There was a video essay going viral about this some time ago.
Music loud as fuck, voices soft as fuck, turn volume down and put on subtitles
Yep the sound mixing is dogshit in 99% of movies and tv shows. Also where i come from everything was always subtitled anyway so im used to it
There’s a couple reasons why I use subtitles all time. Firstly I’m getting older and can’t hear as well with background noise. If my wife is banging around in the kitchen I can’t hear dialog from the TV. With subtitles on I don’t have to mess with the volume.
Another issue is media producers (TV and film) have this idea they need to blast you out of your chair with sound effects and music. So if you turn up the volume enough to hear the dialog clearly, you’re going to get blasted by everything else. Trying to manage that with the volume control is damn near impossible. Interestingly I’ve noticed “dialog boost” appear on occasion in sound track options from my streaming provider. I use it when the option is there. That kind of indicates a global problem.
An issue related to sound leveling is actors used to come out of theater where they learned to annunciate loudly and clearly. It seems actors don’t get proper stage training anymore and now it’s okay to mumble and fail to annunciate. A decent director should never allow that.
Interesting to hear people have the opposite experience as me. I have a home theater and love dynamic audio (loud when supposed to be loud, quiet when supposed to be quiet) but have noticed more and more that movies seem to be mixed for iPads and sound dead. Disney/Pixar is a great example of home theater enthusiasts finding their movies just aren’t acoustically exciting anymore.
The only time I hate dynamic audio is when I’m trying to fall asleep
Televisions with poor audio quality.
I have a 5.1 surround sound and even I notice that audio mixes are terrible. It’s not just poor quality speakers causing this.
This. It’s also mixing that’s intended to be “immersive”; explosions are meant to make you shit your pants while conversations are meant to be at the same level as someone in the room with you.
Not ideal for apartment dwellers with no insulation in their walls or floors, like myself.
I find that I tend to miss words because of pronunciation, accent, or the character just basically not even verbalizing parts of some words.
When I turn on subtitles, I never miss a word.
The audio is just really bad for movies and series that are in the original language. If it’s dubbed the voice becomes much clearer. Or TV speakers might just be shitty, because with headphones everything is clear again …
TV speakers generally suck. With the boom of flat screens they are almost exclusively rear firing.
They basically expect everyone to buy replacement speakers
I watch while my baby naps. Subtitles on, volume low because I swear to god if I wake him up…
I always use them, otherwise I have to hold the remote the whole time and keep changing the volume. Watching Silo right now and there’s so many whispering scenes I’d never be able to make out.
And a few minutes after dead silent dialog, movies start blasting explosions and gunshots loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.
I’m just deaf and happy y’all’re seeing the light. My father was annoyed with mom’s captions. My wife used them before we met
I’m also hearing impaired and am just really glad that captions are becoming so popular.
It used to be that YouTube was rarely accessible to me. There would be a tiny amount of content that had subtitles (sometimes baked in, like epic rap battles of history does), but the vast majority of videos just weren’t fun for me because I’d miss too much. These days a good chunk of popular YouTubers have curated captions and another good chunk are clear enough speakers that the automatic captions work.
I’ve actually been watching more YouTube in recent times than ever before specifically because I’ve been discovering all this content I previously wrote off. There was recently a post somewhere that introduced me to Technology Connections. And from there, I figured I’d check out some other names I had heard about that might be interesting, Linus’s tech tips and ElectroBOOM, and both had captions, too.
My wife and I actually just finished the newest technology connections video. I watched it enough that she got interested in what her dork wife was enjoying. But yeah I really love the rise of captioned YouTube. TC is extra great because he’s been captioning his videos explicitly to be accessible for the deaf/hoh community because he cares about accessibility and I really just want more people to seriously consider that.
I have a whole ass rant about how people think of hearing aid users as all old folks and that hinders my ability to get flashy ones both for style and signaling purposes. But it also comes into play in contexts like this where content aimed at 20-30 somethings will historically just not bother accommodating us as much as stuff aimed at older people.
Alec is a total bro. I have no particular need for subtitles myself, but recommend his channel to people learning English because I know we can totally trust the subtitles, they’re not autogenerated.
He really is. Though I do warn people that if they watch him they will develop a firm understanding and appreciation of the refrigeration cycle
And strong opinions on car signal lights
I think the majority of the time its the mix being designed for a cinema setup. It’s annoying, but understandable.
Sometimes. Except for TV shows.
Also what happened to the “this video has been modified to fit you Tv screen” green warnings. They should do the same with sound mix imho. A TV screens speakers are much different than a theatre, or even home theatre.
Film producers are intentionally mixing for theaters and refusing to mix for home devices.
Are theaters still relevant today? I honestly don’t know. Have not been in one for many years, everything is just way too expensive.
Mumble mumble whisper EXPLOSION!
Because the mixing is usually ass on these shows
For me, at least, it’s the fucking bad audio. So goddamn often the sound makes someone difficult to understand so I watch most things with subtitles.
I don’t have to do that with games. Why? Because I get separate volume sliders for music, sound effects, and speech. Trouble understanding just means I need to adjust those to make the speech louder over music and fx.
Why in the hells tv and movie audio tracks don’t have this separation I don’t understand at all.
Let’s keep in mind that TV subtitles were true garbage back then. I have ADHD and often miss dialogue. I remember resigning myself to not using them as there was a huge time delay and the white text on black boxes covered 10% of our 480p screens.
I believe it’s also psychological, it’s easier to concentrate when there’s written word matching the action. Our attention is diminished these days.
A striking example of how this trend is irreversible is japanese tv. You’ll see words everywhere. It’s used for emphasis but also the shows end up boring without them.
