I hate it when the noise is extremely loud and the dialogue is so quiet that I constantly have to use the volume control and my wife keeps yelling at me to turn it down. It started a few years ago with First Man, the Neil Armstrong movie - on bluray. But I have that problem with bluray and streaming. I also use subtitles all the time because English is not my first language, so that helps. With some movies I'm impressed how good my understanding of English is, and then there are movies where I don't understand half of what they're saying. It's the mumbling and also some accents I guess.
My tv has an Amplify Sound option that seems to raise voice treble tremendously, and I've been using that option during streaming. Regular OTA dialogue set on the Regular Sound option is adequate.
My Sony android TV has all sorts of sound controls including "voice zoom," (emphasise voice or ambiant audio) I keep that on maximum which helps a bit with some films but not all.
Newer documentaries are frustrating. The current trend is using soft voiced narrators. I get half of it if I’m lucky. Then the commercials hit. Boom! Everyone is loud and chrystal clear. I understand every word.
Was watching the new Dune yesterday and it was a whisper-fest. When the volume was at a level where I could hear the dialog, the windows and doors were rattling inside the house once the explosions came. I finally activated the closed captions when Lady Jessica was talking to Paul (in a whisper, of course). Paul had mentioned he knew she was pregnant and she attenuated her whisper level by something like 50%, saying something like “how could you know that?” The other odd part is why people were whispering when there was no reason to. They were both in a thopter and you’d think they’d be able to converse at a normal volume level. Or other times where they were outside… Decent movie, though…
Yes, the recent Dune was a horrible, horrible home video/TV mix. (Good movie, beautiful image, lousy mix in stereo or surround.) My guess is that they're using the theatrical mix (85dB reference level) for streaming, when most experts will tell you it's better to limit the dynamic range by about 6dB and to a 79dB reference level instead. Anybody who wants to learn more about dynamic range and mastering levels can look at the first few pinned discussions on the Gearspace Post-Production Sound forum: Post Production Forum - Gearspace.com Lots and lots of information there, and trust me, industry professionals are frustrated and upset about it as well. And don't get them started on directors like Christopher Nolan who deliberately force the technicians to mix the dialogue channel too low, so you're always going "what did they say? What? Huh?" through a lot of the film.
I read the article, but I think a lot of dialogue in modern films is actually dubbed in after filming. So I'm not sure any of the reasons posited are particularly valid.
I too struggle with dialog in many modern productions. I have dialed my system and room in to the greatest extent possible while maintaining domestic tranquility, but some productions, fugedaboutit. I did notice something very interesting recently. I am watching the new season of The Orville and also Westworld. I love Westworld, but like Dune, it is one of those productions with a lot of whispering. Add to that the whisperer is often female, soft-spoken, and she often has an English accent and I am totally screwed in terms of dialog comprehension. Now let's look at The Orville. For my money, they have the best overall sound design of any current production. Dialog is always loud and clear, the score sounds spectacular, foley is not over bearing, great low end. And, there does not seem to be much if any whispering. Dialog, when it is competing with the occasional space battles is still easily discerned. I would pay real money if Seth would lend out his sound crew to the Westworld people (or Picard, or Obi-Wan, or....). Vidiot, if you happen to know any of the folks doing sound for Orville please pay them my highest compliments.
I found getting a sound-bar really helped in this regard. There are still times when dialogue is hard to hear, but having that little bar has made it much easier and clearer.
Producer Seth MacFarlane is pretty crazed on a lot of technical issues, and dialogue intelligibility is high on that list. Coming from cartoons, he's keenly aware that the dialogue "sells" the story and the character and the emotion in the show. If the audience doesn't understand that, you're dead. I rarely have problems with broadcast shows, but some movies (even streaming movies like Justice League and Dune) were way, way, way too dynamic: as I always say, the quiet dialogue was way down here, and the loud explosions and music peaks were way up HERE. ALL films & TV shows go through what's called a final mix (technically, a final "re-recording mix" on a mixing stage), and that's where the bad decisions are made. The bad decisions aren't made on set or during the edit, it happens mainly because the director -- who supervises everything -- has heard every line of every scene a hundred times, and he feels like you can get away with turning it down. The problem is, for somebody who's never heard the film before, they're going to struggle to hear that dialogue. I think this is essentially Christopher Nolan's problem. Directors need to take the advice of their professional sound mixers, most of whom have decades more experience than they do at getting the most out balancing the levels between dialogue, music, and sound effects.
Big thumbs up on both points. I’ve always appreciated the intelligibility of the dialog on The Orville (as well as having a brightly lit sci-fi show for a change). For movies like Dune or Interstellar, the audio issues really start to detract from the viewing experience. I want to be drawn into a movie, not be pulled out of it while I grab the remote and backup 10 seconds to figure out what was said.
Dialog has been a frequent problem since the 80's. Back in the 80's and 90's the dialog was frequently a problem for me on LD's. Back then most processors could adjust channels from your remote without having to go to a menu. I always had my center channel set 2 db above the others, and higher sometimes. It's never that easy since HDMI came around. DTS LD's were the absolute worst. They purposely set the bass cannel +10 db to impress "bassheads".... I had many LD's that had a matrixed surround sound test, not at the beginning, but at the end! Thanks for posting that video! I enjoyed it and the dialog was crisp except in the samples of crushed dialog.
I think I've found the worst mixed Blu-ray I've ever come across. The Accountant (starring Ben Affleck) has the dialog so low that I have to crank the sound up almost all the way up to hear all of the dialog. Since that makes the gun shots deafening I've turned the volume back to normal and turned on the subtitles.
There's an audio-profile setting that's been on TVs and cable boxes for yearscustomized for night-tim watching so that you can have dialogue AND explosions in the same film without waking up the kids. (IIRC, Comcast Motorola boxes used to call it "Compression": removing all dynamics so that everything is around the same level.)
Roku has a night mode on some of their boxes as well; the only catch is the release on the audio is a little slow so the next 15 seconds or so of dialogue might also be lowered while the volume is coming back up.
We now watch many of the TV series on Amazon and Netflix with subtitles on. Saves constantly fiddling with the volume to cope with so many mumblers. I’d rather not, as it spoils punchlines/comedy scenes, and I find myself reading the subs rather than watching what’s going on.
Tenet was the absolute worst example of this. I literally could not understand a majority of the dialogue...And in a film that's already difficult to understand. Plus there was no subtitle option, since I was in a theatre. At some point in the middle of the film, I just gave up.
I mentioned this before. In a lot of my film noir movies the actors had stage training. So could project their voices when required. Never a problem understanding what they say. Any music was called "incidental music" as that was what it was, it was reduced in volume when the actors spoke. Now it's not even "background music," it's often, "foreground music" and ramped up to add "extra drama" and some of the actors mumble.
It's always fun to crank up the volume to hear barely audible dialog and then be deafened by sudden blaring music and sound effects.
Sometimes it's fun to mute the sound and put on the subtitles. Without "dramatic" over-loud music, some of the action can look a bit lame.
damn!. i'm so glad there's this thread. I'm not the only one. this has perturbed me for years, and now, I have confirmation. It's confounding to me that the industry let's them get away with that....poor dialogue. I mean, aren't there any professionals working on these films/tv? ****** insane.
