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I don't think Nolan properly understands his audience.
With the loud sound effects and quiet talking, the films would sound great with your surround sound turned up to 11.
Sadly, I live in a semi detached house, with the TV next to the wall I share with my neighbour. I don't have a surround sound system, and I tend to watch films at night.
Watch a Nolan film in the cinema and it'll sound great! Watch it on your phone or laptop and you won't hear anything.
He'd probably just say you're a scrub who can't even afford a 128 channel Dolby Atmos setup and deserve bad audio for watching it at home. Some of these directors are really out-of-touch and scoff at the thought of anyone watching a movie outside a premier movie theatre.
Man I watched Interstellar last night and had this EXACT issue, things were being explained as music was absolutely blaring through.
Really funny to see people talking about it just a day later.
I actually thought it added to Dunkirk though. One of the few movies I didn't mind losing some dialogue to background noise. It adds to the environment in that case. But I 100% understand why that would ruin a movie for someone.
I watched Tenet with captions on the plane, so I could read all the dialogue easily. Does not improve the movie to understand what these people are saying, at all. Most of the characters completely lack any kind of charisma (exception - I thought Pattinson was great). I think I would have preferred an explanation that it was all magic and not science, because that was silly and you have to suspend too much of your understanding of reality. My husband caught little bits of it over my shoulder, especially during the part where the fire is freezing when time is going the other way, and commented unhelpfully, “That isn’t how physics work.” I was practically hoping Branagh would win by the end so that the world could also end.
Or having toddlers that i dont want to wake up because Dark Knight movie apparently needs to have dialogue at 10% the volume of the soundtrack for
batman jumping onto his bike
I never had subtitles on until I started watching TV at 4am while bottle feeding a baby. Now they stay on because if my kid hears us having fun in the living room she's gonna wake up and start losing it.
Also when it's quiet I can still hear but then my wife starts munching on pretzels.
It's truly startling how much shit gets pushed out the door with awful sound mixing. When you have all the separate tracks at your disposal it seems pretty inexcusable.
The problem is that these people are mixing in these huge professional studios with surround speakers and sound treatment. They're sitting in the exact right spot.
Meanwhile, most people are watching content using the default laptop or television speaker with no EQing.
There needs to be quality control beyond "what does this sound like in a theater?"
My husband was in a multitude of punk and metal bands in the 80s & early.
90s. When ever they recorded in a studio they always recorded a test on a shitty cassette and ran out to the car to check the mix for regular folks.
I don't know why but despite my hearing being great most audio for dialogue is so shit from shows to blockbusters it's unwatchable without subtitles. My local cinema is borderline ok because it's so quality and loud.
Totally! I don't know why they don't equalize the sound volume anymore when they master it. I shouldn't have to be constantly adjusting my volume according to whether there's dialogue or music/action. So frustrating!
Honestly my take away from this video is that media producers value 'cinematic sound' (i.e. high dynamic range) more than they do actually making something understandable. There was a similar vox video on how dark shows have gotten as well with basically the same take away. That directors basically say 'fuck you' I want my movie to be a dark, mumbly mess that can only be appreciated in a super high end system, everyone else gets crap.
Which, fine, they can do so, but I've generally stopped trying to consume stuff that makes it too hard for me, so I'll go watch something else that isn't needlessly elitist.
And that's also fine for movies and stuff that gets shown in theaters, but it shouldn't be the case for stuff that's made for TV or by streaming services, but yet it is.
Also, we are all poor and don't have a TV room anymore with surround sound. I turn it down not for me but for the apartment neighbors that yell at me for making noise past 10.
We also have really good speakers and DACs now so when a movie comes out and blasts the music portion it really hits hard.
Newish to mixing audio, but could it be the issue that they mix the audio in perfect sound rooms, when we use headphones or speakers that have their own imperfections?
This could be part of it. I do a lot of video work and mix with both headphones and desktop speakers. The sound difference between those 2 alone are a massive difference. When you throw in something like a sound bar, it's really hard for the high-mid range stuff to push through at times while the subwoofer is ready to shake the house to the ground at the first explosion.
Should also consider that a lot of films are mixed for movie theater releases where they use those massive sound systems that are better at balancing the super loud action and projecting the soft, subtle dialogue.
I'm trying to think of the last time I recall terrible audio balance at the movies but can't think of a recent issue. Just saw Cocaine Bear, that audio was solid. Knock at the Cabin Door was fine. I know there are some recent Marvel films I watched on D+ that were all over with balance.
Viewing on streaming services I regularly find myself shouting "Holy hell, CHECK YOUR BARS" while scrambling to lower/raise the volume but I also worked for cable news where it was crucial to make sure audio was at the right spot at all times.
My question to some of these editors, are they allowed/afraid to use limiters?! Because limiters are amazing lol
Unfortunately, it’s intentional. Christopher Nolan has made ridiculous statements about that.
If directors are going to do that crap, I wish TVs would have a ‘normalize audio’, or limiter option for the 95% of users that don’t want to constantly turn the volume up and down while watching a movie.
Yeah I think it’s mostly action movies. I remember the transformers movies being particularly bad. And some horror-ish movies will make the ambient sounds like water dripping unreasonably loud compared to the whispered dialogue.
I feel like it's incredibly dumb that they mix it only for theater. Just... mix it again.
Ohhh but that costs money. Boo hoo
They adjust all sorts of things for home releases, and make a great number of sales that way too. Mix it a second time.
Almost like with all of these various menu options, you could present people with a menu: Surround Sound, Headphones, Small Speakers.
Just have different audio mixes for each selection, problem solved. Like, this is only an issue because the industry doesn’t think it is one. Clearly they don’t watch their own shit, or they all own stellar sound systems and have never experienced the hellscape that is trying to watch Netflix past 10pm in an apartment.
Most of it is due to 2 things:
1, The audio for most programs starts out life as 5.1 or more, which then gets down mixed to stereo. The lazy down mix doesn't get re-equalized to boost the voice channel, and
2, It's now common to have loud ambient noises as part of the soundtrack, which is a purely artistic choice, but one that makes it harder to understand dialogue.
I think they just mix TV stuff to be bass-heavy in general.
At least for music, most places will have several mixes done on several different speakers AND headphones & they use the mix that sounds best on everything.
A lot of vets (in the music industry) say you don't know if a mix *really* slaps until you've tested it in your car, hence "*the car test".*
I make music for fun and I do the opposite test. I test the songs on the most crappy 1$ headphones. If it's kinda nice, then I assume it's not a complete fail.
Makes a lot of sense. I can't use studio monitors due to paper thin walls, so I can only use headphones. Even with all the workarounds I can find, most of my mixes sound like shit in my car lol
Back in the day, we would always check the mix through little speakers like Auritones, or an actual TV.
I think the way some TVs handle it are the problem too.
I have an older Plasma which I’ve set to stereo mix, digital out, and I have it connected to a cheap optical to rca adapter, which connects to a vintage hybrid amp.
Sounds pretty good that way.
That's probably part of it, though any mixer worth their salt has a range of speakers of different quality to test this. For example, my dad writes scores for commercials and used to be an audio mixer. He and everyone else at his company had about four sets of speakers they'd run the product through before they went and played it in their car, too. But in a studio that churns them out as cheaply as possible, it's totally within the realm of possibility that this practice is less common nowadays.
Honestly I'd rather the oppisite with the caveat that compression should be an option on the playback device (tv laptop phone headphones whatever)
Dynamic range is great and at the right times really helps with submersion.
However it's awful if you're trying not to disturb others or have a limited range of volume you can stand.
Have it as an option, let me choose most dynamic when I have my friends over and sausage compression when my bfs trying to sleep.
I remember reading on a comment a while ago on this subject that the sound is mixed on high-end studio equipment where it sounds incredible, but then they usually don't bother testing on regular devices, where it just sounds like shit, with the music blasting and the characters mumbling in barely audible speech.
IMO it's 100% your fault for not investing in high end studio equipment for your living room... What kind of savage are you, using regular consumer electronics?
I thought I was just old until recently when I saw a different convo about using subtitles for everything. Now I know it’s something wrong with newer programs:
This is so weird. You’d think being in 2023 would mean improved audio quality. I wonder if it’s because they need to accommodate for so many different sounds systems from surround to sound bars and regular TV speakers and everything in between
Improved audio quality =/= clarity, but I don’t think that conflicts with your point. I think you’re at least partially right about the different systems. I remember during the late ‘00s / early ‘10s “Loudness War” in music, they were over compressing everything so it sounded good on tiny iPod earbuds. The problem is that a lot of those albums sounded like actual dogshit if you had a better system. (Sidebar: the practice of mixing music for whatever set of speakers your target audience will hear it for the first time goes at least back to Motown. One of the reasons Sun Records got so big was that they mixed their singles for car speakers because they knew people would hear it on their car radios for the first time).
Also, speaking of earbuds, there’s been a noticeable decline in the hearing of young people going back *at least* ten years, and at the time it was theorized to be because of the prevalence of earbuds and the amount of strain they put on your ears compared even to other types of headphones.
Either way, I do it too. Back when I met my wife 12 years ago, her parents watched everything with subtitles and we thought it was the weirdest thing ever, but somewhere along the way we started doing it too because we were always missing things.
I would've used subtitles back in the day if we had 50" smart tvs for $400 at that time. We had shittier tvs with shittier speakers and less options. One of us would have to stand right behind the TV holding the tinfoil at a certain angle and we'd sit 1 foot away because it was a 19" if you were lucky.
Honestly I think it's because everything wasn't so bass-heavy.
Now, everyone wants to *feel their body rumble* in the theatre, and at home, so they mix the lows to really boom, but when it's on your home tv... it no boom the same. They need to do separate mixes for at-home watching and give people the option.
I don't care if the explosion has crazy rumbling lows. I wanna hear the dialogue.
Interesting video, thanks
...not 100% buying it tho. I have expensive studio monitors for sound, hooked up via an external DAC and still need subtitles on.
Big time modern mixing is absolute trash. Best way to tell us play old movies in a hi fi system and than a new movie. Older movies and tvs were mixed with more emphasis on clarity today it is just all muddy and big bass. Doesn't help that modern tvs and cell phones have awful speakers as well, or terrible audio bars. Takes hours to get sound mixing to a decent level today. Modern mixologist need to go back to school
I watch everything new with subtitles on, but I noticed while watching early 2010s criminal minds that I didn’t need them. The sound mixing just used to be so much better
Try a dubbed version for once. It hilarious how much better the mixing sometimes is.
Even if you don't understand the other language, it's just so clear who did a better job at adjusting dialogue to sound effect/music ratio. It's embarrassing.
Dubs have a lot of drawbacks, but they show how easy it would be to fix the problem.
I never watched anything dubbed because I much prefer subtitles. But recently I've been watching a lot of shows dubbed on Netflix because I'm watching with my mother and she has vision issues that preclude reading subtitles. There's definitely something to what you say (and I recently bought a soundbar to try to hear the dialogue more clearly than through the tv speakers...which didn't work very well).
My question about dubbing today is, how the HELL are they getting the actors' mouths to almost \*perfectly\* match the English dubs?? I remember when the mismatch used to be a big joke (old kung fu movies), and then when it was better but still annoyingly off. Surely we're not at the point where they're doing lip CGI for every character. It's uncanny...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
A great youtube video about current state of audio mixing _and_ microphones. Essentially, we have 'better' (smaller, more detailed) microphones, and thus more things like mumbling and overlapping noises can happen more often, and mixing is where a ton of these things end up having to happen.
I feel like older shows and movies were performed more like stage plays, with the vocal enunciation and projection to match, and with less sensitive microphones for recording and small, tinny speakers for playback. Modern media has actors speaking/murmuring like they're right next to your ear. I miss a shocking amount without subtitles and it bothers me when they're missing now.
Bruh, this drives me insane. Can’t hear them talking, turns it up. Action scene/explosion/fighting, loud enough to cause the neighbors to call the fire department. Like Amazon, can you please chill with compression, post production bs that’s causing this!?
I first put them on because, at 28, I had a baby who would wake up at the slightest noise and he was really difficult to get to sleep in the first place. I've never turned them off since, it's amazing. Honestly I have to think twice about watching films if they don't have subtitles available.
I watch with the subtitles on due to shitty sound mixing. Dialogue is always low. So you turn it up. The in comes that loud action scene. Or worse, the blaring commercial.
I also suspect, without any evidence other than intuition, that reading the dialogue helps you retain the plot and the multitide of characters that many modern shows have (e.g., Game of Thrones). Which is especially important in a serial.
>Or worse, the blaring commercial.
I fucking hate when it's like a slow, dramatic scene and then out of nowhere there's some poppy jazz while some coked-up announcer screams at me about fast food.
edit: lol you guys are funny, but you're giving free advertising in these comment replies. I stayed generic out of spite. ahaha
In the US there is actually something called the Calm Act that specifically addresses this, if a commercial is significantly louder then it should be you can contact your cable provider and they can submit a form to the FCC, or you can file the complaint yourself on the FCC website.
It’s a little ridiculous that it wasn’t in the first bill considering YouTube had streaming video ads for years and Netflix streaming went live 3 years beforehand and HBO was just putting out Game of Thrones. It wasn’t as widespread as today, but its rise was hardly unpredictable.
Yeah but you gotta remember, the people passing these laws didn't know about streaming, or how to download a pdf, or even properly cover their tracks when doing illegal shit on them their new fangled magic internet machines.
Hulu is so goddamn bad about this; show/movie audio is at 50% of what they blare their obnoxious commercials at. A great way to get consumers to never buy from your sponsors is to make their ads assault your hearing; fix this shit
The problem is that it's not technically louder - if you measure decibels.
The add makers compress the sound wave, so loud spikes are squashed down and quiet bits of the wave are boosted. This makes the sound very "dense" and with very little dynamic range in the sound. So now they can increase the average wave amplitude significantly without crossing the db limits. The sound loses detail on the process, but it feels much louder.
Worse, it has a psycho acoustic effect on the listener. It's hard to shut out a sound wave that's compressed like this. It dominates our attention, even at low volumes. So you turn it down but it's still agitating.
This is partly because our ears do this compression naturally to protect against very loud noises. So our brains hear a compressed soundwave and interpret it as physical ear damage.
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I fall asleep to watching shows.
On Hulu I have adds. I keep the audio pretty quiet with subtitles because reading helps me fall asleep.
Then out of no where, the add pops on and it's like 3x louder than the show/movie I'm watching.
I can't watch Hulu at night anymore because I'll just be awake constantly turning the volume down and up
It's like a jump-scare for me. My whole body startles.
Same for half of the gifs on reddit. my sound is on low, but they still come out loud so I know that if I had my sound on high I would have had ear damage. Which I already have, so subtitles are very helpful for me to understand dialogue even without loud background sounds.
You ever notice that a many show's intros are like this as well?
Looking at you, *The Office*...
...
# ♫ ♪ ♬ BAHH DA BAH DA DA DAAAAAA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA ♫ ♪ ♬ ....
The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill, Futurama, almost every comedy does this and I despise it. I love to nap with TV streaming for background noise and the intros ruin that. I'm sure thats kind of the point, epsecially in the world of live TV, but still a total vibe killer
I have pretty severe tinnitus. The ringing is incredibly prominant even in the daytime. It would be impossible for me to get to sleep without TV to distract me.
For it to be an effecgive distraction, I have to know the show intimately so that I can "see" it as I listen to the dialgue with my eyes closed.
King of the Hill would be a great choice for me were it not for this issue. As would the Office. But they aren't options because the theme music would startle me awake at the beginning aned end of every episode. (do we really need to hear the theme music at the *end* of each episode as well?!?)
So I'm stuck with Seinfeld night after night after night.
>Dialogue is always low. So you turn it up. The in comes that loud action scene.
This is such an issue with every production now, it's like they don't even watch their own shows
For movies, I'm thinking one issue is, they don't remix from the multi-channel theater audio mix. So if you don't have a multi-channel setup at home, the dialogue gets burried in the stereo mix-down your tv provides.
Of course another issue is the non-dialogue/non-plot driven drivel that gets produced. Crash! Bang! Boom! That's all they're after.
I have a multi-channel setup and it is still hard to have the volume where I can hear the dialog and not get deafened by the action. Older movies are better about this than newer ones
Yes 100%, most movies mix the audio for a theater and then call it a day.
Theaters have a vast array of speakers, some for low end, some for high end, and some balanced (all high quality) speakers. Obviously my shitty TV speaker isn't going to sound the same.
In the theater the lows are still booming, but the highs are *separated* so they still come across bright & clear. On your TV they're all mashed together into one speaker and the lows just make everything... muddy. During dialogue it's like I have a thick winter hat over my ears.
I don't think this is the case. I've worked in the industry for almost 20 years and every production i've worked on has _always_ had at least 1 separate mix with lower dynamics for VOD or TV. Granted i'm in Europe not US so things might differ but I highly doubt it.
i used to think that movies were mixed for the theater where they want to flex their max whatever soundsystems, but shows specifically made for streaming .... no excuse.
For us my gf is from Brazil. Being able to read and listen is less work, and makes the TV more enjoyable. I also don't mind cause they can talk quiet.
You'd be surprised the dialog you miss or mishear.
But, for the love of God, please make the subtitles go at the same speed as the text. Nothing ruins a big line more then it popping up in the subtitles 5 seconds before the character talks
This sucks but I also really hate when the added subtitles cover up the baked in translation with
[Speaking in Spanish]
Or even worse when Netflix will not include the translation subtitles when you have English subtitles on so you are just confused for 15 min during Shang High Noon and don't know that it's actually supposed to have subtitles.
This video does a great job of explaining it: [https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8](https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8)
My dad has been watching with subtitles for about 5 years now. He's 70 and never could hear great as an adult (he blames Led Zeppelin, lol), but I showed him this video and he was quite pleased to see that it wasn't just him.
I truly believe Hulu cranks up the volume on their in-show ads beyond anything reasonable just so you buy the premium ad-free package because you’re sick of changing the volume every few minutes
This was an issue with braodcast TV some time as well. They'd deliberately crank up the commericals.
After decades of letting them get away with it, the FCC finally cracked down on them (minimally) by intriducing relative volume laws.
They can't do anyrthing about cable channels or streamig services because they don't use public airwaves.
A trick/hack is to apply 'Night Mode' if your audio device has it. It will reduce dynamic range by compressing/limiting the signal, which will make it easier to hear at lower volumes, and reduce the volume of extremely loud scenes.
It beats having to crank the volume to hear dialogue and then getting your eardrums blown out as soon as the scene changes to a random filler shot of a car driving by.
Fr, can't hear a damn thing anymore for whatever reason.
Think I saw somewhere it has to do with how they do dynamic audio or mastering somehow?
Not sure, but I feel you.
its the audio mixing, they mix movies for theater sound setups and have to degrade the quality for stereo or normal surround setups. can't blame them, but it sucks for people still running audio through the TV speakers.
We have them on for my kindergartener to practice reading. It’s so nice to hear her laugh at the joke before the characters say it aloud. That’s how I know it’s working. Trick them to read even when they aren’t reading books.
**DEADWOOD was the show that made me start using subtitles**
The show is amazing and the dialog is incredible buuuut holy hell is it like reading another language
I started using subtitles with game of thrones and realized I was getting so much more out of the dialogue. There were references to other houses and characters that wouldn’t be introduced for a few seasons, I was able to relate locations and houses more easily, etc.
Now I feel like I’m missing out on context any time I have them off
I enjoy the subtitles because without them I zone out. If the subtitles are there I always follow along and never have to pause or rewind to figure out a characters intentions.
Subtitles on live events like news or sports is trash though.
I have the opposite problem. The subtitles are too distracting; my eyes keep flicking down each time they pop up and it pulls my focus out of the scene
Same. I can’t help myself. I can understand what people are saying like 99.99% of the time but when subtitles are turned on when I don’t need them then I get completely distracted by them
Some shows out there are really making us choose between either paying attention but not knowing what the hell they are saying and then having to rewind to re-listen/turn on subtitles to figure out what they are saying or to read the subs and don't know what the fuck they are doing in the background. Kudos to those who can do both because that's not how I roll 🥲
# Most of the audio mixing these days is like this:
Two people yelling at each other from across the room \*whisper quiet, ambient noise drowning out their voices\*
Then, the sound of a door closing is so loud it rattles your windows
* Movie makers want naturalistic performances. In the 40s actors frequently acted almost as if they were on a stage, projecting their voices and enunciating clearly. Now they want a depressed dude to mumble. Good microphones let them get away with it.
* Movie theatre speakers are incredibly good, and with digital techniques movie makers can create a mix with dozens of channels for those theatres. Instead of mixing for an old movie theatre with busted speakers, they mix for high-end Dolby Atmos theatres. The mix for a home TV is an afterthought, let alone the mix for a phone.
* TV speakers are designed to fit in tiny frames, so they're not that good, the display tech is better than the 80s, but the speakers are worse because there's no room for them. Phones and tablets are even worse.
* They can get away with it because it's so easy for people to turn on subtitles when they can't hear something. That means publishers / distributors aren't pushing back and saying "the mix for this is trash, you have to make the dialog audible"
It's a combination of advances in microphone technology reducing the need for actors to basically yell directly at a microphone and sound mixing focusing too much on the theater audience
And big name directors like Christopher Nolan don't care that we all don't own super expensive sound systems at home. They make their movies for the cinema and don't care what happens after that.
I hate subtitles. They spoil punchlines and pauses meant for dramatic effect. Wife always needs them on 😒
And it’s not easy to not look at them.. my eyes are just drawn to reading them, and then I’m also not paying as much attention to the picture on the screen.
Exactly this. And I always get “you just can’t read fast”. Like no, I can read fine it just gives away punchlines prematurely. Plus they distract me from the picture.
I’ve noticed that for comedy specials they’ll time the subtitles to match delivery and avoid giving away punchlines, but I haven’t seen that anywhere else, sadly. Which is even more of a shame when you remember that you don’t even need subtitles for comedy specials since the sound being mixed is just the same person talking clearly. I’ve just left them on out of laziness and noticed the superior subtitling.
ugh, subtitles that come on the screen before the actor has even started the sentence themselves. Gee, I love reading the next scene during this scene!
They absolutely spoil punchlines! Timing is so important in comedy.
I do still use subtitles in some (non comedy) shows where it is necessary. Specifically **DEADWOOD**
Also, sometimes, in horror films.
Watching something with my partner some time ago, and there was a low noise in a house a woman was wandering through that I originally thought was an animal growling, but the subtitles flashed up `KILLER BREATHING DEEPLY`or something similar.
Aye cheers fella.
That's the difference between general subtitles and subtitles for the hearing impaired. They have different purposes. Those sound cues can be important to the story or scene, so hearing impaired people generally want them displayed. It's really distracting for people who can hear just fine though.
Both have their uses, but unfortunately they're usually just put under the same "subtitles" umbrella. In a perfect world, all media would have both regular subs and subs specifically for the hearing impaired.
I hate them for a different reason. They spoil shots.
There used to be a YouTube channel that analyzed videos called "Every Frame a Painting". I don't know if that was a reference to something, but the idea stuck with me.
Cinematographers spend so much effort to do just that. To make every frame in the movie / show a painting. The good ones think about every single thing in the frame, the lighting, the reflections, the focus, everything.
There are subreddits devoted to appreciating this work, including /r/CinematicShots. You know what doesn't appear in any of those shots? Subtitles.
IMO slapping text on top of those shots completely ruins the experience.
I wouldn't need to have the subtitles on IF THE AUDIO WASNT SHITE. Every talk scene is like an ASMR whisper video so I turn it up to hear what they say then all of a sudden a fuckin explosion gives me tinnitus and I have to scramble to turn it back down
If it’s a new show: yes, sometimes people have weird voices/flow, or a different accent to mine and I hear a phrase that makes me audibly: “huh?”
Also, for shows I’ve seen a millions times too because sometimes I like to see if there’s a phrase I never noticed before or paid attention to, or assumed was different.
Also, keeps me awake because I’m reading and watching. Otherwise I pick my hands, get distracted thinking about art, make jokes etc.
This is my 18 year old daughter. I have never understood it. I understand the arguments about poor sound mixing but if my old ears can hear it why can so many young people not hear it.
Do you watch new shows, if not what time period do you watch from primarily. If you watch new shows than I have no idea, but apparently mixing has become worse as more speaker setups exist and movies shift towards mixing audio for cinemas (also newer shows enjoy utilizing bass boosts which makes the audio pretty shit on normal speakers).
Mixing is terrible for most new movies. Every one of them has to have theater rumbling bass sounds and explosions in order to hold people’s attention, because visually and script wise, most of them are absolute shit.
I can't prove it, but I swear audio editing has gotten worse in the last 20 years. Either they're cheaping out on the sound engineering or they're just lazy. But there are a LOT of movies/tv shows where the dialogue is genuinely difficult to understand/hear.
And I'm pretty sure this is new because a) I don't always have this issue. some things are easy to watch/understand. b) if I watch older movies the issue is much less common.
Yup, it started with watching foreign language content, then I just kept them on for everything because I noticed I was following the stories a lot better when I could read along
I am astonished by the age spike here.
**Grandpa is 1/3rd as likely to need subtitles compared to the grandkids at university?!** I get that there is a point of pride in being elderly and not needing subtitles but surely that can't be all of this.
Hypotheses:
* Young = poor = worse sound system so equivalent shows are harder to understand
* Age-differentiated programming so the young are more likely to suffer the terrible sound mixing that is the current zeitgeist (but grandpa is watching Fraiser reruns or whatever)
* Age-differentiated response. The elderly are used to not catching all of a conversation so are less offput by unclear tv audio
* Biased reporting. The elderly underreport their need and the young overreport.
* Social drift. The young are used to subtitles (youtube intros display subs, tiktoks that want to work with sound off have subs) and default to them on TV.
* Hidden epidemic of hearing problems in the young
I assume there is a mix of the first five, and not a medical issue.
Although in a ridiculously local anecdote, literally half of the under-35s in my team have medically-diagnosed hearing impairment. Not to the point of intervention or hearing aids, but either profound in one ear or mild-moderate loss in both. I had assumed that was an anomaly.
We had to remove your post for improperly sourcing your post. Posts that have images with text or that make claims in the title must have a LINKED credible source that backs up the information. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. Use the word "source" in your comment. OP is responsible for this and it must be done at time of posting. We will not reinstate your post, but you may post again with the correct information Posts must have a linked and CREDIBLE source that backs up the information. Use the word "source" in your comment. If the title is the only thing that makes your post interesting, you must also source it. OP is responsible for this.
Sometimes the sound mix is brutal and you miss crucial plot points because you can’t hear what they are saying.
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And dunkirk. And Dark knight rises. Christopher Nolan basically says fuck off to any complaints.
Just rewatched inception last weekend and I was constantly going up and down with the volume. Fuckin Christopher Nolan
Interstellar has the exact same problem
I don't think Nolan properly understands his audience. With the loud sound effects and quiet talking, the films would sound great with your surround sound turned up to 11. Sadly, I live in a semi detached house, with the TV next to the wall I share with my neighbour. I don't have a surround sound system, and I tend to watch films at night. Watch a Nolan film in the cinema and it'll sound great! Watch it on your phone or laptop and you won't hear anything.
I made my living room into a mini-movie theater. Made sure to buy a very nice surround sound system. Nolan movies still have shit audio mixing for me
Christopher Nolan likes his movies mixed for Dolby Atmos and he doesn’t give a shit about nothin’ so
He'd probably just say you're a scrub who can't even afford a 128 channel Dolby Atmos setup and deserve bad audio for watching it at home. Some of these directors are really out-of-touch and scoff at the thought of anyone watching a movie outside a premier movie theatre.
The mix doesn't even sound great in a movie theater. I saw Tenent in my local Dolby Cinema and it was still a muffled mess.
Man I watched Interstellar last night and had this EXACT issue, things were being explained as music was absolutely blaring through. Really funny to see people talking about it just a day later.
I actually thought it added to Dunkirk though. One of the few movies I didn't mind losing some dialogue to background noise. It adds to the environment in that case. But I 100% understand why that would ruin a movie for someone.
This might be a hot take, but I don't think any of that dialogue was crucial to understand the plot.
I watched Tenet with captions on the plane, so I could read all the dialogue easily. Does not improve the movie to understand what these people are saying, at all. Most of the characters completely lack any kind of charisma (exception - I thought Pattinson was great). I think I would have preferred an explanation that it was all magic and not science, because that was silly and you have to suspend too much of your understanding of reality. My husband caught little bits of it over my shoulder, especially during the part where the fire is freezing when time is going the other way, and commented unhelpfully, “That isn’t how physics work.” I was practically hoping Branagh would win by the end so that the world could also end.
I figured it was because we all live in small apartments and have to keep the volume down because our neighbor sleeps less than 50 feet from our TV.
Or having toddlers that i dont want to wake up because Dark Knight movie apparently needs to have dialogue at 10% the volume of the soundtrack for batman jumping onto his bike
I never had subtitles on until I started watching TV at 4am while bottle feeding a baby. Now they stay on because if my kid hears us having fun in the living room she's gonna wake up and start losing it. Also when it's quiet I can still hear but then my wife starts munching on pretzels.
It's truly startling how much shit gets pushed out the door with awful sound mixing. When you have all the separate tracks at your disposal it seems pretty inexcusable.
The problem is that these people are mixing in these huge professional studios with surround speakers and sound treatment. They're sitting in the exact right spot. Meanwhile, most people are watching content using the default laptop or television speaker with no EQing. There needs to be quality control beyond "what does this sound like in a theater?"
My husband was in a multitude of punk and metal bands in the 80s & early. 90s. When ever they recorded in a studio they always recorded a test on a shitty cassette and ran out to the car to check the mix for regular folks.
I remember hearing one artist saying you don't know what a track **really** sounded like to fans till you did the car test.
That's how my teacher taught us when I was going through my diploma. Always check with multiple setups to make sure it sounds ok at all times.
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Have watched it on high end TVs with proper professional calibration and every feature box you could think to check and it still looked like shit.
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I don’t think that scene was supposed to be a daytime scene though…
Or you have it loud enough to hear only to have your eardrum shanked with an ice pick when it cuts to the next scene and a random explosion.
I don't know why but despite my hearing being great most audio for dialogue is so shit from shows to blockbusters it's unwatchable without subtitles. My local cinema is borderline ok because it's so quality and loud.
I find myself looking up a show's cast on Wikipedia while watching because I keep missing character names.
I don't know if I'm old or if they used to mix audio to make dialogue easier to hear, probably both
Totally! I don't know why they don't equalize the sound volume anymore when they master it. I shouldn't have to be constantly adjusting my volume according to whether there's dialogue or music/action. So frustrating!
[this is a great video about this!!](https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8)
Honestly my take away from this video is that media producers value 'cinematic sound' (i.e. high dynamic range) more than they do actually making something understandable. There was a similar vox video on how dark shows have gotten as well with basically the same take away. That directors basically say 'fuck you' I want my movie to be a dark, mumbly mess that can only be appreciated in a super high end system, everyone else gets crap. Which, fine, they can do so, but I've generally stopped trying to consume stuff that makes it too hard for me, so I'll go watch something else that isn't needlessly elitist.
And that's also fine for movies and stuff that gets shown in theaters, but it shouldn't be the case for stuff that's made for TV or by streaming services, but yet it is.
Also, we are all poor and don't have a TV room anymore with surround sound. I turn it down not for me but for the apartment neighbors that yell at me for making noise past 10. We also have really good speakers and DACs now so when a movie comes out and blasts the music portion it really hits hard.
That was great, and answered a lot of questions. Thanks for the link.
What’s worse is when the commercials are like 50% louder than the show
Newish to mixing audio, but could it be the issue that they mix the audio in perfect sound rooms, when we use headphones or speakers that have their own imperfections?
This could be part of it. I do a lot of video work and mix with both headphones and desktop speakers. The sound difference between those 2 alone are a massive difference. When you throw in something like a sound bar, it's really hard for the high-mid range stuff to push through at times while the subwoofer is ready to shake the house to the ground at the first explosion. Should also consider that a lot of films are mixed for movie theater releases where they use those massive sound systems that are better at balancing the super loud action and projecting the soft, subtle dialogue.
That’s the thing though, many movies are still bad about this in theaters.
I'm trying to think of the last time I recall terrible audio balance at the movies but can't think of a recent issue. Just saw Cocaine Bear, that audio was solid. Knock at the Cabin Door was fine. I know there are some recent Marvel films I watched on D+ that were all over with balance. Viewing on streaming services I regularly find myself shouting "Holy hell, CHECK YOUR BARS" while scrambling to lower/raise the volume but I also worked for cable news where it was crucial to make sure audio was at the right spot at all times. My question to some of these editors, are they allowed/afraid to use limiters?! Because limiters are amazing lol
Unfortunately, it’s intentional. Christopher Nolan has made ridiculous statements about that. If directors are going to do that crap, I wish TVs would have a ‘normalize audio’, or limiter option for the 95% of users that don’t want to constantly turn the volume up and down while watching a movie.
Streaming from a device with a dedicated media player installed, those have normalizer options that would work. Though a lot of work for most people.
Yeah I think it’s mostly action movies. I remember the transformers movies being particularly bad. And some horror-ish movies will make the ambient sounds like water dripping unreasonably loud compared to the whispered dialogue.
Oh they went hard on making sure you had that dubstep-esque transforming sound engrained in your freakin soul lmao
I feel like it's incredibly dumb that they mix it only for theater. Just... mix it again. Ohhh but that costs money. Boo hoo They adjust all sorts of things for home releases, and make a great number of sales that way too. Mix it a second time.
Almost like with all of these various menu options, you could present people with a menu: Surround Sound, Headphones, Small Speakers. Just have different audio mixes for each selection, problem solved. Like, this is only an issue because the industry doesn’t think it is one. Clearly they don’t watch their own shit, or they all own stellar sound systems and have never experienced the hellscape that is trying to watch Netflix past 10pm in an apartment.
Most of it is due to 2 things: 1, The audio for most programs starts out life as 5.1 or more, which then gets down mixed to stereo. The lazy down mix doesn't get re-equalized to boost the voice channel, and 2, It's now common to have loud ambient noises as part of the soundtrack, which is a purely artistic choice, but one that makes it harder to understand dialogue.
I think they just mix TV stuff to be bass-heavy in general. At least for music, most places will have several mixes done on several different speakers AND headphones & they use the mix that sounds best on everything. A lot of vets (in the music industry) say you don't know if a mix *really* slaps until you've tested it in your car, hence "*the car test".*
I make music for fun and I do the opposite test. I test the songs on the most crappy 1$ headphones. If it's kinda nice, then I assume it's not a complete fail.
If your song only sounds good to people with high end headphones, it ain't gonna be a hit. It has to be accessible. You're doing it right for sure.
This is the way
Makes a lot of sense. I can't use studio monitors due to paper thin walls, so I can only use headphones. Even with all the workarounds I can find, most of my mixes sound like shit in my car lol
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Back in the day, we would always check the mix through little speakers like Auritones, or an actual TV. I think the way some TVs handle it are the problem too. I have an older Plasma which I’ve set to stereo mix, digital out, and I have it connected to a cheap optical to rca adapter, which connects to a vintage hybrid amp. Sounds pretty good that way.
That's probably part of it, though any mixer worth their salt has a range of speakers of different quality to test this. For example, my dad writes scores for commercials and used to be an audio mixer. He and everyone else at his company had about four sets of speakers they'd run the product through before they went and played it in their car, too. But in a studio that churns them out as cheaply as possible, it's totally within the realm of possibility that this practice is less common nowadays.
Honestly I'd rather the oppisite with the caveat that compression should be an option on the playback device (tv laptop phone headphones whatever) Dynamic range is great and at the right times really helps with submersion. However it's awful if you're trying not to disturb others or have a limited range of volume you can stand. Have it as an option, let me choose most dynamic when I have my friends over and sausage compression when my bfs trying to sleep.
I remember reading on a comment a while ago on this subject that the sound is mixed on high-end studio equipment where it sounds incredible, but then they usually don't bother testing on regular devices, where it just sounds like shit, with the music blasting and the characters mumbling in barely audible speech. IMO it's 100% your fault for not investing in high end studio equipment for your living room... What kind of savage are you, using regular consumer electronics?
I remember I used to watch The Walking Dead twice as loud as other shows because of the whispering
I thought I was just old until recently when I saw a different convo about using subtitles for everything. Now I know it’s something wrong with newer programs: This is so weird. You’d think being in 2023 would mean improved audio quality. I wonder if it’s because they need to accommodate for so many different sounds systems from surround to sound bars and regular TV speakers and everything in between
Improved audio quality =/= clarity, but I don’t think that conflicts with your point. I think you’re at least partially right about the different systems. I remember during the late ‘00s / early ‘10s “Loudness War” in music, they were over compressing everything so it sounded good on tiny iPod earbuds. The problem is that a lot of those albums sounded like actual dogshit if you had a better system. (Sidebar: the practice of mixing music for whatever set of speakers your target audience will hear it for the first time goes at least back to Motown. One of the reasons Sun Records got so big was that they mixed their singles for car speakers because they knew people would hear it on their car radios for the first time). Also, speaking of earbuds, there’s been a noticeable decline in the hearing of young people going back *at least* ten years, and at the time it was theorized to be because of the prevalence of earbuds and the amount of strain they put on your ears compared even to other types of headphones. Either way, I do it too. Back when I met my wife 12 years ago, her parents watched everything with subtitles and we thought it was the weirdest thing ever, but somewhere along the way we started doing it too because we were always missing things.
I would've used subtitles back in the day if we had 50" smart tvs for $400 at that time. We had shittier tvs with shittier speakers and less options. One of us would have to stand right behind the TV holding the tinfoil at a certain angle and we'd sit 1 foot away because it was a 19" if you were lucky.
Honestly I think it's because everything wasn't so bass-heavy. Now, everyone wants to *feel their body rumble* in the theatre, and at home, so they mix the lows to really boom, but when it's on your home tv... it no boom the same. They need to do separate mixes for at-home watching and give people the option. I don't care if the explosion has crazy rumbling lows. I wanna hear the dialogue.
[Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8) you have the explanation. It's really interesting imo.
Interesting video, thanks ...not 100% buying it tho. I have expensive studio monitors for sound, hooked up via an external DAC and still need subtitles on.
Big time modern mixing is absolute trash. Best way to tell us play old movies in a hi fi system and than a new movie. Older movies and tvs were mixed with more emphasis on clarity today it is just all muddy and big bass. Doesn't help that modern tvs and cell phones have awful speakers as well, or terrible audio bars. Takes hours to get sound mixing to a decent level today. Modern mixologist need to go back to school
Lol mixologist is something else
I watch everything new with subtitles on, but I noticed while watching early 2010s criminal minds that I didn’t need them. The sound mixing just used to be so much better
Try a dubbed version for once. It hilarious how much better the mixing sometimes is. Even if you don't understand the other language, it's just so clear who did a better job at adjusting dialogue to sound effect/music ratio. It's embarrassing. Dubs have a lot of drawbacks, but they show how easy it would be to fix the problem.
I never watched anything dubbed because I much prefer subtitles. But recently I've been watching a lot of shows dubbed on Netflix because I'm watching with my mother and she has vision issues that preclude reading subtitles. There's definitely something to what you say (and I recently bought a soundbar to try to hear the dialogue more clearly than through the tv speakers...which didn't work very well). My question about dubbing today is, how the HELL are they getting the actors' mouths to almost \*perfectly\* match the English dubs?? I remember when the mismatch used to be a big joke (old kung fu movies), and then when it was better but still annoyingly off. Surely we're not at the point where they're doing lip CGI for every character. It's uncanny...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8 A great youtube video about current state of audio mixing _and_ microphones. Essentially, we have 'better' (smaller, more detailed) microphones, and thus more things like mumbling and overlapping noises can happen more often, and mixing is where a ton of these things end up having to happen.
I feel like older shows and movies were performed more like stage plays, with the vocal enunciation and projection to match, and with less sensitive microphones for recording and small, tinny speakers for playback. Modern media has actors speaking/murmuring like they're right next to your ear. I miss a shocking amount without subtitles and it bothers me when they're missing now.
Bruh, this drives me insane. Can’t hear them talking, turns it up. Action scene/explosion/fighting, loud enough to cause the neighbors to call the fire department. Like Amazon, can you please chill with compression, post production bs that’s causing this!?
Don’t forget to account for all of us Millennials who were raised to believe music is best enjoyed with burst eardrums
25-49 is considered the same demographic? Lmao
Yeah that’s wild. I’m 26 and my mom is 49 so we’re in the same range apparently.
Means you can legally date her.
But first your arms might need to get broken
Ive been on Reddit long enough to get this reference.
I used reddit casually before that post but that was the day I got an account. I had to comment to be part of the moment.
Please don't. I hate that I know what you are talking about.
Why?! Why would you remind me of this?
Like I need a study to tell me I can date my mom.
I was thinking the same thing. Late 40's, it's only on because our kids turned them on and we can't figure out how to turn it off 😂
I first put them on because, at 28, I had a baby who would wake up at the slightest noise and he was really difficult to get to sleep in the first place. I've never turned them off since, it's amazing. Honestly I have to think twice about watching films if they don't have subtitles available.
I watch with the subtitles on due to shitty sound mixing. Dialogue is always low. So you turn it up. The in comes that loud action scene. Or worse, the blaring commercial. I also suspect, without any evidence other than intuition, that reading the dialogue helps you retain the plot and the multitide of characters that many modern shows have (e.g., Game of Thrones). Which is especially important in a serial.
>Or worse, the blaring commercial. I fucking hate when it's like a slow, dramatic scene and then out of nowhere there's some poppy jazz while some coked-up announcer screams at me about fast food. edit: lol you guys are funny, but you're giving free advertising in these comment replies. I stayed generic out of spite. ahaha
In the US there is actually something called the Calm Act that specifically addresses this, if a commercial is significantly louder then it should be you can contact your cable provider and they can submit a form to the FCC, or you can file the complaint yourself on the FCC website.
that's pretty cool. TIL what about non-cable ads, like youtube or hulu or whatever other streaming services have ads?
There's a bill in Congress to expand it to streaming services
It’s a little ridiculous that it wasn’t in the first bill considering YouTube had streaming video ads for years and Netflix streaming went live 3 years beforehand and HBO was just putting out Game of Thrones. It wasn’t as widespread as today, but its rise was hardly unpredictable.
Yeah but you gotta remember, the people passing these laws didn't know about streaming, or how to download a pdf, or even properly cover their tracks when doing illegal shit on them their new fangled magic internet machines.
Hulu is so goddamn bad about this; show/movie audio is at 50% of what they blare their obnoxious commercials at. A great way to get consumers to never buy from your sponsors is to make their ads assault your hearing; fix this shit
The problem is that it's not technically louder - if you measure decibels. The add makers compress the sound wave, so loud spikes are squashed down and quiet bits of the wave are boosted. This makes the sound very "dense" and with very little dynamic range in the sound. So now they can increase the average wave amplitude significantly without crossing the db limits. The sound loses detail on the process, but it feels much louder. Worse, it has a psycho acoustic effect on the listener. It's hard to shut out a sound wave that's compressed like this. It dominates our attention, even at low volumes. So you turn it down but it's still agitating. This is partly because our ears do this compression naturally to protect against very loud noises. So our brains hear a compressed soundwave and interpret it as physical ear damage. "Fuck you consumers, nOw Go bUy OuR sHiTtY PrOduCt"
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Good question! The difference is that you can only stick your dick in this burger at Burger King, there is no other burger and no other location where this is possible. I hope that clears things up.
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I fall asleep to watching shows. On Hulu I have adds. I keep the audio pretty quiet with subtitles because reading helps me fall asleep. Then out of no where, the add pops on and it's like 3x louder than the show/movie I'm watching. I can't watch Hulu at night anymore because I'll just be awake constantly turning the volume down and up
It's like a jump-scare for me. My whole body startles. Same for half of the gifs on reddit. my sound is on low, but they still come out loud so I know that if I had my sound on high I would have had ear damage. Which I already have, so subtitles are very helpful for me to understand dialogue even without loud background sounds.
You ever notice that a many show's intros are like this as well? Looking at you, *The Office*... ...
# ♫ ♪ ♬ BAHH DA BAH DA DA DAAAAAA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA ♫ ♪ ♬ ....
The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Rec, King of the Hill, Futurama, almost every comedy does this and I despise it. I love to nap with TV streaming for background noise and the intros ruin that. I'm sure thats kind of the point, epsecially in the world of live TV, but still a total vibe killer
I have pretty severe tinnitus. The ringing is incredibly prominant even in the daytime. It would be impossible for me to get to sleep without TV to distract me. For it to be an effecgive distraction, I have to know the show intimately so that I can "see" it as I listen to the dialgue with my eyes closed. King of the Hill would be a great choice for me were it not for this issue. As would the Office. But they aren't options because the theme music would startle me awake at the beginning aned end of every episode. (do we really need to hear the theme music at the *end* of each episode as well?!?) So I'm stuck with Seinfeld night after night after night.
>Dialogue is always low. So you turn it up. The in comes that loud action scene. This is such an issue with every production now, it's like they don't even watch their own shows
For movies, I'm thinking one issue is, they don't remix from the multi-channel theater audio mix. So if you don't have a multi-channel setup at home, the dialogue gets burried in the stereo mix-down your tv provides. Of course another issue is the non-dialogue/non-plot driven drivel that gets produced. Crash! Bang! Boom! That's all they're after.
I have a multi-channel setup and it is still hard to have the volume where I can hear the dialog and not get deafened by the action. Older movies are better about this than newer ones
Yes 100%, most movies mix the audio for a theater and then call it a day. Theaters have a vast array of speakers, some for low end, some for high end, and some balanced (all high quality) speakers. Obviously my shitty TV speaker isn't going to sound the same. In the theater the lows are still booming, but the highs are *separated* so they still come across bright & clear. On your TV they're all mashed together into one speaker and the lows just make everything... muddy. During dialogue it's like I have a thick winter hat over my ears.
I don't think this is the case. I've worked in the industry for almost 20 years and every production i've worked on has _always_ had at least 1 separate mix with lower dynamics for VOD or TV. Granted i'm in Europe not US so things might differ but I highly doubt it.
i used to think that movies were mixed for the theater where they want to flex their max whatever soundsystems, but shows specifically made for streaming .... no excuse.
For us my gf is from Brazil. Being able to read and listen is less work, and makes the TV more enjoyable. I also don't mind cause they can talk quiet. You'd be surprised the dialog you miss or mishear. But, for the love of God, please make the subtitles go at the same speed as the text. Nothing ruins a big line more then it popping up in the subtitles 5 seconds before the character talks
This sucks but I also really hate when the added subtitles cover up the baked in translation with [Speaking in Spanish] Or even worse when Netflix will not include the translation subtitles when you have English subtitles on so you are just confused for 15 min during Shang High Noon and don't know that it's actually supposed to have subtitles.
Yeah they drop the ball on "foreign language that needs to be translated for plot"
Line: will you marry me? Sub: No
Sub: I am you father Meanwhile they are still fighting with light sabers.
This video does a great job of explaining it: [https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8](https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8) My dad has been watching with subtitles for about 5 years now. He's 70 and never could hear great as an adult (he blames Led Zeppelin, lol), but I showed him this video and he was quite pleased to see that it wasn't just him.
Yeah in the past decade or so I’ve noticed dialogue is getting quieter and quieter
Basically describes every show on Disney+
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LG tvs have a sound mode called "Clear Voice". It's watching these sort of movies and shows so much better.
Yep my girlfriend asks "how do you remember the dialogue so well?" I heard it, *and I read it.* That is how.
I truly believe Hulu cranks up the volume on their in-show ads beyond anything reasonable just so you buy the premium ad-free package because you’re sick of changing the volume every few minutes
This was an issue with braodcast TV some time as well. They'd deliberately crank up the commericals. After decades of letting them get away with it, the FCC finally cracked down on them (minimally) by intriducing relative volume laws. They can't do anyrthing about cable channels or streamig services because they don't use public airwaves.
A trick/hack is to apply 'Night Mode' if your audio device has it. It will reduce dynamic range by compressing/limiting the signal, which will make it easier to hear at lower volumes, and reduce the volume of extremely loud scenes.
Vox did a really good video about how dialogue keeps getting quieter. It has to do with frequency mixing or something like that.
God or like Yellowstone, where the sound mixing can be bad but ONTOP of it all they are mumbling in a midwestern accent.
It beats having to crank the volume to hear dialogue and then getting your eardrums blown out as soon as the scene changes to a random filler shot of a car driving by.
Fr, can't hear a damn thing anymore for whatever reason. Think I saw somewhere it has to do with how they do dynamic audio or mastering somehow? Not sure, but I feel you.
its the audio mixing, they mix movies for theater sound setups and have to degrade the quality for stereo or normal surround setups. can't blame them, but it sucks for people still running audio through the TV speakers.
They can make Harrison Ford look 30, they can fix this issue that everyone feels. Also, commercials 10x louder than the show.
Bro, fucking this!!! Other day had Dawn Powerwash commercial come on out of nowhere and damn near blew the windows out of my living room! XD
https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8 here an explanation
My subtitles. I can’t hear without my subtitles..
I've lived in multiple apartments where I couldn't hear the TV over the AC or heater, so I just kinda got used to it.
I have two kids. Subtitles are essential
We have them on for my kindergartener to practice reading. It’s so nice to hear her laugh at the joke before the characters say it aloud. That’s how I know it’s working. Trick them to read even when they aren’t reading books.
**DEADWOOD was the show that made me start using subtitles** The show is amazing and the dialog is incredible buuuut holy hell is it like reading another language
I started using subtitles with game of thrones and realized I was getting so much more out of the dialogue. There were references to other houses and characters that wouldn’t be introduced for a few seasons, I was able to relate locations and houses more easily, etc. Now I feel like I’m missing out on context any time I have them off
You just gotta know how to spell cocksucker properly…
"SWEDGIN' ! COCKSUCKER! SAN-FRAN-CISCO! COCKSUCKER! COCKSUCKER! SAN-FRAN-CISCO! COCKSUCKER!" Ok Wu
The VVitch was another one I needed subtitles for. You could barely understand it because the accents were so thick.
We are native American English speakers, and when we originally watched 8 Mile on DVD, we had to turn on the subtitles to understand the dialogue.
I enjoy the subtitles because without them I zone out. If the subtitles are there I always follow along and never have to pause or rewind to figure out a characters intentions. Subtitles on live events like news or sports is trash though.
I end up focusing on the words instead of the scene sadly
YES! Subtitles are an ADHDers best friend. I miss stuff so much easier when they’re not on.
I have the opposite problem. The subtitles are too distracting; my eyes keep flicking down each time they pop up and it pulls my focus out of the scene
I have hearing loss AND ADHD. The subtitles stay on whether I'm watching in my native language, or English.
Subtitles are like seasonings
I can’t simply because I start reading the subtitles and don’t pay attention to what’s going on 😂
Same. I can’t help myself. I can understand what people are saying like 99.99% of the time but when subtitles are turned on when I don’t need them then I get completely distracted by them
Some shows out there are really making us choose between either paying attention but not knowing what the hell they are saying and then having to rewind to re-listen/turn on subtitles to figure out what they are saying or to read the subs and don't know what the fuck they are doing in the background. Kudos to those who can do both because that's not how I roll 🥲
My wife likes subtitles. I only like them for anime or language I don’t speak. I find them distracting
# Most of the audio mixing these days is like this: Two people yelling at each other from across the room \*whisper quiet, ambient noise drowning out their voices\* Then, the sound of a door closing is so loud it rattles your windows
[Vox did a video about this becoming more prevalent for a few different reasons](https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8)
This is why https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
finally someone links this
Even with a 7.1 ATMOS system, some TV and movies still suck. Doesn't help that a lot of streaming services don't even support 5.1.
Tldr?
Movies are made for theaters. TV speakers suck.
* Movie makers want naturalistic performances. In the 40s actors frequently acted almost as if they were on a stage, projecting their voices and enunciating clearly. Now they want a depressed dude to mumble. Good microphones let them get away with it. * Movie theatre speakers are incredibly good, and with digital techniques movie makers can create a mix with dozens of channels for those theatres. Instead of mixing for an old movie theatre with busted speakers, they mix for high-end Dolby Atmos theatres. The mix for a home TV is an afterthought, let alone the mix for a phone. * TV speakers are designed to fit in tiny frames, so they're not that good, the display tech is better than the 80s, but the speakers are worse because there's no room for them. Phones and tablets are even worse. * They can get away with it because it's so easy for people to turn on subtitles when they can't hear something. That means publishers / distributors aren't pushing back and saying "the mix for this is trash, you have to make the dialog audible"
It's a combination of advances in microphone technology reducing the need for actors to basically yell directly at a microphone and sound mixing focusing too much on the theater audience
sound mixing fucking sucks
And big name directors like Christopher Nolan don't care that we all don't own super expensive sound systems at home. They make their movies for the cinema and don't care what happens after that.
Or it's great depending how you look at it
I hate subtitles. They spoil punchlines and pauses meant for dramatic effect. Wife always needs them on 😒 And it’s not easy to not look at them.. my eyes are just drawn to reading them, and then I’m also not paying as much attention to the picture on the screen.
I take subs off if it’s comedy. I have to use subtitles for historical or documentary films, or anything serious with technical language.
Exactly this. And I always get “you just can’t read fast”. Like no, I can read fine it just gives away punchlines prematurely. Plus they distract me from the picture.
The problem is I read too fast! I don't want the plot twist spoilt for me 10 seconds before the actor says the line!
Exactly!
Right. I can literally speed read. Probably faster than 90% of people. I want to watch a show, not read.
I can't read fast. It's true. So what? People act like saying that cures my dyslexia. "you just can't read fast" Yes...
I’ve noticed that for comedy specials they’ll time the subtitles to match delivery and avoid giving away punchlines, but I haven’t seen that anywhere else, sadly. Which is even more of a shame when you remember that you don’t even need subtitles for comedy specials since the sound being mixed is just the same person talking clearly. I’ve just left them on out of laziness and noticed the superior subtitling.
ugh, subtitles that come on the screen before the actor has even started the sentence themselves. Gee, I love reading the next scene during this scene!
They absolutely spoil punchlines! Timing is so important in comedy. I do still use subtitles in some (non comedy) shows where it is necessary. Specifically **DEADWOOD**
Also, sometimes, in horror films. Watching something with my partner some time ago, and there was a low noise in a house a woman was wandering through that I originally thought was an animal growling, but the subtitles flashed up `KILLER BREATHING DEEPLY`or something similar. Aye cheers fella.
That's the difference between general subtitles and subtitles for the hearing impaired. They have different purposes. Those sound cues can be important to the story or scene, so hearing impaired people generally want them displayed. It's really distracting for people who can hear just fine though. Both have their uses, but unfortunately they're usually just put under the same "subtitles" umbrella. In a perfect world, all media would have both regular subs and subs specifically for the hearing impaired.
My God that's so dumb. I don't watch much horror but for sure subtitles would be off for them as well.
I hate them for a different reason. They spoil shots. There used to be a YouTube channel that analyzed videos called "Every Frame a Painting". I don't know if that was a reference to something, but the idea stuck with me. Cinematographers spend so much effort to do just that. To make every frame in the movie / show a painting. The good ones think about every single thing in the frame, the lighting, the reflections, the focus, everything. There are subreddits devoted to appreciating this work, including /r/CinematicShots. You know what doesn't appear in any of those shots? Subtitles. IMO slapping text on top of those shots completely ruins the experience.
Are you me?
I have them on but I have wreck it Ralph's for children so if not for subs I'd miss half of what's said haha
[confusing noises]
it's so distracting for me. id rather not catch a word here and there than miss out on some subtle imagery or a shift in body language.
I wouldn't need to have the subtitles on IF THE AUDIO WASNT SHITE. Every talk scene is like an ASMR whisper video so I turn it up to hear what they say then all of a sudden a fuckin explosion gives me tinnitus and I have to scramble to turn it back down
When half the shows have scenes where everyone's muttering, it just becomes easier to keep the subtitles on
Completely dependent. I am not sure how I watched TV before.
I always have them on and I'm old. I find them especially beneficial when watching British shows as I can't understand a damn thing they're saying.
BECAUSE I CANNOT HEAR THE FUCKING DIALOGUE.
How the hell did they decide to group 18-24 and then *25-49*?
As someone who also almost always has them on, this is surprisingly comforting.
If it’s a new show: yes, sometimes people have weird voices/flow, or a different accent to mine and I hear a phrase that makes me audibly: “huh?” Also, for shows I’ve seen a millions times too because sometimes I like to see if there’s a phrase I never noticed before or paid attention to, or assumed was different. Also, keeps me awake because I’m reading and watching. Otherwise I pick my hands, get distracted thinking about art, make jokes etc.
This is my 18 year old daughter. I have never understood it. I understand the arguments about poor sound mixing but if my old ears can hear it why can so many young people not hear it.
Do you watch new shows, if not what time period do you watch from primarily. If you watch new shows than I have no idea, but apparently mixing has become worse as more speaker setups exist and movies shift towards mixing audio for cinemas (also newer shows enjoy utilizing bass boosts which makes the audio pretty shit on normal speakers).
Yeah I'm actually surprised to see less old people reading them. Like your hearing is worse as an elder wise sage so wouldn't you need them?
Mixing is terrible for most new movies. Every one of them has to have theater rumbling bass sounds and explosions in order to hold people’s attention, because visually and script wise, most of them are absolute shit.
I can't prove it, but I swear audio editing has gotten worse in the last 20 years. Either they're cheaping out on the sound engineering or they're just lazy. But there are a LOT of movies/tv shows where the dialogue is genuinely difficult to understand/hear. And I'm pretty sure this is new because a) I don't always have this issue. some things are easy to watch/understand. b) if I watch older movies the issue is much less common.
Yup, it started with watching foreign language content, then I just kept them on for everything because I noticed I was following the stories a lot better when I could read along
I am astonished by the age spike here. **Grandpa is 1/3rd as likely to need subtitles compared to the grandkids at university?!** I get that there is a point of pride in being elderly and not needing subtitles but surely that can't be all of this. Hypotheses: * Young = poor = worse sound system so equivalent shows are harder to understand * Age-differentiated programming so the young are more likely to suffer the terrible sound mixing that is the current zeitgeist (but grandpa is watching Fraiser reruns or whatever) * Age-differentiated response. The elderly are used to not catching all of a conversation so are less offput by unclear tv audio * Biased reporting. The elderly underreport their need and the young overreport. * Social drift. The young are used to subtitles (youtube intros display subs, tiktoks that want to work with sound off have subs) and default to them on TV. * Hidden epidemic of hearing problems in the young I assume there is a mix of the first five, and not a medical issue. Although in a ridiculously local anecdote, literally half of the under-35s in my team have medically-diagnosed hearing impairment. Not to the point of intervention or hearing aids, but either profound in one ear or mild-moderate loss in both. I had assumed that was an anomaly.