I mean she’s not wrong
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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Anytime there is a quiet scene with whispered dialogue you can be assured that Micheal Bay is about to blow some shit up.
I get it. Ever tried watching *The Dark Knight* at night while your partner’s asleep? Without headphones, it’s impossible—everyone’s practically mumbling.
Or were so traumatized by the double loud ads that come on we don’t even bother turning it up anymore.
Shit should be illegal. It makes me want to buy your product less.
Agreed. Next let’s talk about why everything is SO FUCKING DARK. Many movies require being watched in your basement with blackout curtains drawn during the polar night.
I’m sound guy, i don’t work in the moving pictures but i feel like i have to defend my comrades in arms.
This is a production side issue, not audio department per se. There are multiple factors that are the cause of it. One of the most important is COST CUTTING. Instead of recording reference audio and then ADR:ing the hell out of every single spoken word they now use that reference audio that was recorded on the set. But now we stumble to another problem: dressing and set design. Microphones can NOT be visible. They have to be hidden. This is not a problem when the audio on set is just used as a reference. The mic can be then hidden in the costume. Boom mics are always problematic, they need to stay away from the picture so again: the recording phase is compromised. When we try to mix set audio, there are TONS of interference, the voice is often muffled, there are noises from the costume, it is shite. “You can’t polish a turd” is the #1 rule in audio, if it is shite going in it will be shite going out.
ADR would fix it. That process is about the actors repeating lines dozens of times and we pick the one that is best delivery and matches the lip movement the best. This happens in a very isolated sound booth, direct to mic that is placed optimally (often using two mics with two different gain settings so we can record screams and whispers in one take…). The quality is phenomenal, every syllable is clear and we really have abundance of detail, so much that we need to muffle it to sound natural, to remove some detail to make it sound like someone speaking from some distance away but having full freedom on the two axis: frequency and amplitude.
But.. ADR means the actors need to spend a couple of days recording and what that means is that after shooting has finished, they need to travel back and do the work. This just begs for a conflict in scheduling: the actors are probably working on the next thing and it costs a lot of money to do it. So.. they don’t. And you are the one paying the price for having muffled audio that is loud enough but not GOOD ENOUGH for perfect comprehension.
The audio guys would like to do it better but with cost cutting and the time table that is often just insane: there is no money or time.
What can you do? Implement dynamic range limiting. Many names for that process, windows called it “loudness equalizer”, some TVs and surround receivers may have “Automatic Dynamic Range”, “normalizer”… it is one of those things where each manufacturer wants to call it their Own Thing™ to make it a special feature, like they are doing something very clever… when they are all doing the same thing: lowering the loudest sounds and amplifying the quiet sounds. For Windows users there is also a app called EqualizerAPO that add signal processing stage in the Windows mixer. You can put a normalizer, which is just a limiter with auto gain function, that then controls loudness for the whole system. I use LoudMax, studio grade VST2 plugin. Both of those are free. I rarely have to touch volume, which has been extra useful with youtube that can have wild swings even when they are trying to do that processing for you. It is better to take control of that part of audio processing yourself. This kind of signal processing should’ve been default option since the 80’s but it used to cost tens of thousands, then thousands, then hundreds and now.. it is 100% free. So, check if you already have it, or if you can add it to your system. I can promise you that within a week you have forgotten the whole problem of having to adjust audio levels, it just goes away and you literally forget how awful it was before, it can be very transparent and almost like automatic… which it is, it is automatization to take care of an annoying problem that we ALL HAVE.
Demand also better audio in movies and TV. You guys are not making loud enough noise about the annoying fucking shit that this timeline forces down our throats. It is suppose to be SUPPLY AND DEMAND but when customer are not demanding quality, so none of us get it. Stop taking it and strike back. Audio guys know how to fix it but we are not allowed to.
Why we all need subtitles now: https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8?si=raOXvUMsaXxtK8w3
This couldn’t be more spot-on.
I agree with the point, but don’t see how this is oddly specific, in fact it’s almost as broad/generic as it gets. It’s pointing to an industry wide issue.
The fact streaming companies are introducing dialogue boost is a good indicator of this.
For me, it’s twofold:
– Background sounds/music drowning out the dialogue;
– Poor diction.
The other day, I came across an old movie on an archive site, and I realized that every word was spoken with crystal clarity. Tons of newer movies/series have mumble-dialogue that makes it more difficult to parse.
Me every video game ever
Music – 70
SFX – 80
Dialogue – 100
Voice Chat – 0
This has been acknowledged widely for years but they’re still doing it.
It’s intentional for some fucked up reason.
I always watch tv with subtitles on even if the sound is good. It’s just a better way to watch tv.
Very grateful for the speech enhancement feature on my sound bar. Don’t have any problems with almost any TV show or film now.
I genuinely don’t get this. I’ve had that loads of young people like watching TV with subtitles as they can’t hear what’s being said clearly. I’ve got reduced hearing in both ears yet I’ve never had problems hearing the TV.
Also because your audio settings are on 5.1 instead of stereo
LSS – Almost every TV is in Dolby 2.0, but studios have insisted on mixing everything in 5.1 for decades in the vain hope everyone will buy surround sound systems.
True. Dialogue is much clearer in older movies (even in VERY old movies with much worse audio quality).
Tbf I am definitely hard of hearing at this point
I agree but why is this on r/oddlyspecific?
If you buy a $25k audio system like the sound guys use it sounds fine, I don’t know why people keep complaining about this.
Have you considered maybe it’s all 3?
As someone who has verbal processing issues, I agree with this post 😂😂😂
Probably because the sound engineers/mixers are working in sound proof booth and not in a house with screaming kids and barking dog, like how we watch the movies.
Tenent was the worst
Been saying this for years.
My receiver goes from 60 (taking) to 20 (other parts of the show).
Movies are made to be experienced with a sound system that has a center speaker.
r/SpecificallyOdd
I think Prime has a feature that enhances dialogue. It reduces all other background sounds and increases the volume when characters are speaking. Brilliant!
wtf is UP with that. I’m doing a workout with the freakin remote
I turn on CC because there are 2 kids running around the house screaming. And it takes about 4 hours to watch a normal movie because of antics.
Movies need to start coming with video game settings for sound.
Seems like a settings issue
Its because movies are made for top of the line sound systems. But then we watch them on our shitty soundbars and wonder why our dynamic range sucks.
So true! When I watch movies at home I gotta keep the remote handy to constantly adjust the sound!
“we need to rescue the–”
*turns up volume*
“–KIDS FROM THE EXPLOSION FACTORY.”
**KA-FUCKIN-GODDAMN-FOUNDATION-SHUDDERING-BOOM**
It’s cus TikToks all have subtitles.
Or because of audio compression, because you’re probably watching something with 5.1 sound and playing it through your TV speakers.
Whenever people claim that it’s your audio setup, I just go to good movies with solid sound engineering.
I can watch almost anything in the criterion collection and it will have a quiet scene and a loud scene soon after but the dialog is mixed so I can fucking hear it.
Look for the most part it’s shit speaker company’s using a reverse bell curve tune to make you think you have fancy speakers but in reality they are just boosting bass and high frequency and disguising the fact that the clarity of the speaker is crap.
If you buy a TV that’s is .5 inches thick where do you think the well balanced sound is going to come from?
That and audio engineers need to pull their heads out of their asses and realize that people would like to understand what is going on.
No, it’s because our parents all had awesome surround sound systems with center channel speakers. Now everyone has these awful tiny cheap soundbars with integrated surround sound and they sound like ass.
Many TVs are now equipped with dialog enhancement modes to bring the dialog out more prominently