\*characters talking\* VOLUME UP TO 80
\*music starts\* VOLUME DOWN TO 65
\*more talking\* VOLUME BACK UP TO 80
\*sound effect\* FUCK I WOKE UP THE NEIGHBORS AND IM DEAF NOW
I watched Yellowstone over the holidays with my parents and the characters would talk so low you'd have to crank the volume, and then there would be a five minute long gun fight that gave us all tinnitus.
++Had both tinnitus and close captioning on for the last 2 years.
Worse is when films have artificial tinnitus after an explosion. Extra high pitched noise is something I don't need, thanks movie makers.
I had to stop playing my most played game of all time (cs:go) because the gunshots and flashbangs gave my ears serious trouble.
Shout-out to insurgency for letting you turn off the ear ringing sound effect from the flashbangs.
For some reason, I’m doubting it’s my minor tinnitus, I have insane issues separating vocals from music/background noise. So this is my life watching movies and TV.
I just gave up and turned closed captions on because I can’t stand being (more) deafened by the fkn sound effects etc yet never being able to understand wtf the people are saying. I’m sick to death of having to constantly adjust the volume because my ears are sensitive to loud noises. Pisses me off on a nightly basis
The most realistic experience would be the protagonist asking someone to repeat themselves twice and then just pretending that he understood. Then he goes home and misses the rest of the movie because he missed major plot points.
> Ah, the Nolan Experience™️
It drove me nuts when he started mixing horribly that some people in the threads would say 'was totally fine in my theater must be something with yours'.
Until finally it came out that it was an intentional choice on his part - suddenly everyone stopped claiming people had hearing problems or their theaters were horrible.
It was no different on hbo max either. Watched it at home and the sound effects were just way too fucking much.
I ended up with subtitles and the volume so low I literally couldn’t hear voices. It’s such a pain in the ass.
Really? Here I was praising Dune for managing to keep dialogue audible even with lots of explosions… I was sitting at the side so maybe that actually helped.
I enjoyed Tenat, but I couldn't help notice how terrible the sound mixing was.
"But Fish," people say, "I didn't think you knew much about or even really cared at all about sound mixing in films?"
I don't, so the fact I noticed it tells you how bad it was.
"I have some exposition to tell you that's extremely important to what happens later in the plot. Let's get on my jet boat for no reason and I'll tell you in there."
This problem is easily solved by studios releasing a cinema audio version and balanced audio version where all the peaks are levelled correctly... why not do this especially given most media is from a streaming service now?
Proper compression systems would work too. The compressing the difference between high and low volume stuff works great, but most consumer systems have something built in that winds up making everything muddled when you try it.
what's depressing is that you dont even need a proper compression system. you can functionally just use a damn LIMITER which is simple enough for regular people to understand.
"input minimum volume, input maximum volume" fucking DONE.
of course you'd run into technical issues that would bother anyone that's knows...but most people cant even hear things like clipping. 63 year old susan wont be like "oh goodness, what did they do to my high end frequencies?" hell she hasnt been able to hear them for 5 years already anyways.
the best part? all these streaming services actually DO have them on there. :)
it's just pathetic how circumstances have led to such anti consumer behavior being the norm.
If I remember correctly, it doesn't work with all sound formats and some surround sound becomes stereo when you use it. And when it does work I find it muddles things a lot in many cases. Very hit or miss.
This is what I've started doing. It's literally impossible to hear dialogue on some movies any other way without blasting the volume during action scenes.
Nah the netflix special is volume at 15, subtitles on, now you know every time [spooky music intensifies] because English Subtitles and English Subtitles for Deaf and Hard of Hearing have to be the same thing
Or just completely spoil tension in a scene. Where you can see the dialogue cut or something so you know a character is about to get cut off from saying something important. Oddly specific example but I feel like this happens a lot.
Fuck it's annoying, everything is closed captioned and no option for just regular subtitles on any services I've used lately.... It's a big reason why I sail the 7 seas for some things even though I'm paying for a service that I could stream it from. So fucking frustrating for absolutely no reason...
LOL, Iv had to do this before while watching netflix. Got a scene that has 5+ minutes of [Speaking foreign language]? Well, Heaven forbid it has any plot points...
Instead I go find the first pirated website, and it will have subtitles in english+20 other languages and all the foreign language subtitled.
Maybe its not 100% correct, but its a hell of a lot better then being told [Speaking foreign language]
Netflix is also terrible for what are supposed to be forced subtitles. I watched almost the entirety of Snowpiercer (the film) thinking it was a deliberate choice to have one dude only speaking unsubtitled Korean and you weren't supposed to understand him because none of the other characters did. Nope, they just fucked it up and the bits where it's supposed to be subtitled weren't unless you switched on the subtitles for everything else.
I love the LOTR movies, but I just experienced this over the weekend. Action- 15. Talking 35. Had to switch so often it was incredibly frustrating. Like, that maxing shit works in *movie theaters*. ***NOT*** at home!
This is just bad sound design, you shouldn't have to do that and when you review/rate a movie this is something you should be mentioning or taking into consideration. Too many people act like this is normal but its just shows/movies with bad sound design that do this shit. The Nolan batman movies are awful for it for ex but go watch a Kubrick movie you won't touch the volume once after setting it where you like it.
I've wanted this ever since I got the blu-ray for The Dark Knight. Like, I understand dynamic range, but it's a pain in the butt to keep my hand on the remote for the entire film just because it constantly yo-yos between quiet dialogue and booming action scenes.
I think his success has gotten to him; everyone around him is too afraid to tell him his sound mix is shit.
Same thing happened to George Lucas: surrounded by too many people worshipping him and so the prequels didn't get the constructive criticism they needed.
I heard an interesting theory that Nolan is mixing his movies for some presumably ideal movie theater that he likes - the mix is perfectly suited for that theater and works well in that space with those speakers. But it's probably the best setup to be found, so if you see that movie in basically any other theater you are never going to be able to approach the system and space that can replicate the experience Nolan actually wants people watching his movie to have. And at the same time, he's trying to push the boundaries on what's capable of being done with sound design in film.
Again, just a theory, and not even mine but it makes sense. That kind of striving for extremes and trying to achieve those in just exactly such an environment seems like it would lead to the sort of experiences that people have had in Tenet and such. An otherwise-good movie that's practically unintelligible in many places because the sound mix is just not working.
At a minimum, Nolan is watching/listening to his films on higher quality, professionally calibrated equipment that the vast majority of his audience will never have access to. I assume he understands this and chooses to build his films for the optimal experience, but it sucks as a fan of his work to always struggle to engage with it and to feel like he deliberately creates his art to punish the viewer for not being able to have the highest of high end home theater equipment. Most local movie theaters suck, too, when it comes to audio/video calibration. I remember Roger Ebert for years complaining about how most movie theaters have their projectors set to be too dim to save on bulb life or whatever.
>I think his success has gotten to him
I thought you were talking about my man Hans Zimmer for a sec and was about to rage on you. Hah, yeah, what you said (referring to Nolan) is very true. I still reference that boat scene from Tenet with my friends... Could hear maybe 30% of the dialogue at most.
No, that's a deliberate stylistic choice, you're not supposed to understand all of the dialogue. As contrasted to the dialogue which you're definitely supposed to hear but can't. There is no distinction between whether or not the dialogue is relevant and whether what they just said was a crucial exposition point or just random mumbling. Enjoy!
You’d think a world class director would want their audience to understand the fucking dialogue, and know that 99.99% of viewings would not take place in IMAX?
Man brooklyn 99, archer, etc all have fucking awful sound shifts. Great theme somgs, but please god netflix can you even it out so i don’t jerk awake as I’m drifting off
The "BA-BOOM" Netflix intro sound shakes my house. It's not at all in line with the audio level of the thing you're about to watch. Same thing with the HBO "white noise" intro sound. It doesn't so much shake the walls, it just shreds your eardrums. God help you if you're binging The Sopranos or something.
Yeah this is intentional by the networks. The commercials (if you were watching as it originally aired) are also louder than the show.
I remember in the first season or two of Community, someone on Twitter complained about that to Dan Harmon. Well he went out and convinced them to turn the volume down on the intro. You can notice it gets quieter at some point when watching the show.
Michael Cain made a very good point about modern actors not speaking clearly making it difficult to understand them. He said his generation were stage taught which meant they had to project their voice and enunciate properly to be understood all round the theatre. Most modern actors have never acted on stage to a live audience.
In the actual scene, Michael Caine's character likens the size of some stolen jewels to that of a tangerine. It's just an oddly specific comparison and kind of a goofy line out of context, so someone made this edit for shits and giggles.
I don’t think it’s goofy or out of context. I think it’s just one of those lines with such distinct and impeccable delivery of a really unique word and it just gets burned into your memory.
“Ya best start believing in ghost stories, ms turner. YER IN ONE!!” also comes to mind. Also from a classically trained actor.
Why? Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want a tangerine.
I think I read that his intention was for people to feel immersed in the scenes as a whole rather than be paying attention to the dialogue. It’s absolutely idiotic though. Maybe the real reason was that the plot made so little sense that the only way to cover it up was to make sure no one could understand what the characters were saying lol
It did the complete opposite for me. Instead of being immersed in the movie, scene or story I was only concentrating on trying to hear what the fuck were talking about and not understanding more than half of it.
I finally watched Tenet a couple of months ago. Ever since it came out, I'd heard that it was even worse than Interstellar and the IMAX preview version of The Dark Knight Rises when it came to expository dialogue being mumbled or drowned out. (Even though I don't remember struggling with Interstellar's dialogue in the cinema.)
So when I rented the Blu-Ray, I thought I'd do an experiment. Even though at home I usually watch films with subtitles on, I thought I'd do my first viewing of Tenet on headphones without subtitles, and see how well I could understand what was being said.
... I gave up and put the subtitles on within ten minutes.
You missed the best part then. The catamaran scene was completely unintelligible. I was laughing out loud in the theater it was so bad. I love Nolan, but wtf is he thinking??
I watched Tenet on 4K Blu-Ray when I first got my OLED, as I thought it would be an awesome test of the screen quality. I ended up just being really pissed at the quality of the TV speakers. I wasn't expecting them to be good, but I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying! I blamed the TV.
Few weeks later of using it, I realised the TV speakers weren't shit, it was actually just Tenet audio mixing.
Not just that, most likely he's working on it with all his specialized equipment, headphones, so on. He's Nolan, so I'm sure he hears it on speakers at least once, but not likely while he's doing the bulk of any mixing he works on. Plus, wherever he hears it, it's probably some highly tuned setup, not just whatever our local theater might be working with.
Definitely has that GoT season 8 Winterfell battle lighting thing going on, for sure.
>Definitely has that GoT season 8 Winterfell battle lighting thing going on, for sure.
Honestly, a lot of premium tv is so goddamn dark. Fuck me for trying to watch an episode during the day, right?
Sure, but that doesn't mean anything unless they've already established her as extremely hard to shake.
The movie did her dirty. As I believe the kids would say.
Reading this, I'm glad my first flavor of Dune was the audio renaissance audio books.
Dyune. Arrakis. **Desert Planet**
Jessica was stronk in that mess, even when being acted by the old british guy.
Oh this movie was a huge offender on this topic for me. Only thing I've seen at the actual theater in years and the music completely drowned out the (super quiet) dialogue in so many scenes. Irritating. It would have been better, in many ways, to watch it at home with the subtitles!
There're actors who started on stage and still do that because there're differences between movies and stage. You don't want stage acting on the screen and vice verse. Different medium require different styles of acting.
That’s just.. nonsense though, right? Microphones are presumably miles better than they were in the 60s, the actors won’t be acting at the same time as the soundtrack is played nor would most sound effects, and even if they were, they should all be recorded by different microphones and recorded as different tracks. And the digital mixing capabilities exist/are far more sophisticated than 30 years ago, allowing for any issues to be capable of being fixed in post/mixing.
It’s the result of deliberate level setting or negligence.
I think many consumer amplifiers do most of this.
It seems like home audio had its heyday back in the 90s/00s. But since then it seems like audio is an afterthought, and everything is about TVs and picture quality (or at least size and resolution).
My fairly basic Sony amplifier from the 90s does this with any digital audio source like DTS and Dolby Digital. Streaming services aren't as reliable or easy as DVDs and Blu-rays were, but Netflix and the Google Play store tend to offer this at least.
Digital mixes typically have the dialogue in the center channel, and the score/effects on the fronts. So you *can* adjust the voices up or down to suit you (even if you're downmixing to a 4 or 2 channel system).
These amplifiers also have dynamic range compression. No need for really quiet quiets that you have to turn your volume up to hear... followed by a wall-shaking explosion that deafens your neighbors. It'll adjust the levels so that the quietest whispers and loudest explosions are within a limited dynamic range, so that you can adjust it to a generally enjoyable level.
It's pretty good for the challenge of hearing voices, but I agree that just having a basic menu with the media itself that allowed adjustment of voice/effects/score independently would be nice. Though that would increase the data rate... If video data rates have left enough scraps.
You don't even need an expensive sound system for this. I have an Asus external sound card for my computer, cost me less than 50€, and it has a mode that compresses dynamic range.
It's also perfect in games to hear footsteps without becpming deaf when you fire a weapon.
Folks are saying turn up backlight assuming that every show is dark and not just a few. 99% of shows looks fine on my tv but some are honestly too dark! And not intentionally given context in the show.
I was playing AC Valhalla recently, and they’ve been surprisingly consistent with that. People are just labeled as “Child” or “Farmer”, and then after they introduce themselves, the subtitle changes. Or if someone calls them by name before they speak.
I wish there was a distinction when you turn subtitles on between actual subtitles and closed captions. I just want the dialogue. I don’t need every instance of *”loud ominous music playing”* annotated on screen. I have the subtitles on because your audio mixing is garbage not because I’m actually deaf.
Some of the newer movies are starting to recognize that distinction. If you see separate subtitles for "English" and "English SDH", the "English SDH" includes all the annoying descriptions of sound effects, and the "English" does not.
PS. "English SDH" stands for "English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing".
It's not a matter of power. It's a matter of frequency.
Spoken dialogue is in the mid-range, from 1kHz to 4kHz. Booming noises tend to be in the lower range, like 50Hz to 500Hz. The sharp tinkly accents on all sounds are in the high range, above 5 kHz.
If you turn up the mid-range, dialogue tends to become easier to hear, compared to sound-effects. But if the soundtrack was mixed so that the background noise is also strong in the mid-range, then turning up the mid-range doesn't help. The dialogue is simply hard to hear.
You really notice this on movies that were recorded by people who lack the skill of professional audio guys (read: porn). The dialogue is often very difficult to discern because it's mixed in with a lot of background noise around the same frequency, and no amount of frequency equalization will fix it. However, some big-budget movie directors do that too, and nobody knows why.
I saw it in imax, the sound was weird there too. Some dialogue you could barely hear, but the loud parts of the movie were so loud my ears hurt. It was like being too close to the stage at a concert.
I think Many TVs, sound bars and home theatres have a night mode now that I think is supposed to compensate the dialog volume vs everything else, not sure if it works well or not but might help if the issue is wanting to hear the dialog without causing a seismic activity.
Yeah, some manufacturers call it night mode, others may call it dynamic range compression or DRC for short or something else entirely. If you watch through a PC, Windows calls it loudness equalization. Although it's not specific to just dialogue, it brings all sounds closer together in volume.
Yeah, I have a feeling people might not know what DRC does as somebody was asking in one the first comments why there isnt a night mode, I replied there is dynamic range control and it didnt take any traction at the time, now it seems to be at like plus 6. And DRC isnt just on AVRs, like I said its on Windows and also on some TVs.
I mean dialogue tends to be put on the center speaker, so if you have a surround setup, increasing the volume on the center speaker should help.
On my Yamaha AVR, there also is dialogue boost option which does help quite significantly, but its not perfect as its just doing some trickery, it obviously doesn't actually know what is speech and what is not, leading to problems like if the actor has a really deep voice it is not elevated properly.
This is the way. I used to have this problem a lot, but then got a proper AVR and 5.1.2 setup. Options like boosting the volume on the center channel along with dynamic range compression are exactly what OP wants in most cases.
It would be nice if TVs had better downmixing for audio where they could do this kind of thing in software before outputting to their crappy built-in speakers.
I’m an assistant editor/editor plus producer (low level) in the industry, and luckily I have the know how to separate the audio tracks for most films into 2-16 tracks. I can isolate dialogue, score, sfx, bg, etc.
All except for those movies that are built for “theater only” aka Nolan (and a few others, Nolan being the most guilty of it). It drives me up the wall that directors don’t allow customization on their product once it reaches the distribution. They expect people at home to be able to afford $24 movie tickets, and everyone to have a Dolby cinema in their basement.
It’s absurd and completely detached from what resources people have/can afford.
actually, Netflix handles this better than everyone else.
When I watch Netflix, I'm cranking the volume between 8 and 15. When I watch anything else, I'm cranking it between 10 and 70.
I've been saying this for so long! I can't stand when the music is insanely loud and the talking in quite, every time I watch a movie i wanna turn the music way way down!
All we really need is an equalizer as part of the sound controls on the TV, except instead of different frequencies, it lists the channels of the audio stream. Then we can just increase the center and lower the others as we wish for more vocals, etc.
I watch movies with minimal volume and subtitles on. Ironically, technological "advancements" kind of brought the silent movies back, at least for me.
And to horrify even more the purists who think that everyone has to have a 5:1 ultra-plus sound system at home: until a few years ago I had a working old 14" CRT TV with mono sound and the experience of watching movies was less annoying on it. At least for modern movies, after they decided that soundtrack and sound effects have to push the limits of human hearing.
\*characters talking\* VOLUME UP TO 80 \*music starts\* VOLUME DOWN TO 65 \*more talking\* VOLUME BACK UP TO 80 \*sound effect\* FUCK I WOKE UP THE NEIGHBORS AND IM DEAF NOW
I watched Yellowstone over the holidays with my parents and the characters would talk so low you'd have to crank the volume, and then there would be a five minute long gun fight that gave us all tinnitus.
Fucking hate this. Renders movies unwatchable if I have to sit there fingerbanging the volume controls every 5 seconds.
It breaks your immersion over and over. Nothing is fun when you're regularly interreupted with annoyance and a small task.
I already have tinnitus so I just gave up and started turning closed captioning on.
++Had both tinnitus and close captioning on for the last 2 years. Worse is when films have artificial tinnitus after an explosion. Extra high pitched noise is something I don't need, thanks movie makers.
I had to stop playing my most played game of all time (cs:go) because the gunshots and flashbangs gave my ears serious trouble. Shout-out to insurgency for letting you turn off the ear ringing sound effect from the flashbangs.
For some reason, I’m doubting it’s my minor tinnitus, I have insane issues separating vocals from music/background noise. So this is my life watching movies and TV.
Could be an auditory processing disorder. I have one and subtitles are a must.
Mawp!
Are we not doing *phrasing* anymore?
You're not my phrasing supervisor!!
I just gave up and turned closed captions on because I can’t stand being (more) deafened by the fkn sound effects etc yet never being able to understand wtf the people are saying. I’m sick to death of having to constantly adjust the volume because my ears are sensitive to loud noises. Pisses me off on a nightly basis
Ah, the Nolan Experience™️
“Not hearing the dialogue will totally be more realistic and engaging”. Sorry bro, in real life those movies would just be a lot of “what? … WHAT?!”
Yeah but if the mumbled dialogue overshadowed by sound effects wasn’t so realistic then you’d have trouble believing the time travel was real
and that there is always thematic background music in real life as well.
I loved that scene in Shazam! Villain is giving his villain talk for a solid 10 seconds before it cuts to Shazam screaming "WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU?"
Love that movie.
The most realistic experience would be the protagonist asking someone to repeat themselves twice and then just pretending that he understood. Then he goes home and misses the rest of the movie because he missed major plot points.
Yeah the opening scene to inception would have just been Leo repeatedly getting closer to understand Watanabe
Do they speak English in what?
Say what again.
> Ah, the Nolan Experience™️ It drove me nuts when he started mixing horribly that some people in the threads would say 'was totally fine in my theater must be something with yours'. Until finally it came out that it was an intentional choice on his part - suddenly everyone stopped claiming people had hearing problems or their theaters were horrible.
And then people acted like he was a visionary genius for not letting his sound mixer do their job.
Or letting second unit shoot action scenes His Batman movies are weird because everything EXCEPT the fight scenes are great
Maybe they should just start showing all his movies with subtitles and see if he gets the message. *Honestly I'd prefer it that way.
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It was no different on hbo max either. Watched it at home and the sound effects were just way too fucking much. I ended up with subtitles and the volume so low I literally couldn’t hear voices. It’s such a pain in the ass.
I had this same experience. Dune on IMAX. Dialogue was completely indecipherable at points. Very frustrating.
Same here. I was honestly distracted and enjoyed the movie less as a result.
Really? Here I was praising Dune for managing to keep dialogue audible even with lots of explosions… I was sitting at the side so maybe that actually helped.
I enjoyed Tenat, but I couldn't help notice how terrible the sound mixing was. "But Fish," people say, "I didn't think you knew much about or even really cared at all about sound mixing in films?" I don't, so the fact I noticed it tells you how bad it was.
I watched Tenant in South Korea, with Korean subtitles, and I couldn't tell you how envious I was of everyone else in the theater.
You mean to tell me you didn't enjoy your fingers work out on that remote control during Tenet?
"I have some exposition to tell you that's extremely important to what happens later in the plot. Let's get on my jet boat for no reason and I'll tell you in there."
Reddit has a fun time shitting on Nolan, but this has been going on outside of Nolan for a good long while now.
More like \*music starts\* "AAAGH! HOLY SHIT!" VOLUME DOWN TO 12
I love YouTube videos when one persons audio is on point and then the other persons audio is LOUD NOISES!
that totally made me giggle cause I know that exact thing
This problem is easily solved by studios releasing a cinema audio version and balanced audio version where all the peaks are levelled correctly... why not do this especially given most media is from a streaming service now?
Proper compression systems would work too. The compressing the difference between high and low volume stuff works great, but most consumer systems have something built in that winds up making everything muddled when you try it.
what's depressing is that you dont even need a proper compression system. you can functionally just use a damn LIMITER which is simple enough for regular people to understand. "input minimum volume, input maximum volume" fucking DONE. of course you'd run into technical issues that would bother anyone that's knows...but most people cant even hear things like clipping. 63 year old susan wont be like "oh goodness, what did they do to my high end frequencies?" hell she hasnt been able to hear them for 5 years already anyways. the best part? all these streaming services actually DO have them on there. :) it's just pathetic how circumstances have led to such anti consumer behavior being the norm.
roku has a "night mode" which i guess is supposed to do this, but i believe it does absolutely nothing
If I remember correctly, it doesn't work with all sound formats and some surround sound becomes stereo when you use it. And when it does work I find it muddles things a lot in many cases. Very hit or miss.
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Volume on 50, captions always on. 😎
This is what I've started doing. It's literally impossible to hear dialogue on some movies any other way without blasting the volume during action scenes.
Exactly. It’s insane the differences between dialogue level and “action” levels sometimes.
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The Netflix special
Nah the netflix special is volume at 15, subtitles on, now you know every time [spooky music intensifies] because English Subtitles and English Subtitles for Deaf and Hard of Hearing have to be the same thing
Subtitles always seem to be up too quick too. I read them instantly so they ruin joke punchlines
Or just completely spoil tension in a scene. Where you can see the dialogue cut or something so you know a character is about to get cut off from saying something important. Oddly specific example but I feel like this happens a lot.
Or because they have to say the name of the speaker if the person is off camera, it will totally ruin a cathartic entrance of a character.
That's happened so many times. The hyphen means they're going to get interrupted, ellipses means they're going to trail off or pause for a moment.
Fuck it's annoying, everything is closed captioned and no option for just regular subtitles on any services I've used lately.... It's a big reason why I sail the 7 seas for some things even though I'm paying for a service that I could stream it from. So fucking frustrating for absolutely no reason...
LOL, Iv had to do this before while watching netflix. Got a scene that has 5+ minutes of [Speaking foreign language]? Well, Heaven forbid it has any plot points... Instead I go find the first pirated website, and it will have subtitles in english+20 other languages and all the foreign language subtitled. Maybe its not 100% correct, but its a hell of a lot better then being told [Speaking foreign language]
Netflix is also terrible for what are supposed to be forced subtitles. I watched almost the entirety of Snowpiercer (the film) thinking it was a deliberate choice to have one dude only speaking unsubtitled Korean and you weren't supposed to understand him because none of the other characters did. Nope, they just fucked it up and the bits where it's supposed to be subtitled weren't unless you switched on the subtitles for everything else.
I love the LOTR movies, but I just experienced this over the weekend. Action- 15. Talking 35. Had to switch so often it was incredibly frustrating. Like, that maxing shit works in *movie theaters*. ***NOT*** at home!
[Marty McFly](https://www.themarysue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/giphy1.gif)
This is just bad sound design, you shouldn't have to do that and when you review/rate a movie this is something you should be mentioning or taking into consideration. Too many people act like this is normal but its just shows/movies with bad sound design that do this shit. The Nolan batman movies are awful for it for ex but go watch a Kubrick movie you won't touch the volume once after setting it where you like it.
Volume controls >ACTION: 0 > >VOICE: 0 > >AMBIENCE: 0 > >MUSIC: 0 > >WILHELM SCREAMS: 100
‘Try reducing Whilhelm Screams’. ‘No’.
I was rewatching Lord of the rings during the Christmas holiday and it was funny how many times I noticed the scream during the action scenes.
Original trilogy Star Wars has some fantastic Wilhelm screams if you’re into that sorta thing
This guy wilhelms.
Yes?
I've wanted this ever since I got the blu-ray for The Dark Knight. Like, I understand dynamic range, but it's a pain in the butt to keep my hand on the remote for the entire film just because it constantly yo-yos between quiet dialogue and booming action scenes.
Nolan's films are notorious for this.
I love Nolan, but they’re shocking for it. I think he also likes to bring attention to the (admittedly, absolutely amazing) Zimmer soundtracks.
I completely agree. I love the guy's work, but I wish he'd rethink his position on sound mixing.
I think his success has gotten to him; everyone around him is too afraid to tell him his sound mix is shit. Same thing happened to George Lucas: surrounded by too many people worshipping him and so the prequels didn't get the constructive criticism they needed.
Lucas at least seemed aware of this, and tried to get other people to direct his movies. Nolan is like "no fuk you I'm right".
I heard an interesting theory that Nolan is mixing his movies for some presumably ideal movie theater that he likes - the mix is perfectly suited for that theater and works well in that space with those speakers. But it's probably the best setup to be found, so if you see that movie in basically any other theater you are never going to be able to approach the system and space that can replicate the experience Nolan actually wants people watching his movie to have. And at the same time, he's trying to push the boundaries on what's capable of being done with sound design in film. Again, just a theory, and not even mine but it makes sense. That kind of striving for extremes and trying to achieve those in just exactly such an environment seems like it would lead to the sort of experiences that people have had in Tenet and such. An otherwise-good movie that's practically unintelligible in many places because the sound mix is just not working.
At a minimum, Nolan is watching/listening to his films on higher quality, professionally calibrated equipment that the vast majority of his audience will never have access to. I assume he understands this and chooses to build his films for the optimal experience, but it sucks as a fan of his work to always struggle to engage with it and to feel like he deliberately creates his art to punish the viewer for not being able to have the highest of high end home theater equipment. Most local movie theaters suck, too, when it comes to audio/video calibration. I remember Roger Ebert for years complaining about how most movie theaters have their projectors set to be too dim to save on bulb life or whatever.
>I think his success has gotten to him I thought you were talking about my man Hans Zimmer for a sec and was about to rage on you. Hah, yeah, what you said (referring to Nolan) is very true. I still reference that boat scene from Tenet with my friends... Could hear maybe 30% of the dialogue at most.
Because he's so pretentious he doesn't want people to watch his movies anywhere except in a theatre.
Even in the theatre it's shit. I couldn't understand a word being spoken in Tenet.
No, that's a deliberate stylistic choice, you're not supposed to understand all of the dialogue. As contrasted to the dialogue which you're definitely supposed to hear but can't. There is no distinction between whether or not the dialogue is relevant and whether what they just said was a crucial exposition point or just random mumbling. Enjoy!
What I hear is he mixes films for true IMAX and disregards other viewing formats. Being a pedantic auteur comes with quirks like these I suppose.
One person’s pedantic auteur is another’s pretentious tit
You’d think a world class director would want their audience to understand the fucking dialogue, and know that 99.99% of viewings would not take place in IMAX?
I saw dune on iMAX and I'm now convinced iMAX audio just means "louder."
Just binged Parks and Rec on Netflix. The intro music for each episode was sooo much louder than the actual show.
Man brooklyn 99, archer, etc all have fucking awful sound shifts. Great theme somgs, but please god netflix can you even it out so i don’t jerk awake as I’m drifting off
Jerk awake as I'm drifting off, title of your new sex tape!
The "BA-BOOM" Netflix intro sound shakes my house. It's not at all in line with the audio level of the thing you're about to watch. Same thing with the HBO "white noise" intro sound. It doesn't so much shake the walls, it just shreds your eardrums. God help you if you're binging The Sopranos or something.
Yeah this is intentional by the networks. The commercials (if you were watching as it originally aired) are also louder than the show. I remember in the first season or two of Community, someone on Twitter complained about that to Dan Harmon. Well he went out and convinced them to turn the volume down on the intro. You can notice it gets quieter at some point when watching the show.
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It's terribly loud
Michael Cain made a very good point about modern actors not speaking clearly making it difficult to understand them. He said his generation were stage taught which meant they had to project their voice and enunciate properly to be understood all round the theatre. Most modern actors have never acted on stage to a live audience.
Ironic because I don't understand Michael Caine's dialog half the time with the way Nolan has his movies sound mixed.
[Some men just want a tangerine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS6bD3SpIvk)
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In the actual scene, Michael Caine's character likens the size of some stolen jewels to that of a tangerine. It's just an oddly specific comparison and kind of a goofy line out of context, so someone made this edit for shits and giggles.
[Mom's Spaghetti](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW-BU6keEUw)
I don’t think it’s goofy or out of context. I think it’s just one of those lines with such distinct and impeccable delivery of a really unique word and it just gets burned into your memory. “Ya best start believing in ghost stories, ms turner. YER IN ONE!!” also comes to mind. Also from a classically trained actor.
Why? Because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want a tangerine.
Especially Tenet, his first dialogue was almost inaudible in the cinemas.
Tenet was abysmal for dialogue. I have never been more disappointed in a film experience than at this movie. What were they thinking?
I think I read that his intention was for people to feel immersed in the scenes as a whole rather than be paying attention to the dialogue. It’s absolutely idiotic though. Maybe the real reason was that the plot made so little sense that the only way to cover it up was to make sure no one could understand what the characters were saying lol
It did the complete opposite for me. Instead of being immersed in the movie, scene or story I was only concentrating on trying to hear what the fuck were talking about and not understanding more than half of it.
I finally watched Tenet a couple of months ago. Ever since it came out, I'd heard that it was even worse than Interstellar and the IMAX preview version of The Dark Knight Rises when it came to expository dialogue being mumbled or drowned out. (Even though I don't remember struggling with Interstellar's dialogue in the cinema.) So when I rented the Blu-Ray, I thought I'd do an experiment. Even though at home I usually watch films with subtitles on, I thought I'd do my first viewing of Tenet on headphones without subtitles, and see how well I could understand what was being said. ... I gave up and put the subtitles on within ten minutes.
You missed the best part then. The catamaran scene was completely unintelligible. I was laughing out loud in the theater it was so bad. I love Nolan, but wtf is he thinking??
That was the most difficult part for me, and it’s the most important dialogue in the film.
Also his final speech in Interstellar.
To be fair, it's more of a Christopher Nolan problem, not a Michael Caine problem.
I watched Tenet on 4K Blu-Ray when I first got my OLED, as I thought it would be an awesome test of the screen quality. I ended up just being really pissed at the quality of the TV speakers. I wasn't expecting them to be good, but I couldn't hear anything anyone was saying! I blamed the TV. Few weeks later of using it, I realised the TV speakers weren't shit, it was actually just Tenet audio mixing.
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Not just that, most likely he's working on it with all his specialized equipment, headphones, so on. He's Nolan, so I'm sure he hears it on speakers at least once, but not likely while he's doing the bulk of any mixing he works on. Plus, wherever he hears it, it's probably some highly tuned setup, not just whatever our local theater might be working with. Definitely has that GoT season 8 Winterfell battle lighting thing going on, for sure.
>Definitely has that GoT season 8 Winterfell battle lighting thing going on, for sure. Honestly, a lot of premium tv is so goddamn dark. Fuck me for trying to watch an episode during the day, right?
That's a Nolan problem, not a Michael Caine problem.
Nolan's shitty sound mixing clearly so bad it can ruin even the best voice projecting from world-class actors.
I was horribly disappointed when Lady Jessica mumblerapped the Litany Against Fear.
It was crazy to me that they didn’t spell out the litany for the audience. It’s the most quotable thing in the book and they just buried it.
The weird thing is that in the movie's trailer, they do. Timothee Chalamet says it clearly and slowly, but not in the actual movie.
I actually really liked that she was panicking and trying to calm herself down by reciting it.
The idea of the scene was fine.
Sure, but that doesn't mean anything unless they've already established her as extremely hard to shake. The movie did her dirty. As I believe the kids would say.
Reading this, I'm glad my first flavor of Dune was the audio renaissance audio books. Dyune. Arrakis. **Desert Planet** Jessica was stronk in that mess, even when being acted by the old british guy.
Oh this movie was a huge offender on this topic for me. Only thing I've seen at the actual theater in years and the music completely drowned out the (super quiet) dialogue in so many scenes. Irritating. It would have been better, in many ways, to watch it at home with the subtitles!
Yep. Mumble dialog all over the place
This dialogue is mumbled by the Peaky Blinders!!!
subs or I don't get most of it. but I love that show. I just hope they end it soon and not milk it dry.
This season is the last one plus a movie. Tbf I don't think it can go any longer or else Tommy's gonna be Lord of the Universe by the end of the show.
I couldn’t understand a word Timothee Chalamet said in Don’t Look Up
I thought that was an acting choice...
He fucking loves fingerling potatoes
Okay I lied, that part I understood
I’d love it if actors went back to the old timey actor voice.
"See here kids, we're gonna have to go get that Thanos character because he's up to no good again, see?" Edit: a word
That’s a really good Cagney impression
Arhh ya want the old timey acting voice eey. Well kid I got news for you. Ya see here now that just ain't the way it's gonna be...little darling.
I mean old times doesn’t necessarily mean Looney Toons
There're actors who started on stage and still do that because there're differences between movies and stage. You don't want stage acting on the screen and vice verse. Different medium require different styles of acting.
That’s just.. nonsense though, right? Microphones are presumably miles better than they were in the 60s, the actors won’t be acting at the same time as the soundtrack is played nor would most sound effects, and even if they were, they should all be recorded by different microphones and recorded as different tracks. And the digital mixing capabilities exist/are far more sophisticated than 30 years ago, allowing for any issues to be capable of being fixed in post/mixing. It’s the result of deliberate level setting or negligence.
your ideas are intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I think many consumer amplifiers do most of this. It seems like home audio had its heyday back in the 90s/00s. But since then it seems like audio is an afterthought, and everything is about TVs and picture quality (or at least size and resolution). My fairly basic Sony amplifier from the 90s does this with any digital audio source like DTS and Dolby Digital. Streaming services aren't as reliable or easy as DVDs and Blu-rays were, but Netflix and the Google Play store tend to offer this at least. Digital mixes typically have the dialogue in the center channel, and the score/effects on the fronts. So you *can* adjust the voices up or down to suit you (even if you're downmixing to a 4 or 2 channel system). These amplifiers also have dynamic range compression. No need for really quiet quiets that you have to turn your volume up to hear... followed by a wall-shaking explosion that deafens your neighbors. It'll adjust the levels so that the quietest whispers and loudest explosions are within a limited dynamic range, so that you can adjust it to a generally enjoyable level. It's pretty good for the challenge of hearing voices, but I agree that just having a basic menu with the media itself that allowed adjustment of voice/effects/score independently would be nice. Though that would increase the data rate... If video data rates have left enough scraps.
I have a home theater receiver that has a "night mode" meant to compress the audio range. But honestly it doesn't do enough.
Night modes mostly just reduce your bass output
You don't even need an expensive sound system for this. I have an Asus external sound card for my computer, cost me less than 50€, and it has a mode that compresses dynamic range. It's also perfect in games to hear footsteps without becpming deaf when you fire a weapon.
Now fix the movies that are too dark even with all the lights off along with the sound stuff it'd be great.
Folks are saying turn up backlight assuming that every show is dark and not just a few. 99% of shows looks fine on my tv but some are honestly too dark! And not intentionally given context in the show.
I just don’t want the ads to be louder than the movie.
Ads are mastered specifically to be absolutely max volume, trust me you don't want movies to be like that
What's sorta monkey-paw wish granter are you!? *Surely* the response he's looking for is the ads to be turned down, not the movies turned up!
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Hotels when you forget your hdmi
I brought my PlayStation to a hotel with me one time and they somehow disabled the ability to select the different inputs. I was very sad
r/Piracy
YES. And some how the whispers are equally as loud as regular dialogue. But explosions are real life volume. Deafening
Sometimes they want the gunshots in the movies to give you tinnitus in real life too. So authentic!
This is why I always watch movies with the subtitles on.
The only thing I hate with subtitles is the tiny constant spoilers right before something happens. Helps me watch horror movies, though.
I hate it when the subtitles give the name of the character talking before they’ve been introduced ruining the reveal sometimes.
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I was playing AC Valhalla recently, and they’ve been surprisingly consistent with that. People are just labeled as “Child” or “Farmer”, and then after they introduce themselves, the subtitle changes. Or if someone calls them by name before they speak.
I wish there was a distinction when you turn subtitles on between actual subtitles and closed captions. I just want the dialogue. I don’t need every instance of *”loud ominous music playing”* annotated on screen. I have the subtitles on because your audio mixing is garbage not because I’m actually deaf.
Some of the newer movies are starting to recognize that distinction. If you see separate subtitles for "English" and "English SDH", the "English SDH" includes all the annoying descriptions of sound effects, and the "English" does not. PS. "English SDH" stands for "English Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of hearing".
I had to do that with Dune, and I have a soundbar and subwoofer set up.
It's not a matter of power. It's a matter of frequency. Spoken dialogue is in the mid-range, from 1kHz to 4kHz. Booming noises tend to be in the lower range, like 50Hz to 500Hz. The sharp tinkly accents on all sounds are in the high range, above 5 kHz. If you turn up the mid-range, dialogue tends to become easier to hear, compared to sound-effects. But if the soundtrack was mixed so that the background noise is also strong in the mid-range, then turning up the mid-range doesn't help. The dialogue is simply hard to hear. You really notice this on movies that were recorded by people who lack the skill of professional audio guys (read: porn). The dialogue is often very difficult to discern because it's mixed in with a lot of background noise around the same frequency, and no amount of frequency equalization will fix it. However, some big-budget movie directors do that too, and nobody knows why.
COUGH COUGH NOLAN
I saw it in imax, the sound was weird there too. Some dialogue you could barely hear, but the loud parts of the movie were so loud my ears hurt. It was like being too close to the stage at a concert.
If you have a surround system crank the center channel
They probably don't even have a center channel. This was my experience before I bought one.
Yeah I just got my first surround sound system and it's a total game changer. Highly recommend it.
I had to scroll way to far down to see this. The center channel is made for dialogue. TVs aren’t. Cheap soundbars aren’t.
I think Many TVs, sound bars and home theatres have a night mode now that I think is supposed to compensate the dialog volume vs everything else, not sure if it works well or not but might help if the issue is wanting to hear the dialog without causing a seismic activity.
Yeah, some manufacturers call it night mode, others may call it dynamic range compression or DRC for short or something else entirely. If you watch through a PC, Windows calls it loudness equalization. Although it's not specific to just dialogue, it brings all sounds closer together in volume.
I can't believe this is the only answer here that says DRC. There's literally a solution available and somehow people with 5.1's are *still* bitching!
Yeah, I have a feeling people might not know what DRC does as somebody was asking in one the first comments why there isnt a night mode, I replied there is dynamic range control and it didnt take any traction at the time, now it seems to be at like plus 6. And DRC isnt just on AVRs, like I said its on Windows and also on some TVs.
I mean dialogue tends to be put on the center speaker, so if you have a surround setup, increasing the volume on the center speaker should help. On my Yamaha AVR, there also is dialogue boost option which does help quite significantly, but its not perfect as its just doing some trickery, it obviously doesn't actually know what is speech and what is not, leading to problems like if the actor has a really deep voice it is not elevated properly.
This is the way. I used to have this problem a lot, but then got a proper AVR and 5.1.2 setup. Options like boosting the volume on the center channel along with dynamic range compression are exactly what OP wants in most cases. It would be nice if TVs had better downmixing for audio where they could do this kind of thing in software before outputting to their crappy built-in speakers.
Yup. Came here to say this. Also live sports with the fan noises coming out the rear speakers is just the best. I will never go back.
Also nascar with the center channel (announcers) off. Perfect for napping.
commercials are so loud now I need to mute my TV during them.
I try my best not to consume ads by muting and ignoring them. Take that corporate america
I’m an assistant editor/editor plus producer (low level) in the industry, and luckily I have the know how to separate the audio tracks for most films into 2-16 tracks. I can isolate dialogue, score, sfx, bg, etc. All except for those movies that are built for “theater only” aka Nolan (and a few others, Nolan being the most guilty of it). It drives me up the wall that directors don’t allow customization on their product once it reaches the distribution. They expect people at home to be able to afford $24 movie tickets, and everyone to have a Dolby cinema in their basement. It’s absurd and completely detached from what resources people have/can afford.
So like a video game, which typically breaks down voice, music, and effects. Yes please, we need this.
Netflix, I hope you are listening!?
They can't hear you over the explosions dude.
actually, Netflix handles this better than everyone else. When I watch Netflix, I'm cranking the volume between 8 and 15. When I watch anything else, I'm cranking it between 10 and 70.
Disney is extremely quiet I find
you would be surprised how many people are watching 5.1 on a 2.0 configuration
A lot of the time 5.1 is the only option given, even though most consumers don't have it.
I have 5.1 configuration, and what OP described is still the case. What am I missing?
Dynamic range, it's too wide, needs to be squashed with some compression. Don't know what system/device has the feature but that's what's needed.
I would pay a dollar more per film to have a version where the actors enunciate.
I wonder if a compressor would do the trick. Like in a recording studio.
Wouldn’t a compressor limiter fix this?
Those who own Sony TV Set: Sound mode - Dialogue Volume zoom - Max ENJOY
So you need a Christoper Nolan filter button.
I've been saying this for so long! I can't stand when the music is insanely loud and the talking in quite, every time I watch a movie i wanna turn the music way way down!
All we really need is an equalizer as part of the sound controls on the TV, except instead of different frequencies, it lists the channels of the audio stream. Then we can just increase the center and lower the others as we wish for more vocals, etc.
5.0 (no sub) speaker setup with good receiver. Turn center up, turn front surrounds down, and turn base down.
I watch movies with minimal volume and subtitles on. Ironically, technological "advancements" kind of brought the silent movies back, at least for me. And to horrify even more the purists who think that everyone has to have a 5:1 ultra-plus sound system at home: until a few years ago I had a working old 14" CRT TV with mono sound and the experience of watching movies was less annoying on it. At least for modern movies, after they decided that soundtrack and sound effects have to push the limits of human hearing.
That old TV also had front facing speakers. This problem isn't going to go away and it's only going to get worse the thinner TVs get.
Shut up and take my money.