This "creeping" of music into the soundtracks of movies has poisoned many other areas of entertainment. I practically lose my mind at any MLB baseball game; with a song clip for every batter on the home team, incessant filler music. Just shut the F*** up.
I recently purchased a new television that has speakers firing out from directly behind the screen. Helps us hear things much better. We are done with the home theater stuff. Too much is not always a good thing. With the new television dialogue is clear again. Even Tom Hardy.
I find that the new episodes of Doctor Who have the worst sound mixes of all. The music totally overwhelms the dialog (although, that may be a god thing).
Obviously everyone's situation is different but if I can help it I'll always go for no subtitles even if I'm struggling to hear dialogue. Films are meant to be watched not read. Subtitles are always a very last resort
The other problem with dialog is you can't just turn it up, because one minute people are whispering and mumbling, and the next you have a jet engine landing at full volume or the music is WAY TOO LOUD. I've totally given up on contemporary music documentaries.
I'm also a fan of captions. OK, maybe "fan" is not the right word but I prefer to have the captions turned on. For me it started with Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings trilogy. Between the accents and the weird names of characters/creatures/places it made for a more pleasant viewing experience.
Interesting consensus here. Nobody defending current films. Long article. Easy to condense to a single sentence. Everybody involved - producers directors actors sound techs - are incompetent. It would be interesting to see how John Ford would have reacted to a mumbling actor. Interestingly, a supposed mumbler from a prior generation, Marlon brando, was intelligible in The Godfather with cotton in his mouth.
I never have trouble at home but at the theater esp when the volume is thru the roof I cannot make out what people are saying. I remember the movie Dunkirk at a Dolby theater I could not understand a word the people said cause it was so loud.
Granted, this is a cartoon, but my daughter was watching "Sing!" on the blu-ray last night and it was either *whisper whisper* when someone was talking or LOUD NOISES!!!!! when someone sang a song. Spent 90 minutes adjusting the volume. Really annoying.
I just do what I've done for a long time: jack that center channel up in the settings over the other channels. Doesn't completely solve the issue but it does raise the dialogue in a lot of cases.
My hearing is shot due to a number of factors, but even if yours isn't the below may be useful anyway. We got a new, bigger TV a few months ago. First TV I ever had without an analog audio output. I had simple powered loudspeakers on the old set. I lived with the TV's built in speakers for a while, always with subtitles on and often turned up to 100%. Finally caved and got one of these AccuVoice AV157 TV Speaker with Twelve Levels of Voice Boost and it does exactly what it says. I'm only using level 2 or 3 of the 12 levels of enhancement available and it was like taking 10 years off of my hearing. Plus the algorithms really do bring down the levels of background music without affecting the dialogue. A little weak in the lower bass, but there's a subwoofer out I can hook up someday when I get around to it. (There's a model with built in sub, too, but wouldn't fit where we wanted it. ) If any creator wants to complain about me rejiggering their carefully planned sound design they can pound sand.
Astounding that one has to buy a specialized external amp or use subtitles to understand modern movies and TV shows. Welcome to the 21st century.
The old “joke” is that most UK film actors are discovered in the theatre, while most American ones are found in the gym.
Consider: Films today are not made with US audiences in mind. The big money is overseas, esp. Asia. Captions rule!
I was hoping that article was going to explain the three ways on how we the consumer can fix the low volume in dialog only to find we're to leave it up to the industry. That's a long read for no solution.
I was thinking of doing just the same with my small Boston Acoustic satellite speakers, turning them to the wall (opposite direction) and then cranking the volume.
Found it interesting in the article, where the sound editor guy talks about having to punch-up a syllable or even a vowel in post, for clarity...and in the next sentence he has to complain that he can't put a boom mic right in front of an actor, because the cinematographer might get a shadow on the actor's face from it. Soooooo....it's okay if a sound editor has to goose the volume on a word, but...it's too much trouble to ask somebody to digitally fix a shadow on a face in post-op...? Well lah-di-dah...
Happy to see I am also not alone on this. I think it has a lot to do with modern mixing. To me everything sounds much cleaner and crispier in 2.0 compared to 5.1. Seems 5.1 is much harder to get right.
I find in American films, many of the female actors diction sounds more like Disney cartoon characters, whilst the male ones seem to grunt a lot.
Well, in surround you have a choice as to whether you immerse the dialogue in a sea of atmospheric reality...or, if you want the atmospheric reality to compliment the dialogue coming out of that center speaker. Seems when the director is too fascinated with the former, you lose the ergonomics of the latter. 2.0 is really just a microcosm of the same issue, only in "2.0" the dialogue is still centered for the most part, if you want it to reach the audience properly.
As I touched on before. I'm pretty sure that in some movies, in the editing stage, that where there's a scene which visually doesn't seem as dramatic as the director would like it to be, they resort to the usual practice of just ramping up the music, so some of the dialogue gets lost.
I always bring decent quality earplugs to movies and concerts. I use Etymotic Research ER20. If I need them I have them. I used to go to the Laemmle theaters NoHo Wednesday senior showings with a friend. He ran screaming out of the theater watching Snowpiercer. "It's so f*ing loud." I bought him a cheap set of foam earplugs but he always forgot them.
I don't have a problem with the standard sub-title settings and I didn't realize they are customizable. Still I found this an interesting article: Streaming Subtitles Should Not Be This Tricky to Read
