I’m constantly having to turn the volume up and down depending on the what the scene is. It’s not just me either. A lot of people I know have resorted to just turning on the closed captioning so they can hear what they’re saying. I don’t remember this being an issue before.
In: 2005
I’ll take a risk and speculate that you’re sitting in your living room and want good sound, but mostly just want to hear what people are saying. The problem is that maniacs like me want explosions as big as what we get in the theater in our home. I’ve got speakers taller than my mother-in-law, and I want to exercise them. Movie theaters spend orders of magnitude more on their sound systems than I do, and they want to exercise those to get a good ROI. Theaters and maniacs pay more and shout a LOT louder than regular people, so our opinions carry more weight than they probably should.
One of the easier ways to exercise good rigs is what’s called high dynamic range. Which is to say, making the soft parts as soft as possible and the loud parts so crazy they blow out your windows. Back in the day the limitations of what was in the average person’s home meant engineers had to compress things to the point loud and soft weren’t that far apart.
But that’s not the case today. Flat-screen TV speakers suck so badly almost everyone has a basic home theater setup. And so engineers think it’s ok to cater to maniacs like me, because folks like you have the same basic ability to get the high dynamic range that I do.
What they don’t get is that you’re not a maniac. You’re not gonna optimize your room to reduce the reflections that make those loud parts so painful. Tbh, cheap theater owners don’t do it either, and that’s why it feels like I’m getting foil rammed into my ears whenever I go watch a movie in most theaters.
And you’re right, it has gotten worse. I didn’t used to need to turn my rig up to the point I know it’ll get complaints from the non-maniac parts of my family (i.e. everyone else) when things start exploding. I need to do it all the time now. I *like* it being loud, but the rest of the fam, not so much. My girls out-vote me 2-1, so I end up pumping the volume up and down the same as you.
I’m not sure what the solution is.
If you have Netflix, look at the language options and pick the audio track that does NOT have “5.1” on it. I think Netflix always defaults to the 5.1 track and I find the other version’s dialog is easier to understand.
It’s not your speakers or your setup. It’s how the movie was made. I was just discussing this yesterday with my friend who helps create and determine audio/video standards. It’s such a problem, that the TV manufacturers have come up with a new future standard to put the vocals on their own dedicated channel so the sound bars and TVs can fix the audio for consumers.
However, if you have a surround system, try to increase the volume level of the center channel. If you have an equalizer (in your TV/soundbar/whatever), try turning up the levels on vocal frequencies.
Additionally, you can crank up the volume in your living room to make the sound as loud as a theater. Then you’ll be able to hear the vocals, but the music and explosions will be really loud just like in a theater. Though, it’ll sound/feel louder than a theater to you because you’re in a smaller space.
I have to say, as an older person, it wasn’t always like this, even with less advanced technology of the time.
Very hard for me to go to movies…no longer care if I get looks for keeping my fingers in my ears. And TV…gotta have captions.
Have to believe this is deliberate and not due to speaker issues.
My wife and I have everything with subtitles while still having the sound on. I don’t remember why we started doing it but we like it lol
Play with your TV settings. Most TVs have various sound settings where you can optimize the sound for speech.
[looks at Christopher Nolan] yeah Chris, why is that?
Text captioning on all TV at home these days. Actually prefer to keep the volume low and read what’s their saying. 😕
Shitty mixing / balancing (I don’t know the terms to describe it). If the music or other background sounds are leveled too high in the mix? Dialogue is lost.
When my kiddo was pre-tween, he picked a show that could have been nice. The stories seemed good, for a older kids show. But it was unwatchable because the balance was so off.
My kiddo, at the time, was 10? 11? Wanted to bail.
I don’t recall the name of the show.
Source: Im a mix engineer for film & TV.
Eli5: Mixing films and shows with a big difference between the quiet sounds and loud sounds gives impact and provides a cinematic experience. This sucks for home viewing because domestic environments are extremely noisey relative to a cinema and the quiet sections get lost.
Simply put: The quietest film/TV sound has to be louder than your ambient room sound in order to be heard clearly. The quieter your ambient sound, the quieter the mix be yet still be heard.
Eli10: Companies mix film and TV to different loudness standards which are intended for different viewing environments. Cinemas are sound treated, quiet environments with good speakers so when mixing for theatre you can make the quiet sections super quiet and they will still be easily heard. This makes the loud parts seem even more impactful.
The phrase to describe the difference between the loudest and softest sounds is “dynamic range.”
Why is it more prevalent?
The problem with a lot of modern media, especially as TV shows have become higher budget and more cinematic, is that they are mixed with a wide dynamic range to give that cinematic experience. The problem with this is that the majority of people watch said shows in a domestic environment that is much noisier. Streaming has thrown a spanner in the works as typically things made to be publicly broadcast to a domestic environment had a smaller dynamic range to cater for that environment but sites like Netflix don’t work to those same standards.
This just skims the surface but covers enough to hopefully answer your question.
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