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Volume [Mr Lovenstein] (files.mastodon.social)
submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 8 points 21 hours ago

Exactly why I use subtitles.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

This could be because your TV sucks, or at least the audio, a lot of companies push for big Bass like would be in an explosion because it sells TVs which would be fine if they didn't skimp on the highs and mids making speech suck.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 23 hours ago

Lol, no, it's not because your TV sucks, but because almost none of us are watching on a 5.1 or higher channel system and the audio mix was never changed from their cinema release

Anything I watch in my TV that sounds awful sounds just fine out of my 5.1 PC because I suddenly have access to more channels where the audio is actually out (dialogue looooves to get mixed to center only for some reason)

[-] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

It's not like the audio mix isn't shit in theatres anyways.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago

I'm pretty sure a lot of it is simply because that sort of mixing style is pretty fashionable at the moment. If you mix movies like they were mixed in the 90s and 2000's (i.e. very clear and distinct dialog) then they don't 'sound' modern.

Even in cinemas the mix is awful and almost inaudible half the time. Extreme example but I saw Tenet at the cinema and had to guess at half of the dialog because Christopher Nolan is especially and increasingly fond of this.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

This may be for some cases. But I've also had the exact same experience in the theater except I can't change the volume. All the fun of not understanding mixed with the thrill of losing your hearing.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago

Commercial: DO YOU OR A LOVED ONE HAVE MESOTHELIOMA????!!!!

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

#High Dynamic Range™

[-] [email protected] 50 points 1 day ago

I feel like the real issue, is that we only get one volume bar. If it was normal to define both the minimal and maximal volume setting and have the players stretch the given dynamic range into that then it would all be good.

[-] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago

I have dabbled in video editing and it is SO easy to manipulate and level the audio track so that dialogue is louder than music and sound effects. This has led me to believe that movies where this is a major problem like Tenet are absolutely mixed this way on purpose, and the only reasonable conclusion to draw from that is that Christopher Nolan is insane.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

Mostly, it's a downmixing issue.

The movie is mixed to have Music, Speech, SFX spread out through 5.1 or 7.1 The speech and primary important sounds come through center. General music is a mix of L,R and Surround. When you feed that audio track to a dumb tv, it does a horrible job at turning it into L and R sound only.

If you feed it through a good 5.1 or 7.1 receiver or soundbar, you get options for Speech and surround and you can mess with levels individually. But the speech is front and loud.

If I just plug my roku into my tv, the center channel is almost at, all I get is the light intermixing of center in L and R so speech is horrible. you jack up the volume to hear the speech, then all the other sound is way too loud

Likewise, in most cases just taking an AAC and convert it to mp3 without adjusting the levels, it ends up sounding like trash.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

How can we set volume of music, SFX and voice separately, in games but not in movies?

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago

In games these categories of audio are calculated and mixed locally in real time, for movies they are mixed down to a single track and compressed ahead of time.

These days having three audio tracks would not be a significant problem, compared to the high resolution video track. But I guess the industry never changed.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

You could on laserdisk, but dvd got more popular

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[-] [email protected] 144 points 2 days ago

This is a real pet annoyance of mine, and I have seeing apologist posts on the internet about it.

If the actors cant enunciate properly except when they're shouting, that's not adding realism, they're doing bad acting.

If the sound engineers can't get a good audio balance for anything except the loudest moment in a film, that's not a limitation of technology/sound physics, they're bad at mixing.

If the director can't keep all of this in check and make a film that people can actually enjoy, that's not artistic choice, they've made a bad film.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 2 days ago

For the sound engineers, your not wrong, but they don't have the power you think they do. Asking for another take is an annoyance but accepted by the camera team and visuals, but audio is often overlooked, and you can't just keep mixing a bad take. But, directors are on a time crunch and so a sound guy saying "actually I know that take was perfect but we can't hear anything" is usually ignored.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

This is a fair point. If people demanded their money back when a film has bad audio, I wonder if that might incentivise the industry to care more about this.

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[-] [email protected] 27 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Alot of it is... pretentiousness?

Like, there's a lot of high-brow thinking in the movie industry where stuff is mixed for movie theaters. You know, theaters that have good surround speaker setups, but also turn the volume way too loud. It's "as its meant to be experienced" if you ask the Hollywood producers. I think Netflix and more small-screen oriented producers are better about this, where even surround mixes are much more reasonable.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've made similar experiences in movie theatres. And streaming services continuously disappoint on that front too.

[-] [email protected] 130 points 2 days ago

Have no shame in using subtitle, because american movie is either horribly sound balanced or spoken in unintelligible accent.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

This is perfect lol. Now we need one for absurdly loud motorcycles ruining an evening’s cool.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

Sometimes there's also a random high pitched buzz in the background that's louder than anything else for one whole scene. How heard would it be to just remove that frequency range or maybe see that it is louder than every other scene?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Solve guy went to music school instead of law to add that in there. He's keeping it in there if it's the last thing he does

[-] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Adjust the audio stream settings. It's probably on 5.1 surround sound if you have this issue, and that means terrible audio on stereo speakers.

Sure, modern stereo mixes are still awful, but in a lot of cases, switching to an audio stream appropriate for your setup fixed a lot of ambiguity.

[-] [email protected] 68 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes. And stop fucking mumbling. And use a proper lighting for fuck sake, I don't care if it is middle of the night in a forest, I want to be able to see what's going on.

[-] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago

And please stabilise the camera. I'm not in this car chase, I'm trying to watch it without getting a migraine.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago

Shakey cam to cover up a limited budget for a car chase, instead of getting creative ... so if the rapid cuts and wobble wasn't there you'd see that they only had one street and couldn't exceed 30mph

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[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Just run the audio through a dynamic range compressor. Then everything will be just as loud as the commercials.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago

Watching a Christopher Nolan movie I see.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago

Or films from Spain. They whisper in a mumbled accent, then all of a sudden they start SCREAMING at each other.

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[-] [email protected] 37 points 2 days ago

Exactly why I use subtitles. Seem to recall Interstellar was horrible like this.

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[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

It is why I enable "Loudness Equalization" on every audio device in Windows.

It makes soft sounds louder and loud sounds softer.

Can't stand it otherwise either.

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[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

Been there the hard way. I got Tubular Bells II, and listened to it via headphones (I had no speakers).

There is one passage where the music ends, and a child speaks. It was hard to understand, so I turned the volume to 11, and heard the end of the sentence like "and nothing was ever heard of him again but the sound of tu-bu-lar bells." The next sound was the BANG of the tubular bells, making my eardrums meet somewhere in the middle. somewhere...

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

As someone who played EVE a lot back in the day, all I can hear is "get that interdictor!"

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

The solution is obviously to learn german. Then you can watch with our excellent and easily intelligible dubs.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

But you better enjoy our voice actors, we have about 3!

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this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
1194 points (99.1% liked)

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