set the system to the number of decibels you want, not the amount of amplification you want.
That seems to be the problem mentioned in the "Mixing For Streaming" portion of the article.
> Case in point: Mann recently worked on Joe Carnahan's "Boss Level," which was originally meant to be a theatrical release. "For a variety of reasons, it ended up at Hulu, and when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ... there are only a couple different ways of measuring these things these days, and I can only imagine that it's somebody just not understanding the reason why it should be this and not that."
Question 5: https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells...
There never seem to be versions of this story shared where, to use the link's example, the movie manager turns out to be a semi-retired audio engineer.
But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?
It's about "smug and arrogant and thinks he knows" vs. "really does know." That's why it's an evergreen.
A favorite example is in Annie Hall where a smug guy is explaining Marshall McLuhan to his date, and Woody drags out the real McLuhan to tell the guy he's full of it.
How many times have you heard it told of the form "The senior architect made a statement about transaction locking, with which the junior engineer disagreed and cited ACID properties. It turned out the senior architect was Jim Gray."?
Granted, it's a terrible story, which is why it probably doesn't get told. Because you would have expected Jim Gray to be more knowledgeable about the topic. I guess it just irked me, because the anecdotes always feel curiously similar.
I think you are just overlooking something so common and in your face that it seems invisible.
In terms of retail/services, it's a 'customers are idiots' story, and they abound. An automotive example is "I need a 710 cap". In computer troubleshooting, the PEBKAC, PICNIC, and ID10T stories.
The BOFH stories might not be real, but they scratch an itch real people encounter. the BODY mangles people both up and down the chain of authority.
Vast swathes of industries have internal "Junior/contractors doesn't know how to think". On a drilling rig, a new hand will be sent to get the key to the vee door.Or a bucket of steam. Or in other industries, maybe a left-handed screwdriver or some such. In military, there are lots of real stories of drill sergeants making recruits feel foolish, and you can be sure they laugh about it over coffee with each other.
There's the SR71 airspeed story. And pilots get their callsigns from doing something stupid, normally.
No there's lots of stories where the expert comes out on top. Perhaps as many as "senior is an idiot"
So it's not an interesting anecdote the other way around.
Anyhow, the Annie Hall bit doesn't hinge on any senior-junior relationship.
Meme-wise, the "loser" of the exchange doesn't go on the recite the story. Then again, I love to tell my friends stories about the times I was the idiot. But I generally don't announce them to the universe.
> But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?
You think theater owners are statistically at least as likely to hold a non-theater-owner job as audience members of no specified profession are?
(And if you were curious, because of course I asked: Apparently indoor sports stadiums are the absolute worst for concert acoustics. At least with open stadiums it gets rid of some of the echo, and they can work their magic to pad out the space.)
I was the ONLY developer who had ever touched a line of code in that software.
Which is just as funny as the recruiter who wanted to recruit me for a position and said I'd be a great fit and a shoe-in for the interview because he had years of experience working with the company in question as a partner.
...I wrote the job description. It was literally an open position for my direct subordinate. I was the hiring manager and had never heard of the recruiter before. So I replied with "interest," we went through the interview process, I submitted my resume, and then he called us up to speak to the person hiring for the position saying that he had a GREAT candidate. This guy hadn't even read the resume, because my current employer was on it as it was obviously my current job. I let him in on my secret, and also let his manager know about my experience with him too. She used to work for me on my team as a recruiter before taking the job to start the firm's New Orleans office.
"I think in the case of Mr. Nolan, with ["Tenet"], the characters have a mask, and he wants to keep the original sound because I think for him it's more real," he says. Presumably, that mentality also extends to "The Dark Knight Rises," in which Bane's mask muffled a significant percentage of that character's lines.
---If that is the case, that the director does not want us to understand the dialogue then why make it so important to the story? Why make it so dialogue heavy then?
The staff said that the requirement to play it at this volume had come from the distributors and ultimately from the director, in response to complaints of inaudible dialog. No idea if that's true but they also said they were now getting loads of complaints about the volume and having to refund tickets, unsurprisingly. What a ridiculous mess.
Anyway, I eventually watched at home with subtitles and it seems I didn't miss much. Michael Spicer summed it up beautifully [1].
But Tenet is probably the loudest I’ve ever heard in a theatre. It had to be more than 90db for large parts of it.
And then I attended a wedding reception with a DJ recently, and it was over 90db for the whole two hours in a small-ish hall. Imo, that’s unacceptable.
In both of these experiences, my ears hurt bad. I can only think that the people making the decision to go this loud have already had their hearing damaged enough that they don’t think it’s loud enough. Well, why don’t we fix the problem by not busting people’s ears in the first place!
Maybe we should start suing folks who try to damage our hearing? Or get some legislation to set a cap on the average and max db allowed at various events? I’m not really sure how this problem will get solved.
And don’t get me wrong, I love immersive audio! I really enjoyed a lot of Dune’s soundtrack and mixing. I’m just shocked that immersive audio today basically means “turn it up to 90db to kill their ears” and not “let’s have a really meticulously mixed and nicely balanced experience.” But that enjoyment ends when my ears hurt.
There are clear guidelines on how many decibels for how long damages ears, and noise is simple to measure.
I've been to concerts which were ear-splitting even up in the bleachers. It's just crazy to think how loud it would be right at the stage.
I just don't understand how venues don't get sued into oblivion, and I wish they would because it's too goddamn loud to enjoy.
If in the first few minutes I have problems hearing the dialogue, I just stop watching, leave a 1-star review with a comment that the audio is incomprehensible and ask for a refund in case I paid for watching. Hopefully, the others would start doing the same and the trend will go away.
I won't be seeing another Nolan film until he changes his mind on the importance of voice quality, as I like to enjoy movies and not strain to have any idea what is going on. His choices in sound quality and mixing completely breaks any sense of immersion for me...if they were outstanding plot-wise I would possibly struggle through. But without that sense of immersion, they're just not worth watching imho, as his films are all about the immersion factor.
They all wanted to rewatch it so we saw it in my home cinema and I put on subtitles, and everyone agreed that once they could actually understand the dialog, it was not a very good movie at all…
I wonder if there's a parallel worth making to music. some kinds of music (eg, metal subgenres) feature vocals that are basically unintelligible unless you look them up. it can be nice to know the lyrics, but it's not essential to enjoying the music.
Maybe a more similar distinction would be the X-Men/Wolverine movies vs Logan, where the latter is a more introspective take on the character, and so the story is relatively more important than the action sequences.
When I first saw Batman Begins, I didn't at all understand that there was some connection between Henri Ducard and Ra's al Ghul (both played by Liam Neeson)... was really confused why Batman's apparent friend/mentor suddenly became the villain, and then somehow a bunch of other villains showed up and wanted to do something to Gotham (but couldn't understand what). At first watch, all I got was that "Batman went through some hard shit before Gotham". It didn't at all prepare me for the plotlines of the subsequent movies and none of the characters made sense until I could rewatch it with subtitles on.
My understanding is that Nolan chose that unintelligibility for some artistic reason, but as a moviegoer, it just means I miss most of the entire plot of his movies. That's especially the case when you combine unintelligible dialogue with fast dark scenes... just a lot of blurry fists and wheels that's incredibly hard to keep track of.
Also Interstellar... first time I watched it, all I really got was "corn farmer goes to space and gets betrayed". None of the intricacies of the Bookshelf of Time™ got through because it was all unintelligible. Argh.
When I watched Tenet I had to let parts of my thinking go and just let it wash through me as it went without constantly trying to think too hard about what was happening. Dark corners were later illuminated, some weren't, but ok. My wife couldn't handle the start of it as there was too much not understood. I thought it was great and worth another watch.
For other movies, as discussed in the piece, there is more going on with dialogue quality that isn't intended. That's the real shame.
That sound guys aren't even allowed to utter criticism of director or risk career speaks volumes about the industry.
The nice side-effect from that constant volume changing is that the volume display covers the subtitles, which means I can neither hear nor even read the subtitles the dialogue >:(
I think cinema mixes are conventionally around 30 dB between dialog and the loudest sounds, which works great in the cinema (both because there is less ambient sound, and because you expect really loud sounds in the cinema), but is pretty extreme at home if you don't have a proper "home theater" setup. That's like the difference between normal conversation and a lawn mower. If you're watching a movie at home and two characters are talking and then one of them starts their lawn mower, do you actually want it to be as loud as if you fired up a lawn mower in your living room? For sustained sounds I generally wouldn't want it much more than 10 dB above dialog (that's like running a washing machine) and for very peaky effects like gunshots 20 dB is probably pushing it for most people's living room setups.
I have a proper home theater setup and it seems worse.
With subs the walls shake. Try watching a movie at night with someone asleep in the next room.
It's so irritating, I wish they'd be sensible. It doesn't seem like anyone enjoys it, I can't work out why the directors don't want a movie to be an enjoyable experience for the viewer.
Every comment that I've seen echoes the same sentiment. Nobody is springing to the defense of these ridiculous dynamics.
> With subs the walls shake. Try watching a movie at night with someone asleep in the next room.
I mean that's the point of a subwoofer. If you want to have actual low frequency response you will feel it. Obviously this setup is not compatible wiht someone trying to sleep in the next room.
In my setup, I go one step further. I have a 'no subwoofer' activity on my Harmony hub that turns off a smart outlet switch to the sub and turns on Dynamic Volume. No more keeping my roommate up by watching movies late at night.
In my setup, I go one step further. I have a 'no subwoofer' activity on my Harmony hub that turns off a smart outlet switch to the sub and turns on Dynamic Volume. No more keeping my roommate up by watching movies late at night.
Funny how dynamic compression became all the range in music, but the opposite happened to movies.
I recently struggled to find all of the channels in my DTS audio collection. Turns out that it many tracks the important bits were hiding in the front-left-center and right-left-center channels which the hardware decoder in the sound system send nowhere but I was able to find via software decoding.
Completely absurd to have to hack so hard on this stuff, even if I love the process!
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This article drags on so long I almost forgot what I was reading about. Maybe they should investigate the decreasing signal:noise ratio of modern journalism next.
(And Three Ways To Fix It)
The only real fix is to use a dynamic compression algorithm. Most AVRs (home theater receivers) have this, and I now always use the chrome plugin AudioChannel for playback to devices that do not have that feature.
2. the fact that you consider this a long article says a lot more about you than the article or the author. I read the whole thing (with ublock origin active) and I did not notice much if anything that I would consider "noise" in the context.
Ah yes, victim blame.
> the fact that you consider this a long article
I didn't say that. I said the article drags on so long before it gets to the actual content. Not that the article itself was long.
> I did not notice much if anything that I would consider "noise" in the context.
Good for you. We had different experiences, then.
> I didn't say that. I said the article drags on so long before it gets to the actual content.
There are 6 paragraphs of introduction before jumping right into the Nolan case. With default font sizing, it's a bit less than 1 page of content in my web browser. How is that "drags on so long before it gets to the actual content"?
I tried to restrict my remarks to the article in question. You closed with the sweeping generalization "Maybe they should investigate the decreasing signal:noise ratio of modern journalism next."
And there are no charts. The proposition is simple. (Dialogue got worse.) What's the metric. How it has gotten worse. Where's the data.
Okay, maybe it's not that kind of article, but it's full of fluff. (At least compared to what I expect clicking on a HN link that has an interesting title.)
I always watch BBC documentaries or clips from the previous night late shows (such as Colbert's or Kimmel's), often while cooking or doing chores, and I can follow basically the entire thing without having to go back, even if I'm distracted or if there's some environmental noise.
I can't say that it's the same with films, though. They are often hard to follow for me without subtitles, I suspect due to IMHO just how terribly they are mixed. Sound effects and music are usually boosted up to outrageous levels, which cause the dialogue to become muffled or close to inaudible. It just sucks and it's not a good experience at all.
I wonder if this explains part of TV's surging popularity relative to film. I also find modern movies frustrating to watch, in part because I can't follow the dialogue. (I assumed it was a hearing thing.)
The truth about it is that people listen to audio in less-than-perfect environments all the time. The ideal "Home Theater" is a room that has one door and isn't a passage from one place to another and doesn't have people doing other things. In real life a lot of people have a big TV in an room that's part of an open plan and a "boomy" soundtrack which is great in the theater will drive people apart in their home.
https://www.silicondust.com/product/hdhomerun-flex-4k/
I'd like to say that this is a wonderful product that "just works" but unfortunately some of the devices I have (XBOX ONE, 8th gen iPad) don't support the AC4 soundtrack even though my various trashy Android devices handle it just fine.
There's a Dolby equivalent as well, but as far as I know there are zero titles that make use of it except for a couple of demo discs.
(This of course would only be useful where you had original audio tracks)
> Dialog always pans across center, but in movies, most FX generally don't. In games, since much of the action happens up front, even with full-range centers, putting all of the volume in one speaker for all the dialog and FX happening directly in front of you generally doesn't sound as good as spreading the power for the FX around to the front mains.
It says a lot about Naughty Dog that they wanted players to have the best experience, no matter what setup they had.
[0] https://www.avsforum.com/threads/uncharted-among-thieves.109...
This is mostly prevalent in video games because they lack auteurs obsessed with this kind of thing.
And increasingly they are losing the quality content that they didn't produce themselves.
It gives plenty of control. It's pretty great in practice.
I guess upping the center channel is an ok solution in practice because this doesn't happen very often, but DTS:X and Dolby TrueHD do actually support a separate dialog object that you can adjust the volume of independently, but AFAIK there are no actual movie titles that are mixed to make use of this feature.
Combine that with this trend of filming long, brooding pauses punctuated by only occasional dialog, and you get a lot of resentful watchers after they've waited for 30 seconds for the actor to finally say something, and then it trails off unintelligibly, leading to a 90-second adventure in rewinding not far enough, then too far, then waiting for buffering...
If the dialog were mixed louder, lower volume at the cinema wouldn't be corrected (because everybody would understand what was going on) but sound meant to make the audience jump, wouldn't. This transfers to home viewing, because people at home aren't going to max out the volume of their TVs to watch your movie, so they now can't hear the dialog (unless you remix home releases.)
It's like the opposite of the loudness war. Enforcing loudness when the viewer has control of the volume knob requires making the necessary sound (the dialog) so quiet that people have to turn it up. It's like the volume blast of TV commercials before it was regulated.
In the 2005 audio, the silent parts have grains. Both the sound effect and voice are almost at the same level. You don't spend your time constantly lowering and increasing the volume as music, sfx, and voice alternate.
Now in 2021, (or more like 2018 the last time I watched), it almost feels like the voice is on a different track. Unless you wear earphones, you will be smashing the volume button up and down from scene to scene.
With headphones, it sounds disconnected. You can feel the voice actors standing there in that empty soundproof room. The quality of the recording is so flawless that maybe you need studio monitors to hear. The home sound system doesn't cut it anymore.
The soundsystem of the future is subtitles.
In Star Trek: Discovery, all other issues aside, one that irks me a lot is the main character delivers about 2/3rds of her lines in a literal whisper.
This is meant to convey emotion, since the writing on Star Trek now is dripping with deep emotion in every scene.
I'm not sure if it's the direction or the acting, but when every line is whispered, then nothing is.
I don’t think I’ve ever dismissed someone coming to me in that way, and I hope if I ever do that I’m fired for it.
I can't watch movies without those anymore. You just have to go to guest services and ask for them; sometimes the frontline staff won't know they have them, but a manager almost always knows how to get one and set it up for you. It's free.
5.1 audio tracks tend to put most of the voices in the center channel only.
If you listen in stereo, there is a challenge here with down-mixing to left and right.
Several band-aids to alleviate it:
If you watch using MPC-HC, turn normalize on at 400% in the settings, or alternatively if using anything else, turn on Realtek's loudness equalization to do the same thing.
If not wishing to use normalization, then if using LAV change center mix level to 1.00 from 0.71, or if using MPC-BE in the mixer change center from 0.0 dB to 3.0 dB.
I use normalize myself, because it's still too quiet even with a mixing boost to the center channel.
I use both players actually.
Can somebody translate this, what is meant by “cut on film” in this context?
I found [0] via web search, but it seems to be about distribution and not production. It seems unlikely to me that a 1994 movie’s sound was initially recorded in an optical format. But I can see how if it was planned to be distributed with sound-on-film, that could influence the production. Is that what was meant by the quote above? What do movie sound people mean by the word “cut” in this context, or does it have no specific meaning?
Also, can you speculate on how the dialogue on that movie was initially recorded? Digitally? Analog tape?
In the old days they had to record it correctly at the time because there was no ability to fix it later in post-processing.
I usually turn on subtitles not just because it's hard to understand the dialog, but I often watch movies at night after my spouse is in bed and if I turn it up to the point where the dialog is easy to hear, the sound effects/music are often way too loud.
My soundbar has a "night" mode that compresses the volume levels and makes it a bit more tolerable, but I still generally leave the volume turned down so low that I need to use subtitles to understand all of the dialog.
The result is that all the trends of making the 'splosions louder and the dialogue quieter are amplified (haha) for the vast majority of home viewers, to the point that they can't understand any of the dialog unless the background music and explosions are waking up the neighbors. And that's without the film itself having made some questionable choices to begin with (as—which others have mentioned here—Tenet)
Closed caption is textual stream with metadata (x/y position). That would be a cinch to play in an off-screen area.
I have the center channel bumped several steps louder than the others on my receiver. This makes a world of difference over stereo mixes. (I will admit the voice sound can be more uneven - wind noise etc starts to show through)
Hmm, thinking out loud - I bet a multichannel mix could be calibrated on your system to bump the center channel, even if outputting to 2 speaker
A very short introduction in the form of a personal experience to explain the issue clearly and objectively and then explaining each issue with good research and relevant quotes. I learned a lot!
All the time in the production has been spent on the game, but for some reason they couldn't be bothered to implement the first basic thing that the player is going to want to change, settings/keybindings etc.
Perhaps it is a case of the producer having lost touch with what the consumer experience is?
I am Deaf. Whenever I start a Paw Patrol episode for my children I have to turn downward the sound. Even I can feel that someone cranked up the sound to 11. The table starts vibrating, the children cover their ears and the Yacker Tracker flashes red.
It's really annoying and as a Deaf person I don't know how to fix the sound level.
for executives: this type of failure can crucify everything from box office earnings to streaming. every copy you send to an emmy voter will be shrugged off as dark-and-mumbly.
Downmixing 5.1 to stereo is almost always trash. I've never come across a solution that does it well out-of-the-box.
Most people imagine 5.1 as stereo, just subdivided into front and back, with an added center channel for funsies.
In reality, it's basically mono.
The center channel is the main thing, which delivers most of the dialogue, and there are 4 auxiliary speakers sprinkled around you for sound effects.
When downmixing 5.1 to stereo, you should turn up the volume of the center channel a ton before splitting it up to the left and right speakers. This is rarely done in reality, so you end up with a weird mix where the sound effects and off-screen noises are way too loud, and the would-be-center-channel dialogue is way too quiet.
More to the point: in a world where Netflix and PS4 default to 5.1 output, should we not expect everyone with just two speakers to be getting crappy sound?
Basically, your TV may be better than your sound system.
Stereo is the standard way to mix music (because headphones), but a dedicated center channel has been pretty much required for any home theater for a good long while. Most non-Netflix streaming services just straight-up assume you've got a setup that can properly handle surround sound if you're streaming any 4K content.
Edit: I know this comment isn't about the audio, specifically - but rather, just about how movies have changed more generally.
In case you're unaware, you don't need a darkroom to develop 35mm film. I don't use an enlarger to transfer my photos onto photo paper (which would require a darkroom). Instead, I develop in the light but using a light-proof changing bag to load my film into a light-proof Paterson developing tank. After I pull the developed film out and let it dry, I scan the negatives using a photo scanner (I use an Epson v600, but there are plenty of options out there for scanning film negatives). Reddit's r/analog and r/analogcommunity is a thriving community.
This is worse than compression of pop music for Spotify broadcasting, this affects the core storytelling of the media. We purposely did NOT go see James Bond in the theater knowing that we wouldn't understand anything people were saying.
My first instinct is to throw a Raspberry PI at the problem, but I am not sure where to start.
Hopefully I'll get to go back to a theater someday!
"Very often, the streamed audio is a compressed version that you wouldn't get on a Blu-ray," Mangini explains:
"On Blu-ray, if you select 7.1, that is our full fidelity, 48 kilohertz, 24-bit master audio, just as it came from the mixing studio. You can get that on a Blu-ray, and you can get that on certain premium platforms. I think you have to pay extra money for that.
A long time ago, I took a tour of some recording studios. Many of them had some car radio speakers in the booth, so they could hear what the record sounded like in the car with shitty sound. Now, of course, cars have much better sound.
It does seem like a movie sound guy would need the equivalent, with some home theater setups that simulate how people are actually hearing it.
I don't have issues with understanding my American colleagues and talking with them, but when I try to watch a movie without a subtitle, I feel that I'm far from being good enough in English. I thought I was alone in that, so thanks for posting this.
I’m glad this was called out. I was super-excited for Tenet last year. I had a brand-new 7.2 Atmos setup… and I had to watch with subtitles on because I couldn’t understand anyone. Very frustrating… glad it wasn’t just me!
Well... there's no loud background music in real life, and some sounds (like rain, etc...) are usually less loud in real life than in movies...
That and other parts of the article seem like clear analogs to IT design issues: If we follow the standard, then we get a lot of failures by people not following the standard. Think of web design, for example.
IME, the answer in IT is: Deal with it. Appealing to the standard as an excuse for the failures is BS. If your website fails because some end-user platform doesn't implement standards properly, that's on you. You need to build for the messy real world, not for an idealistic, perfect, clean-room world of standards.
Is there no user-centric design concept in film?
The cinemas are meant to be calibrated. People can calibrate their home cinemas the same.
There is much more to communication than the literal words.
> All it took was a little bit of collaboration and communication, and all of a sudden, grip and electric are moving generators a hundred yards away instead of having them right around the corner from the set.
If you do the mixdown to stereo poorly and/or refuse to compress the DR and then play the result from built-in TV speakers I guarantee that you won't be able to hear the dialogue at an acceptable volume even though the film is from 1962 and features clearly-spoken lines from former professional stage actors.
Sound people complain about compression (muddy), not wide dynamic range (drama and depth.)
Another option (if they wanted to use it) would be to use signal processing techniques to extract and improve the dialogue tracks.
[EDIT] But yes, a better option would be for production companies to deliver that as an option to begin with, complete with professional attention to make sure it's good for its purpose.
to apply your own compression to the audio signal for chrome-based playback.
1. Move front and surround and height if you have them speakers to full range.
2. Set center speaker cutoff a few hz higher than normal, like 80 or 100
3. Turn up level going to sub. Turn down volume knob on the sub. This prevents auto off
You get a lot of the low end effects off the sub, and the center and sub is just for dialogue. You get that depth effect without the dialogue being muted. I feel filmmakers do this so their movies don't age. Supposedly they're going to have a laser speaker, and the flat panel tv will be a speaker itself with the sound shot across the screen. All those movies get a new release for that.