Post memes here.
A meme is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme.
An Internet meme or meme, is a cultural item that is spread via the Internet, often through social media platforms. The name is by the concept of memes proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1972. Internet memes can take various forms, such as images, videos, GIFs, and various other viral sensations.
Laittakaa meemejä tänne.
The sound is often so fucked up. Music, explosions, guns, cars etc are so fucking loud, but conversations are very dim, as if people are almost whispering. It's often very hard to hear what people are saying, especially when eating crisps.
I always use English subs, even when watching stuff in my own language (Dutch)
If you have a soundbar or sound system turn the night mode or quiet mode setting on. It compresses the dynamic range of the audiotrack basically lowers the sound levels of the loud sounds
So, the solution to completely fucked up sound is to use a device to mangle that sound back into something which isn't complete shit?
And yes, I understand it's about the director wanting the loud sounds to be loud. But, when your art direction means that a major (if not majority) of your audience is going to have to "fix" your artistic direction, your artistic direction is the problem.
p.s.: don't mean to jump down your throat, this is just one of those things that grinds my gears. Along with the "let's make everything too dark to possibly see" art direction which has become popular.
If you have a proper surround system than usually soft dialogue isn’t as big of a problem since the voices are on the center channel and don’t share the same speaker as the music and sound effects which are on the other speakers. The problem arises when you listen to a surround mix on a stereo system or a cheap soundbar. The center and surround channels then gets down mixed into the stereo channels. Which can drown out the voices by the loud sounds since now they share the same speaker.
The real solution is adding a proper stereo mix as an option. Which used to be normal in the DVD era.
Maybe if Gen X had ever learned to level audio correctly with limited spectrum and inverse dynamics we could understand what people were saying between explosions.
You mean anything by Christopher Nolan? Actually infinite it really does depend on the film, some of them do have pretty good audio mixing but Tenant was terrible
Because they insist on mixing the audio in a shitty way so unless you want to fiddle with the audio-level every 5 seconds or have your eardrums shattered by action/suspense-scenes, you can't hear dialogue and need subs to understand what the fuck is going on...
Edit: and before people start saying "5.1 in stereo is the cause!1!!1!1", no forcing stereo does absolutely nothing to alleviate this.
It's not that it's mixed shitty, it's that they never remixed it for new releases. So it still uses the theater audio mix and range where there's 12,000+ watts of audio power available and like 12 audio channels.
When they actually remix it to a home release format the issues almost always go away. Even remixing for 5.1 most TVs can downmix to stereo just fine.
Hyperrealistic acting also doesn't help. Lots of actors insist on mumbling in a way that makes it hard to understand even if in a cinema.
What about direct to streaming shows. They still have the same problem. Not saying it does not happen, but its mostly shitty mixing. Especially in American shows.
For fucks sake, can we just get releases that have separate audio tracks for dialogue, music, and effects that we the viewer can decide how we want to hear it?
Video games figured this out
I don't want the explosions to be so loud that it wakes my entire house.
Yeah! It would sure be nice if we took accessibility issues seriously.
Like one lesson we learned as a society in the aftermath of implementing strong ADA laws (in the US) is that what's needed for the bare minimum for some of us is often really nice for the rest of us.
For example: if you're delivering a dolly of boxes to a building, the wheelchair ramp really beats working the dolly up the stairs.
It would be amazing if dialog were a separate channel, if only so that it can be boosted for the hard of hearing. If that meant more options for remixing for you and me - oh no?
It would be amazing if the subtitles were available and accurate. Great if you can't hear the audio. It's useful for scrubbing if you want to remember and find a obscure movie quote.
No, the directors intent is more important, and obviously you need a full Dolby speaker system to properly enjoy. /s
Yeh you can watch at lower volume with subtitles because even if you don't conciously look at them it still helps your brain interpret the sounds and make up for anything you miss due to the reduced volume.
Movie theater audio systems continued to go big blue baby boinking bonkers. Remember when the THX logo wasn’t survivable by children under 7?
This kinda makes sense to me.
We use subtitles because the sound mixing is fucking terrible in most media now. It's set up for massive theatres where dialogue sounds normal and gunfire or explosions sounds realistically loud. But I'm not trying to have realistically loud explosions in my living room on my Vizio, so the volume is set accordingly, meaning you can't make out words half the time.
I've got a decent 5.1 system. It brings the boom boom when needed.
Still need subtitles. I blame the lack of theatre trained actors. The Hollywood gang mumble.
Audio levels are mixed horribly and go crazy loud with music but i cant fucking hear anyone talking. It feels like around 2010 or something tv shows and movies were like "lets just forget about voices and let everyone hear explosions and shitty driving music".
Its not my ears because YouTube folks who can mix their audio properly are easy to hear. Anime is mixed well usually with voices.
Its the studios doing this for whatever reason unknown to us.
I use subtitles 100% of the time now.
For anything cinematic, the intent is usually to get more dynamic range. If you turn it up enough that the dialogue is audible, then the explosions will be as loud as an actual explosion. Fine in a movie theater, not so much in an apartment complex.
Mostly is because it's mixed for 5.1
The center channel takes care of most of the dialog and the rest is distributed to 4 satellite (and usually smaller) speakers but when it's down sampled to stereo everything has the same level
I for one love having to turn it right up to hear the actors mumble important plot points at eachother right before gunshots or jarring violin stingers damage my speakers/ear drums/wake my kids up.
Dunno why you're pussying around with subtitles lol.
I'm hard of hearing and Hollywood insists on making dialogue bearly audible, so I need to use subtitles to understand wtf the character just mumbled.
Also, she doesn't suck at eating popcorn, that's the suprise popcorn you find after you've demolished the rest of the popcorn.
I turn on subtitles to subtley force my kid to read. He's got ADHD like me, but mine made me read at a super early age, while he struggles with it. To me, it's a way to expose him to words and the spelling as they come. My dad struggled with reading as well and basically just memorized most words and their pronunciation instead of actually learning to read. If that helps the kiddo, then I don't mind it, but I secretly turn it off by myself, and turn it back on when I'm done.
basically just memorized most words and their pronunciation instead of actually learning to read
That’s pretty much the only option you’re Anglo anyway, there are basically no letter-> sound rules that apply over a non trivial vocabulary.
It's perfectly consistent if you follow the 400 normal rules and 1300 exceptions.
The rules make sense if ya break it up into Germanic and Romantic groupings, if it's Germanic in origin the phonetic spelling probably is right (weird accent shit not withstanding, I swap O and A sometimes) while if it's Romantic in nature it's either easy to spell because it's just straight Latin or it's a pain in the ass because it's one of the French words. Tertiary lone words from other languages groups tend to be with Germanic in that it has probably had its spelling rejigged to be phonetic in English, Welsh lone words not withstanding.
Also a lot of people forget that English is the international language, and most of the non-native speaker can't really hear the pronunciation correctly. Well, i don't at least.
most of the non-native speaker can't really hear the pronunciation correctly.
Either that, or the audio quality is just bad.
(I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan)
I turn on subtitles cue we can't hear shit when they talk
It's hard to understand poor pronunciation mixed with fast dialogue. I'm a native English speaker and I often struggle with high paced scenes. I basically always use subtitles for that reason.
Ants can't read dumbass. Subtitles don't cause ants, trans people do.
I've used descriptive audio to re-"watch" my favorite movies while driving for work. It's fascinating how the descriptions work with the time constraints to get the story across.
Here's a great podcast episode about how they are made: 20,000 Hertz - Audio Descriptions
I have hearing loss, and from this thread I gather most of you have it too lol. Yeah, probably sound mixing is bad, but do yourself a favor and get checked. Your life quality can really improve if you treat this condition.
I got my hearing tested and it's normal (for my age). I just have terrible auditory processing!
As a millennial that had Gen X and boomer relatives... So do they, especially as they got older.
How bizarre. I detest subtitles for myself as I end up reading rather than watching the content - compulsively.
I've never had an issue hearing dialogue so I'm perplexed as to what audio setups are being used to make things so lousy for so many people.
