What might be even more insane, or an indication of industry manipulation to own a market sector is my Spectrum cable TV plays the same movies I have on BD and the sound is balanced between dialog and explosions. This happens on all cable channels. I don't have HBOmax, just basic "rerun" channels, PBS and the three networks channels and they all control the dynamics so I don't have to reach for the remote to turn the volume down. Why doesn't someone explain why individual cable tv stations are able to do this on the fly broadcasting these movies but the BD folks just don't want to or can't?
Broadcasters, content providers are not allowed to have bass below 50 hz and some other limitations.... They have a license to kill...
Broadcasters use compression because they have to service an entire public's television sets. Yes, down to your 12-inch Philco's and Emersons even your grandpa doesn't have in his fly fishing workshop in his garage anymore.
On the other hand, I often can't stand watching a lot of old movies where everyone's standing around declaiming their lines in an affected mid-Atlantic accent, and prefer the more realistic acting style that started to appear 50 or so years ago. If that means having to turn on the subtitles, so be it.
What you're describing could never apply to most of Film Noir. Some of the acting is superb. The fact that some of us are noticing the music more demonstrates that what it is supposed to do, isn't working. Quite often what an actor says is key to understanding the plot. If they mumble behind loud music, then you can miss it.
A lot of the streaming services now have a "closed caption on replay" setting. Ruko has a back 20 second button that rewinds 20 seconds, and if you have this setting turned on, the captions show during the replayed portion. It's nice if you missed hearing something and want to go back and hear (and read) what was said. Unfortunately, Netflix doesn't have this option, but Hulu, HBO Max and Prime have it.
The day I have to read subtitles in my own language because the million dollar cinematic audio technology can't handle dialog well enough to hear will be the day I stop buying movies. I'll wait till the movie is broadcast on cable tv.
But it's a style of acting. Someone (I can't remember who) described it as "acting acting". You would never expect people in real life to talk or behave like this and you always know that you're watching actors. This goes back to the beginning of drama when actors were trained to do certain things to communicate emotions so the audience could easily understand what's happening.
That's a point of view, but not one I share and you're generalising. Brando is a lot to blame for some of the nonsense we've had to endure in films for the last fifty years, I'm generalising too. Bottom line is that with most films of the forties and some in the fifties, it's easier to hear the dialogue than that of many contemporary films. That's a known fact.
The final mix is where Satan has his day to be sure. Directors need to learn to run a rough mix of the movie on a more or less standard home system for their friends, and when a friend says "What? Can you run that back?," take note and loop or re-mix as needed.
I haven't watched a lot of newer movies in years. However, this thread jumped out at me because I saw the Elvis movie four times at the cinema and once I purchased it digital, I immediately went to closed caption for certain parts of the movie. Also, I recently streamed Black Phone and had to rewind a couple times and turn on closed caption, even though I tried just listening again at first
If you are using Microsoft Edge as your web browser, there is an option called "immersive reader" that you can activate by pressing the F9 function key. It will hide a lot of the ads and extra graphics and present just the main article and the relevant embedded photos. It's not perfect, but it really makes reading articles less of a chore on many web sites.
So glad to discover I'm not alone in experiencing difficulty in understanding dialogue in films and some TV shows. It get's really frustrating when the actor is almost whispering a line. It is soften in scene that's taking place in near darkness- another issue I find frustratingly annoying. We have 4K HD and directors want to. have movies that are set in a deep gloom that can hardly be seen.
No one likes The Sharp Of Darkness even in 4K HD...and yes I'm being funny making it sound like a movie title. Kind of a waste of high rez and wide color gamut to watch a movie in muted tones and dim lighting like The VVitch. And the dialog is so quiet and far away that it feels one is listening in a vacuum tube with increased air pressure.
I always thought it was my hearing combined with my less than optimal room treatment in my theater room. I still think those are both factors but I have definitely noticed older films usually being much easier to understand. With newer ones, I'm always fiddling with the EQ settings on my amp and I almost never feel the need to touch them with older films. One exception was Alien. I figured I would choose the theatrical 4.1 soundtrack since I had chosen to watch the theatrical cut. But my wife and I both felt the dialog was really hard to understand much of the time.
That's a late 70's film. The original soundtrack might have been stereo or 3.1 ....??? My first surround sound receiver that I got back in the late 80's was the Pioneer AV-5000. Pro-Logic wasn't out yet. My channels were L & R and left and right surround channels but the surround channels had the same thing in both. You could call it 4.1 Dolby Surround but really it was 3.1 surround. When you adjusted the surround channels, it applied the same level to both. Movies from before the 1990's were often just stereo and some might have had a bass channel for cinemas that had a bass speaker. Well, some of the movies were Mono. It must be strange work to apply 5.1 to many older films as has been done.
Because I have hearing issues including very loud tinnitus, hyperacusis, and recruitment, I pretty much always have to use subtitles, especially with most television and film from the last 20 or 30 years. My wife and I like to watch the DVDs we have of some of our favorite shows from the 70's and 80's like Columbo, Rockford Files, Streets of San Francisco, Kojak, Star Trek TNG and DS9. With those shows, every now and then I notice I hadn't turned on the subtitles because I am following most of what is being spoken. I go ahead and turn them on anyway because there will be things said I will miss. But this almost never happens with newer TV and movies. With them, I immediately notice the subtitles are necessary. This is yet another of many things I notice about how many things are produced today. Cheap. It's epidemic.
Nothing much to add to this discussion, other than a here-here! Sound on modern movies is horrendous. I have just moved to a much smaller apartment, and trying to get the sound right - which means making sure the neighbors aren't hating me - has proven very difficult. You either have the dialog loud and clear, along with all kinds of extraneous LOUD traffic, explosions, jump scares, or you tame the thing and can't hear half of what is said. I have "average" hearing for someone my age. I don't have tinnitus or any other ailment when it comes to hearing. I know my hearing isn't what it used to be, but damn there is obviously a decision being made that is causing issues. I imagine if you live in an isolated location, it'd all be fine because you'd just crank it up. Sadly, that's no longer me. Currently I've switched everything to Stereo, which helps somewhat.
