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I can't hear without them anymore (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by Stamets@lemmy.world to c/memes@lemmy.world

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[-] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 118 points 3 months ago

At some point, sound mixing just went to shit. My partner was in the industry working in post-production and agrees with me. The sfx are loud and the dialogue is not - thus all of the smart tvs and settop devices supporting features like “Dialogue Boost.”

I used to notice it a lot with poorly managed concerts - the singer’s mic would get drowned out by the instruments. I guess all the people who were responsible for that moved to LA.

But now I have a soundbar and two HomePods as speakers, and still turn on subs. And that might have something to do with the number of concerts.

[-] Boozilla@lemmy.world 52 points 3 months ago

Thank you. I thought I was old man yelling at clouds over this. Drives me crazy. The worst is when the sound editor thinks some dumb pop song really slaps and turns the volume WAY UP and drowns out everything else.

And OMG the low talkers. Low talking and dimly-lit scenes are all the rage these days. I think part of it is Galaxy Brain people in the streaming biz thinking this is how they save time and money.

[-] Vladkar@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

Man, dimly-lit scenes have been a pet peeve of mine for years. Every time Law & Order is on, I can't help yelling "turn a light on!" at the screen. Maybe they'd be able to solve the murder faster if they could actually see shit.

[-] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 3 months ago

No joke, I know a guy that works on the backgrounds in Law & Order and he was talking about how half the time you can’t even see what they’ve done lmao.

[-] Boozilla@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

This made me laugh, I can imagine the ghost of Richard Belzer yelling at them.

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[-] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

Doesn’t it also have to do with how the sound is encoded and delivered? Most voice is on 5.1 is designed to go center speaker, so if your system lacks a center speaker and you have it set to home audio, instead of L/R it’s gonna be muted.

[-] Person264@lemmings.world 7 points 3 months ago

I don't think missing channels get muted, they just get shared into what's available. A 5.1 soundtrack played on a 2.1 system is going to share Centre between L and R, and put SL onto L and SR onto R. I have an old surround sound system that can't decode the new codecs that Disney plus etc use, but the Chromecast knows this so just sends it out a 2 channel boring signal. Dialogue is fine because it just goes to the two speakers equally, rather than be cut out. If your system is set up to output to 5.1 speakers but you just haven't plugged in the centre speaker, then that's a different thing and you would miss stuff, same as if you didn't plug in the front left speaker.

[-] SchmidtGenetics@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

When I change my reciever to 2.1 I lose all commentary on sports, since those are exclusively center channel. While researching it I found out about this other potential issue, kinda interesting actually.

Some receivers are smarter, some are dumb, so you need to make sure the APP, the TV, the Receiver, and sound bar (if used) all have the same settings, or strange things can happen, like one thinking it’s receiving 5.1, even though it’s not. Or vice versa.

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[-] DharkStare@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

I saw a video that blamed some of it on advances in microphone technology. Actors used to speak directly into a mic but now sets have a bunch of tiny microphones hidden everywhere to pick up sounds.

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[-] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 31 points 3 months ago

Filmmakers have actually changed the way they capture and mix audio to take advantage of this. They also sometimes abandon TV audio in favor of tuning the sound for high-end setups.

Here is an interesting deep-dive that focuses on Christopher Nolan's filmmaking.

Why You Can't Hear The Dialogue in Tenet

[-] MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

In a perfect world, there would be the recommended mix, and then the apps (Netflix, Hulu, etc) would let you adjust the faders the way you can with EQ. Instead of one stream of sound, you can balance the voice/music/fx by yourself. Hell, throw EQ on each of those channels. Late at night and you don't want to bother the neighbors? Let me turn down the bass on the FX and Music channels. Also let me just turn down FX and Music channels in general because I can't fucking hear what the actors are saying.

Edit: I was talking to my wife about this subject and she was like "yeah, I can do this on my Peloton. Adjust the voice vs music"

So yeah. The technology exists. It may not be retroactive. Like movies and shows already made won't have the option (but vocal isolation plugins have come a long way). But we have the technology and bandwidth to do it moving forward.

[-] accideath@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I mean, a Surround mix and a „I only have TV speakers but would like to hear the dialogue“ mix would be an improvement I suppose.

But also, dialogue isn’t always meant to be clearly understandable. Real life isn’t either.

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[-] Glowstick@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Unpopular opinion: Subtitles detract from the watching experience more than mishearing some words. tv / movies are a visual medium, the image on the screen is primary to it. And it doesn't matter how fast you read, the subtitles still degrade what you get out of watching the show. If your eyes are constantly darting down to the words and then back to the image then you're missing meaningful things that are happening in the image. And the text physically blocks part of the image. And the words appear on screen at a different timing from how the actors speak the words, which further worsens the emotional impact you can receive.

Yes, i agree, dialogue mixing has gotten very bad and it sucks to miss words that are said, but imo subtitles ruin the experience even more

[-] Laurentide@pawb.social 46 points 3 months ago

I get what you're saying and I wish I didn't need subtitles, but it's kind of hard to understand what's going on when 90% of the dialogue in modern shows is unintelligible mush.

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[-] 0ops@lemm.ee 10 points 3 months ago

I'm with you. If you like subtitles, you do you I won't judge, they just personally drive me nuts. I try to ignore them when I watch with someone else, but they pull my eyes away from the movie. Plus they spoil jokes and ruin the timing.

Also, maybe I have super-ears, but I really haven't struggled to hear dialogue at all in the movies I constantly hear people complain about (mostly Nolan's). I'm genuinely confused about that controversy, because they sound fine to me.

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[-] blattrules@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

I totally agree. The subtitles are so obtrusive that I’m unwillingly forced to look at them and it distracts from the video. They also completely ruin comedic timing. My wife, however, needs the subtitles on, so I live in a subtitle household now.
I’ve never had a problem generally understanding the dialog even with the terrible sound mixing, but the subtitles have ruined a bunch of jokes and completely block things I need to see on the screen very frequently.

[-] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

It's really easy to watch the movie, and to catch that one word in the sentence you want to look at without losing anything in the frame. People who watch with subtitles don't read every sentence, more like 30 words per movie, and subtitles and scenes don't change that fast, you have ample time to do some back and forth between the image and the text.

[-] blattrules@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

It never works like that for me; if the subtitles are on, I can’t distract myself from them whatever I do and end up reading every sentence.

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[-] prole@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, I feel like people in this thread are really slow readers. After a while, you learn to do both at the same time. it's really not difficult. I just watched Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall. Both are in foreign languages (to me, an English speaker), and therefore were entirely subtitled. Both are beautifully filmed, and I had no problem completely appreciating that while still being able to understand everything being said. It was trivial.

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[-] verdigris@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 months ago

Yeah I prefer when the subtitles are like half a second late so it doesn't ruin the comedic or dramatic impact of every line.

[-] intensely_human@lemm.ee 6 points 3 months ago

Or, perfectly timed. I’ve seen captioners do this before: if a character pauses, what they say after the pause doesn’t appear until they say it.

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[-] spiderman@ani.social 5 points 3 months ago

I don't mind using subtitles when I watch movies in my language but when it comes to anime or movies in other languages I prefer subtitles because it's better than not understanding a single word.

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[-] Resonosity@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

Yeah I agree, I think subtitles make the viewing experience worse. But the solution is better mixing, not just no subtitles

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[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 29 points 3 months ago

My partner is English as a second language. They’re always on for her benefit. But as I introduced her to Game of Thrones, I realized I was picking up on details that I’d never noticed prior. I can’t imagine watching without them at this point.

[-] Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net 29 points 3 months ago

Tip: If you don't have surround sound, make sure that you've got your in-app settings/tv settings set up the right way. If you have it set to surround sound, you won't be able to hear shit.

[-] Laurentide@pawb.social 28 points 3 months ago

I thought I was going deaf because I struggled to make out what people on screen were saying. Then a friend got a bunch of us together to watch a TV show that was filmed in the 90's and I could clearly understand every single word being spoken. The problem is on the production end.

[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 25 points 3 months ago

It helps that subtitles got good. Closed captions back in the day suuuuuucked and were only good for the deaf and hard of hearing

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[-] Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

I always use subtitles. No idea why it's so hard to get dialogue to sound good on home systems.

[-] Wrench@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Because the sound is mixed for 50 speaker theater setups, and they don't bother remixing it for home theaters.

Industry is cutting corners, and are oddly prejudiced against inferior home theaters, even though that seems to be where the vast majority of media is consumed nowadays.

[-] InternetUser2012@midwest.social 14 points 3 months ago

Lol, I hate them. You spend your time reading rather than seeing what's happening. Drives me nuts

[-] ji17br@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 months ago

Also any lines that depend on timing of delivery (mostly jokes) get completely ruined

[-] Zess@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

I can't read while I'm also trying to see things!

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[-] Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

With all the news about AI... maybe someone can get an AI model that can fix the damn sound so I can hear the words...

[-] spiderman@ani.social 9 points 3 months ago

I thought it was my ESL comphrension issue but it seems like even natives feel the same.

[-] Anyolduser@lemmynsfw.com 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I would recommend using face to face conversations to judge your English comprehension.

I am a native speaker with perfect hearing and I still have to use subtitles with any movie made in the past ten years.

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[-] nondescripthandle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 months ago

I put subtitles on so my friend can understand whats being said when I show them Letterkenny.

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[-] letsgo@lemm.ee 7 points 3 months ago

I hate subtitles; the only time I'll put them on is mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Oh dammit. -click-. When the elocution is so poor I can't make out what they're saying.

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[-] HotsauceHurricane@lemmy.one 7 points 3 months ago

Grew up with a partially deaf sister. I cant even game without subtitles. And now spotify has lyrics in real time ? Get the fuck outta here.

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