Because the fuckers producing the shows make the music and sound effects 5x louder than it needs to be but the dialogue half as loud as it needs to be.
It’s because they’re mixing dialogue for the center channel speaker. Most people don’t have a center channel on their TV or sound bar, but some "Dialogue Mode"s will exclusively play the center channel and drown out the sound effects. It’s a trade off, but one that most manufacturers don’t even give the option for.
I have 5.1 and still encounter tons of shows where I need to crank the volume for dialog and then hurriedly lower it during explosions or fight scenes. This wasn’t much of an issue a few years ago on the exact same surround sound setup.
I have a 5.1 as well, and I use software normalization (Plex and through my Shield) to fix it. I know there’s a way to tune it via hardware, but my setup is an ancient Yamaha receiver and I prefer the software normalization.
Mixing can be a mixed bag, as everyone uses different hardware to master their sound, but normalization or boosting center fixes it 99% of the time.
Hm. I’ve got a basic 5.1 setup via sound bar and have dialed center up to max. It sorta works, but it makes the “surround” a lot less impactful because of the disproportionate levels (eg explosions straight ahead still boom).
I always though this was a deliberate mixing decision for “immersion”
I should give this a shot too as my setup uses all the same hardware (including the Yamaha receiver). I’ve been hesitant to have Plex level audio since it can reduce quality, but mixes are getting so bad that it’d probably improve the quality above all else.
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.
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
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.
Film producers are intentionally mixing for theaters and refusing to mix for home devices.
Mumble mumble whisper EXPLOSION!
Are theaters still relevant today? I honestly don’t know. Have not been in one for many years, everything is just way too expensive.
Because the mixing is usually ass on these shows
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
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
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 started when I had a tiny house and we had a baby.
Seems like movies especially are mixed so quiet during dialog, but get so LOUD during action sequences, that I just had to turn it down and read the dialog to catch what I miss.
As I get older and my hearing isn’t as great as it once was, I find it’s just helpful
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For the perfect example of the whisper problem watch any episode of Star trek discovery. The main character whispers almost every line and it’s very disturbing.
There was a video essay going viral about this some time ago.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/06/watching-movies-tv-with-subtitles/674301/
This article encapsulates everything I feel about the subject. I hate using subtitles, but sometimes I just have to in order to hear what people are saying due to streaming services messing with the actual sound mix using their stupid algorithms. As for reasons I hate subtitles: they distract from the actual film and can occasionally spoil things happening. If subtitles are on the screen, my brain forces my eyes down to read them, and I inevitably lose out on some of the nuances of the visual part of the visual media.
Additionally, if I’m watching foreign films, I get this urge to learn the language so I can stop using subtitles. Maybe I’m a curmudgeon, but I just can’t stand them. I can’t imagine watching Redline for instance with subtitles on. Yuck.
When I play films produced decades ago in stereo or even mono, it’s shocking how much easier the dialogue is to understand. I’ve resorted to spending a not insignificant sum on a 5.1 setup just so I can crank up the centre channel and make the dialogue a bit more intelligible. Even then it still isn’t perfect. The dynamic range just really isn’t suitable for home viewing. I’m still constantly riding the volume to keep sound effects from pissing off my neighbours/sleeping child…
Here’s a youtube video on the same topic I watched recently: https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8
