At some point, sound mixing just went to shit. My partner was in the industry working in post-production and agrees with me. The sfx are loud and the dialogue is not - thus all of the smart tvs and settop devices supporting features like “Dialogue Boost.”
I used to notice it a lot with poorly managed concerts - the singer’s mic would get drowned out by the instruments. I guess all the people who were responsible for that moved to LA.
But now I have a soundbar and two HomePods as speakers, and still turn on subs. And that might have something to do with the number of concerts.
Thank you. I thought I was old man yelling at clouds over this. Drives me crazy. The worst is when the sound editor thinks some dumb pop song really slaps and turns the volume WAY UP and drowns out everything else.
And OMG the low talkers. Low talking and dimly-lit scenes are all the rage these days. I think part of it is Galaxy Brain people in the streaming biz thinking this is how they save time and money.
I thought I was going deaf because I struggled to make out what people on screen were saying. Then a friend got a bunch of us together to watch a TV show that was filmed in the 90’s and I could clearly understand every single word being spoken. The problem is on the production end.
Unpopular opinion: Subtitles detract from the watching experience more than mishearing some words. tv / movies are a visual medium, the image on the screen is primary to it. And it doesn’t matter how fast you read, the subtitles still degrade what you get out of watching the show. If your eyes are constantly darting down to the words and then back to the image then you’re missing meaningful things that are happening in the image. And the text physically blocks part of the image. And the words appear on screen at a different timing from how the actors speak the words, which further worsens the emotional impact you can receive.
Yes, i agree, dialogue mixing has gotten very bad and it sucks to miss words that are said, but imo subtitles ruin the experience even more
I get what you’re saying and I wish I didn’t need subtitles, but it’s kind of hard to understand what’s going on when 90% of the dialogue in modern shows is unintelligible mush.
What genre are you watching typically? I find that very few shows and movies give me this problem.
Actually… Have you considered it’s your speakers? I have this issue with music. My high fidelity speakers are perfect, but I’ve got a cheap anker speaker that’s nearly impossible to listen to lyrics on. It’s all bass, and no treble.
I mostly watch anime these days so I’m reading subtitles regardless. The dialogue sounds pretty clear, though; I may not know what the words mean but I can easily make out the syllables being spoken. American stuff, though… If it was made in the past 15 years then it’s probably going to be full of mumbling and too-loud background noise. I suppose it’s possible that my friends have cheap speakers, but I remember sometimes having the same issue at the theater, back when I still went out to see movies.
More recently, I’ve been watching old British and American shows that a friend has been streaming. Stuff from the 60’s and 90’s. Didn’t have any issues understanding what was said.
the image on the screen is primary to it.
Exactly. Cinematographers spend so much effort to put everything in the scene in exactly the right place, lit exactly the right way.
Watch, for example, this breakdown of how Akira Kurosawa frames everything in a scene to draw your eyes in certain directions. If you look away and don’t see the character looking left and right with shifty eyes, you miss a key part of what’s happening. Or, take some of the more famous individual frames in movie history and imagine them with white text on top of them. It’s especially bad when it’s a very dark scene, or a scene where the key elements are in the shadows.
And the words appear on screen at a different timing from how the actors speak the words, which further worsens the emotional impact you can receive.
Not only that, but sometimes the subtitle ruins the suspense. Like, in the audio version there’s a faint sound you can’t quite make out, but that’s how it’s meant to be. But the subtitle says something like [sound of coffin opening].
It does suck that a lot of dialogue mixing these days is terrible. But, I’d rather have to go back and listen again if I missed something than have the entire movie downgraded by constant subtitles flashing up on-screen.
Besides, I think you need to train your ear. It’s the same way that people have trouble with foreign accents. When they haven’t heard them before it’s initially hard to understand. But, over time, you learn to hear that accent better. Similarly, I think people who always use subtitles are losing and/or never developing the ability to hear the dialogue properly, so they have more problem with it, so they continue to rely on the crutch of subtitles. Even though movie dialogue mixing is significantly worse these days, it’s very rare that I actually have trouble hearing and understanding the dialogue. It’s an effort sometimes, and it’s annoying that they’re so badly mixed, but I can still understand what’s being said and don’t need to either go back and listen again or turn on subtitles.
Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of the first image in the header of that site you linked having white text superimposed over it?
You can see how it detracts from the image though, can’t you?
Oh bro, you’re preaching to the choir here. I absolutely hate subtitles. Even with foreign content it’s a shitty requirement to engage with the media, although preferable to dubbed content for me in most situations. I have an Apple TV, and tvOS allows you to set subtitle size, color, border type, background type, and brightness, which really help make them much more bearable in these unavoidable situations.
That said, I’m not hating them as much as I thought I would in Shogun, probably because they’re edited in to the master by the producers and they actually look decent compared to that harsh sterile blinding typical white type of subtitle that most included forced subs use.
Yeah, sometimes they’re unavoidable, Shogun is ok, but I still think everything would be better without them. I wonder if there’s a version of Shogun without subtitles for people (not me) who understand both English and Japanese.
On the subject of Shogun, one thing that’s hilarious: the English is supposedly Portuguese. It took me a while to figure that one out. Like, when they’re speaking Japanese it’s Japanese, but when they’re speaking English, it’s supposed to be Portuguese. At least, I think? Although there were some scenes early on that I think where they were speaking English. I guess there’s no way you could get away with a TV show where the two actual spoken languages were Portuguese and Japanese, with everything subtitled for English speakers. But, the way they did it is really weird. Like, the actual Portuguese speakers sometimes speak English with a Portuguese accent, and the Spanish speakers speak Spanish-accented English, which is maybe supposed to be Spanish-accented Portuguese, but the main character speaks a variant of British English, but it’s supposed to be accentless(?) Portuguese?
Yeah, the whole Portuguese but spoken in English thing is kind of ridiculous I guess. I did read an interview about that though and they wouldn’t have been able to find enough actors who spoke both Japanese and Portuguese to the level they would need.
And I’m not sure about the subtitles for people who can understand both languages. I do know that the subtitles aren’t “forced”, they’re mastered in to the video. I pirate my shit, if they were forced subs my player would use my system settings for size, positioning, color, opacity, etc. I would assume that the English portions are subbed the same way for the show in the Japanese market, but idk.
I hate subtitles; the only time I’ll put them on is mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Mmf mmnmm fmm ffmmm. What? Oh dammit. -click-. When the elocution is so poor I can’t make out what they’re saying.
