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This is a real pet annoyance of mine, and I have seeing apologist posts on the internet about it.
If the actors cant enunciate properly except when they're shouting, that's not adding realism, they're doing bad acting.
If the sound engineers can't get a good audio balance for anything except the loudest moment in a film, that's not a limitation of technology/sound physics, they're bad at mixing.
If the director can't keep all of this in check and make a film that people can actually enjoy, that's not artistic choice, they've made a bad film.
For the sound engineers, your not wrong, but they don't have the power you think they do. Asking for another take is an annoyance but accepted by the camera team and visuals, but audio is often overlooked, and you can't just keep mixing a bad take. But, directors are on a time crunch and so a sound guy saying "actually I know that take was perfect but we can't hear anything" is usually ignored.
This is a fair point. If people demanded their money back when a film has bad audio, I wonder if that might incentivise the industry to care more about this.
Nah, I have a good sound setup and I don't want to be watching movies with less dynamic range because some people are using their shrilly built-in TV speakers with their children screaming in the background or $5 earbuds.
If you don't want to have a proper 5.1 audio setup, it's not the director's problem, it's the media player. Audio compression, center channel boosting, and subtitling are things that media centers have been able to do for decades (e.g. Kodi), it's just that streaming platforms and TVs don't always support it because they DGAF. Do look for a "night mode" in your TV settings though, that's an audio compressor and I have one on my receiver. If you are using headphones, use a media player like Kodi that allows you to boost the center channel (which is dedicated to dialogue).
WHY are you getting down voted despite giving clear suggestions on how to get around this problem for people without a 5.1 surround sound setup?
people don't like spending money, and it's the entire problem. Visuals people will shell out money for a great TV, but then complain that the audio is terrible. Really people need to invest in both. If you are watching a movie on an expensive TV but didn't do anything for audio, well then of course it won't sound good. TVs aren't designed to have good audio. They give you a speaker to be able to listen to something, but it's a small cheap one or two in the back.
Fact is that for movies it's a video and audio, and people should be thinking about both. People don't need to go spend another 500 bucks on a 5.1 system, but even a cheapo sound bar for 150 is going to sound better - because they made it for audio. It's an audio device. I have zero surprise that people can't hear things well from a device that is meant to display visuals first.
I had a 5.0 setup before I even bought my first TV. I was just using my PC monitor until then.
It's counter-intuitive but decent sound comes first. I'd much rather watch Interstellar in 360p with 5.1 audio than in 4K OLED HDR with built-in speakers.
But when you say that people get mad because they spent a grand on a TV that sounds like shit and they feel they have to defend their choices.
Agreed. In computer terms it's similar to using integrated graphics when you bought everything else to be a gaming computer. I mean, the integrated graphics will work, but it feels like you're missing a curcial component there. Or buying a computer with a spinning hard disk as it's main drive now. You have to go into the purchase thinking of the whole usage in mind, not just what's on the screen.
Even if I had the money and desire for a setup like that, I would not want a high audio range in media because I hate loud noises and am very sensitive.
In my opinion the big explosion can be a little bit louder than the footsteps but there doesn't have to be a huge difference. I'll sacrifice some realism for my eardrums.
And why can't all dialogs be about the same volume either?
I guess it's a hot take, but dynamic range is a very useful tool, not limited to movies but also music and almost any audio that isn't just "talking heads".
I do want explosions to be significantly louder than whispers.
Not everything is a podcast / video essay that needs to be mixed to minimal dynamic range.
Right?! A track like Spanish Sahara by Foals that uses the full dynamic range is such a pleasure to listen to. Then there's In the Air Tonight which IIRC has a digital release with super compressed dynamic range. The whole point of that song is that it slowly builds up to a genre-defining drop, so it had better stand out!
But people want to listen to movies on their built-in TV speakers with children crying in the background, and they don't want to understand how or why things are the way they are, they just want to complain that the world doesn't revolve around them.
Does night mode fix mumbly american actors who are unintelligible at any volume?
It should reduce the difference between the quietest sound and the loudest sound in a movie, but if an actor doesn't speak clearly in the first place, I don't think it helps much.
Yeah, that's what I was getting at - many new / recent movies have such poor election that it's hard to tell what they're saying.
Well, you gotta try it first to know if it helps or not. A lot of the time, it really is just the problem of the movie having an audio dynamic range that is too much for the sound system to handle. In those cases, it really helps when you compress that range to better fit your speaker's capability.
I spent $400 on headphones to address this and despite having had enough issues with build quality to not recommend Bowers & Wilkins specifically, they sound damn good.
So the excuse you are making is that the performer on stage does not need to speak clearly and loudly, because the people in the first few rows can hear them fine.
Good tip on night mode though.
I've noticed that some of the best enuciators are people that have a lisp and have obviously either taken speech classes or have self taught themselves how to overcome their lisp with better enuciation.
I present to you the master orator and renowned pugilist philosopher Mike Tyson.