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Can’t Hear What Actors Are Saying on TV? It’s Not You
- glandium 4y agoThe best part is when you increase the volume because you can't hear the mumbling, and then some sound blasts off and kills your ears and your neighbor's. That can be gun shots, explosions, or worse, the commercial break.
- CRConrad 4y agoThat "up the volume for commercials" is the worst. Not only commercial TV channels do that, but YouTube too.
- Vanit 4y agoI have subtitles on more often than not. My biggest peeve is when the subtitles spoil the name of a speaker we don't know yet /facepalm
- kwertyoowiyop 4y agoCan’t hear what the actors are saying, and can’t see them either because interior scenes are all now lit like a haunted house at midnight.
- azinman2 4y agoI think it’s because they assume you’re watching a night with lights turned off?
- pmontra 4y agoPeople watch videos in so different light conditions, places and devices nowadays. Phones, tablets, computer monitors, TVs. Public transport, car (even the driver!) park, restaurant, couch, bed, restroom.
- bigmattystyles 4y agoI’ve felt this watching game of thrones. I’ve always wondered though, aren’t tvs with hdr supposed to fix this? What should one look for?
- benhurmarcel 4y agohttps://www.theverge.com/2022/10/3/23386058/house-of-the-dragon-episode-7-too-dark-compression-my-eyes https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/3/23386058/house-of-the-dra...
- themihai 4y agoNo tech can fix incompetence. That being said some say it was just a budget cut(cgi is cheaper if you can't seen anything)
- prvit 4y agoGo on https://www.rtings.com/ https://www.rtings.com/ and buy any decent OLED TV. Solves this problem entirely. HDR can help if you’re watching HDR content, which most new content is starting to be.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 4y agoStreaming? Bluray? The video bitrate can easily be 5+ times higher on bluray
- bigmattystyles 4y agoIn my case it was streaming - I would think 95% of viewers stream.
- Mindwipe 4y agoHDR helps a bit, but in some cases it makes it worse, because the HDR grade has been done by a colourist on a $15k mastering monitor in a pitch dark room, and assumes that anyone watching at home is doing likewise. The dynamic range crush of the SDR version actually results in a brighter (technically worse, but brighter) picture overall, and is sometimes slightly easier to see than the HDR on a cheaper HDR set with limited contrast or in non-ideal viewing environments (like the average living room with lights on or a window). To be blunt, they are bad grading jobs when delivering a product to a general audience and there's not much getting around that. At least for HOTD it could be reasonably argued it's most egregious episode was simply one where there were significant filming issues at the time due to weather and they had to make the most of it in post (not very successfully, but starting from a bad base), but if we look at the Winterfell scenes from GOT for example that was just someone completely forgetting about average users.
- mrguyorama 4y agoThe darkness is especially stupid because most video compression just destroys and ruins everything even remotely unlit.
- selfhoster11 4y agoRiddle me this, why does stereo mixing done for foreign language versions sound much better? I suspect some combination of you know, actually bothering to mix down to 2.0 rather than 5.1 and hoping for a miracle, or audio mixing overall simply being done in a way that emphasises dialogue over the music score or background sounds.
- smorrebrod 4y agoFor foreign versions, dialogues will be dubbed after filming and recorded in a studio so it can sound much clearer.
- xwowsersx 4y agoThere was another article, also from WSJ, discussing some of this phenomenon: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-all-these-20-somethings-have-closed-captions-turned-on-11663386473 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-do-all-these-20-somethings-... I was relieved when I read that original article because I really did think it was just me. It really annoys me because when CC is on, my eyes tend to focus on them even if I don't need it for a particular sentence or scene. I feel that takes away from enjoying the film since I'm so laser focused on the CC. I've tried to ease my focus up a bit, but I just can't seem to do it; if CC is on, that's where my eyes go. I do wonder if a new UI/UX for CC could resolve some of that issue. Maybe something like using AI/ML to dynamically place the CC closest to the person speaking so I don't need to direct my eyes at the bottom of the screen and can have both the text and the actor's face in my field of vision? Anyways, just some random thoughts from someone who is increasingly annoyed by not being able to make out what the hell people are saying on screen anymore!
- NobodyNada 4y agoI also find CC distracting, but... > Maybe something like using AI/ML to dynamically place the CC closest to the person speaking so I don't need to direct my eyes at the bottom of the screen and can have both the text and the actor's face in my field of vision? I think this would be even worse, at least for me. Now not only are there distracting words on the screen, but they're also jumping around erratically! I wish there was an option to delay closed captions so that they appear after the line is spoken, rather than before. That way, I'd be hearing the line before reading it, rather than the other way around, so it doesn't ruin the delivery. It would also make it easier to ignore captions when I don't need them, because I could just glance to the bottom of the screen after I miss a word rather than having to preemptively read everything just in case.
- ianai 4y agoIf I’ve got to use CC for video the point of the video is nil. Whole experience ruined. I probably don’t represent everybody but still enough.
- imbnwa 4y agoI had this problem massively with the English-speaking parts of 1899
- LilBytes 4y agoYep, same here. What a delightful TV show but understanding the actors speach which admittedly is gutteral at times was nearly impossible. It basically enforced CC for me at times.
- remarkEon 4y agoYes, the sound mixing in 1899 seemed uniquely bad, which is unfortunate because it’s an otherwise good and interesting sci-fi show.
- me_me_me 4y agoI watched few episodes in English, then visited my parents who watched dubbed version of it. I usually dislike dub as its usually an 'audiobook' movie. But to m y surprise it was so much better. Also its so dark (pun intended) just use stronger lighting.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoArticle appears paywalled for me
- deadbolt 4y agoArchive for you: https://archive.ph/Izkhd https://archive.ph/Izkhd
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timbit42 4y agoTry the web browser add-on, "Bypass Paywalls Clean". It transparently bypasses over 300 news media paywalls including WSJ.
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoI was on my phone, but thanks anyway.
- gigel82 4y agoI have Closed Captions / Subtitles on all the time, I cannot watch any movie or show made in the last 10-15 years without it (I would hear 20% - 90% of the dialogue otherwise). Don't find CC distracting any more, and as an added bonus I am enjoying a lot more foreign content because I'm using CC anyway so why not.
- smegsicle 4y ago> foreign content because I'm using CC anyway so why not and then you get to experience the phenomenon where you forget that a movie was foreign at all because you knew what everyone was saying just as well as if they were speaking in english
- charcircuit 4y agoCC is a transcription. They are not translations.
- jasonjmcghee 4y agoClosed captioning can provide translations. If it was specific to transcription historically, it no longer is today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning
- csmpltn 4y agoNolan's Tenet is a great example of this.
- rieTohgh6 4y agoIf someone told me it was on purpose in this one just to be more confusing I would believe it.
- xxs 4y agoSome part are purposely unclear, some video on the matter[0] [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgznB0-ICo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgznB0-ICo
- carewell 4y agoI watched it twice and hated it. Being confused by the unintelligible dialog is a big part of why I hated it.
- muh_gradle 4y agoCan't hear dialogue? What about not being able to see anything that's going on. Yes I'm looking at you Weiss and Benioff for that travesty that is season 8 of Game of Thrones
- silisili 4y agoThis is a big one for me. I'm not sure if I'm just getting older, but half the stuff on TV looks too dark to me. I'll just turn off movies or shows within a few minutes if everything seems too dark and gritty. My ears already are working harder, leave my eyes alone.
- washadjeffmad 4y agoThere seems to be an effect where the more visual information something is capable of, the more critical we become of its content. Go back and watch a VHS on a CRT TV, or even a DVD version of something that has a Blu-ray or HD version available to stream. It's abysmal, and yet we somehow managed to love them. After struggling to create single a receiver profile for modern streaming content to cover the range from "everyone's mouth is full of socks" to "pure sonic agony", I do agree that audio mixing has become something of a lost art.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> There seems to be an effect where the more visual information something is capable of, the more critical we become of its content. Maybe because when the creators stop being constrained by the medium, they get "creative"? > Go back and watch a VHS on a CRT TV, or even a DVD version of something that has a Blu-ray or HD version available to stream. It's abysmal, and yet we somehow managed to love them. Good or bad, at least the full range of colors was used. For example, I've watched tons of Star Trek shows of home-recorded VHS tapes on CRT TV, and I'd still prefer that to watching new Star Trek live action installments in 1080p streaming on a high-quality computer screen, simply because in the VHS/CRT/old shows case, things had colors, and I could actually see what's going on.
- genocidicbunny 4y ago
- cat_plus_plus 4y agoSo basically studios focus on flashy garbage rather than a good story and acting? What actors say should be the most important part of movie experience, not an afterthought. Same with concerts, drown out mediocre lyrics/singing with beats. Or bars, why even try to understand your date as a person if only short term physical hook up matters?
- TacticalCoder 4y ago> Rather than mixing for mono (one-speaker) and stereo (two-speaker) audio—which makes audio sound clearer on basic TVs—sound engineers today often design for a higher number of speakers and then scale audio down for less-capable systems. Does anyone know if moving to a "3.0" audio setup is sufficient to fix this? That'd be left+right+center channel. Several speakers brands, if I'm not mistaken, do name the center channel as "vocal" or something like that. Do people with a 3.0 speakers setup or more also have this problem of voices behind harder to discern than they used to? Or is this just affecting people watching movie using whatever stereo setup? I'm asking because I've got an "audiophile" stereo setup but don't really want to go to the trouble of moving to an home cinema amp + many speakers.
- jhoelzel 4y agoyes it is. But it can also be solved by simply getting a quality amp that will remaster it for you. The problem with your setup (if its build for stereo) is that you will have to replace the amp
- carewell 4y agoHow would adding a 3rd speaker change anything? The broadcasted signal is still a 2-channel audio, right? Is the amp just going to transform it to M/S and use mid channel for the center speaker?
- jhoelzel 4y agoWell actually what we mean is that some content is not in stereo and therefore you have a missing component. You can always set your system to dolby sorround even though you dont have the speakers for it, but what will happen is that you will miss a Channel. So lets say you are watching 5.1 content over 2 speakers and your amp does not break it down for you, you will be hearing the content of the people speaking weirdly low and all effects REALLY loud. This is because your tv is trying to send you audio on a speaker you are laking and thus it swallows it. This makes the voices of characters sound further away and can be freaky :D
- XorNot 4y agoWatching Andor recently this was in full effect: I was riding the volume control since even with a 3.1 setup, actors were still too quiet and explosions way too loud.
- mvhvv 4y agoI personally prefer to watch most things with subtitles. I'm usually extremely conscious of how much noise I'm making in the house, and I rarely ever want to watch something at cinema volumes. Good quality subtitles rarely ever feel intrusive, but I really wish there was a better distinction between subtitling and closed-captioning. Most modern streaming platforms seem to only offer one accessibility-focused option that combines both, and I find it hugely irritating to see text on-screen like "[SOMBRE MUSIC PLAYS]" or "[CROWD MURMURING]".
- Rebelgecko 4y agoFWIW I've gotten hooked on using headphones, even when I'm watching something on my TV. Even cheap BT headphones will give clearer dialog than a TV's crappy built-in speaker, without having to worry about making the walls vibrate.
- PainfullyNormal 4y agoI spent serious money on a sound bar a while back. I used it twice, sent it back, and I've been using the BT headphones ever since. One of these days, I'm going to have company over and I won't know what to do. Make the walls vibrate, I guess.
- amjnsx 4y agoThe LG C1 TV (and possibly any LG TV?) has a "Clear Voice" sound mode which make watching things using the TV speakers much better.
- sph 4y agoI'd rather have close captioning than nothing at all. There's many Amazon Prime movies I've quit because of a sentence I could not hear very well and they didn't come with close captioning. I hate that so much these days. My pirate setup at least comes with auto-synced subs for everything I watch.
- sogen 4y ago
- WalterBright 4y agoI like to watch movies in their native tongue, with English subtitles. Then, I attempt to learn the language by comparing the two. After watching a hundred hours of Norwegian shows, I now know that "tahk" means "thanks".
- ridgeguy 4y agoAfter ~70 hours of watching Finnish shows, the only word I can recognize is "ok".
- CRConrad 4y agoHints: Moi, hei = Hi, hello Moido, heido = Bye Kiitos, kiitti = Thanks HTH!
- WalterBright 4y agoDutch people tell me they learned English by reading the Dutch subtitles on American shows (because the Dutch market isn't big enough to justify dubbing). But I know enough German to know that the English subtitles only rarely match the German. So how do people learn English this way?
- sph 4y agoIt's easier to learn English with English subtitles, and stop often to Google some new word or idiom whenever you encounter one. I went from average in English comprehension to fluent in ebonics of the Baltimore area by watching The Wire.
- WalterBright 4y agoI've been watching "Power". It's difficult to understand the street slang, but with subtitles to help I've been learning: gat = gun strapped = armed five-oh = cop dime = call on phone
- 4gotunameagain 4y agoDutch is very similar to English. It is like the illegitimate child of English and German :)
- fifticon 4y agoI really miss the 'loudness compression' that was present on many DVD playback applications. We have a family routine of watching a movie together each friday night. I sit next to the stereo, as the 'grumpy dad', and twist the volume control up and down, depending on whether there is character dialogue, or things are exploding. If I turn it up enough for character dialogue to be audible, the 'exploding cars' parts are deafening. And if the exploding cars are tolerable, character dialogue is inaudible. DVD players used to have a hack typically called 'dynamic range compression' or similar. If I had a professional movie theater, the wild dynamic range would be cool. But in your basement without hifi dampening on your walls, it doesn't behave well :-/
- orhmeh09 4y agoApple TV has a feature that does this. It’s why I bought an Apple TV after having problems using a Roku in my small apartment.
- maccard 4y agoI've got two TVs, and a soundbar on one and all 3 have an audio normalisation mods, fwiw.
- SomeHacker44 4y agoDenon (and other?) Receivers have a feature called Audyssey which has a "night mode" which does exactly this. I have not used it, just the room EQ correction mode.
- brokenmachine 4y agoIt's called "Dynamic Volume" on the Denons.
- scrumper 4y agoI do enjoy that there's a big overlap between people who complain that all the dynamic range has gone out of music (the "loudness wars") and people who complain that there's too much dynamic range in TV and movie audio :) No dig at you, I'm exactly the same. It makes some sense - outside of a conductor introducing the 1812 overture I can't think of a musical scenario that needs to cover everything from a whisper to an actual explosion - but it's still amusing.
- toofy 4y agosrsly. how about they take small fraction of the often ridiculous out-of-place special effects budget and put it towards giving us good audio. like, just because you can do special effects doesn’t mean you need to jam them in literally everywhere to wow us.. i want to be able to watch a movie with my living room theater and have the audio match my system or in my bedroom and have it be clear on basic ass tv speakers. take some of that stupid special effects budget and give us proper audio tracks. sorry this is one of my pet peeves. there is no reason in 2022 that audio needs to be this muffled. they can do both theater quality and basic but they dont—drives me up the wall.
- afiori 4y agoI don't think that the special effect budget has a lot to spare. Often its size is due to cutting on-set costs and already relies on overworking the artists.
- klipklop 4y agoBuy a Denon or similar receiver with Audussey dynamic volume. This adds a small amount of lag but is amazing for keeping dialogue clear and loud without having a sound like an explosion wake everyone up in the house. It’s a good deal better than other attempts to normalize audio.
- ornornor 4y agoBe warned that Denon AVRs are a buggy mess that partially break every other update. I wish I had known that because I really hate my X2400h for it. The Audyssey auto calibration does make my speakers sound even better but everything else about this AVR is a drag.
- brokenmachine 4y agoMy Denon has been great, and I'm very fussy. There's no bugs. It even has a telnet control protocol. It's great. One thing I really like about it is you can factory reset it to the firmware it came with originally. So I don't get that nervousness when doing updates that it'll be broken or they'll change something that I don't like. My LG TV, on the other hand, has been blocked from accessing WAN on my router so it doesn't get updates.
- DoingIsLearning 4y agoStudios are designing audio for the top 10% percent of audio systems... solution: go buy a soundbar.
- spoiler 4y agoWhat soundbar do you use? All the ones I've read about say that they make sound worse; it was specifically about quality sound bars like Sonos IIRC
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- xxs 4y agoI guess it was a joke comment - most soundbars are not even close to an imax alike sound system
- carom 4y agoWill a soundbar help me understand accents? That is my main problem. Almost every show I watch has heavy accents for flair (fantasy) or because it was cheaper to do with non-US actors (action). I either have to watch with subs and miss the beautiful shots because I'm reading or rewind a couple times per episode when I can't get something. Off the top of my head - Northman, just watched it today, great movie, definitely stuff I didn't understand. House of the Dragon. Peripheral. It really feels like every show now.
- causi 4y agoI wish all media came with a "proper nouns only" caption mode. All these fantasy and sci-fi shows can make picking up names and places very difficult.
- dpkirchner 4y agoI agree and disagree. In some cases subtitles reveal information you shouldn't have yet like the identity of characters yet to reveal themselves. Sometimes I feel like the people that work on movies hate movies (or other people) with a passion.
- isaacfrond 4y agoAccording to the article movies are often mixed for high-end sound standards, like Dolby Atmos. As the owner of high-end audio stuff, I'd love to have the Dolby Atmos. Yet the streaming services all seem to be limited to 5.1. The HBO app, which I run on a playstation is, wait for it,..., 2.0! If those high-end audio stream are all available, why aren't they streamed? Or let me rephrase that, where can I get them?
- Mindwipe 4y agoHBO Max supports Atmos on some devices. Don't remember which off the top of my head. As do Netflix, Apple and Amazon.
- solarkraft 4y agoI'm in the fortunate position of knowing another language than english. While I'd much prefer watching with the original audio, sometimes I watch the dub because it's usually much clearer.
- martindbp 4y agoFrom the perspective of ESL speakers this is really bad. Most people become fluent in English by watching TV. If you need subtitles then your listening comprehension will suffer greatly. I grew up on Friends, Star Trek and Simpsons etc, all with very clear speech. Maybe we need some software to enhance speech and make it more legible. Not just increase its relative volume but also reduce mumbling. We shouldn't have to, but maybe with an automatic solution streaming services could more easily add the option...
- AngryData 4y agoI use subtitles on everything these days, but I also found a big improvement in hearing/understanding from buying a cheap pair of studio monitors. For speech you sort of want the flat response so the middle range where most speech is at doesn't get washed out. It sounded different at first but after a week I stopped noticing it and now pick up more sound effects and noises in the mix of media that for years I never noticed before. They are often used as the basis for audio mixing and what I want to hear is what the guy mixing the audio is hearing, so why not? Im not trying to replicate a rock concert in my house with earbleeding volumes and the "extra" bass and treble responce used to sell consumer audio equipment and speakers is counterproductive for clarity. Ill be integrating studio monitors into my audio setups for the rest of my life after buying my first cheap pair.
- novakinblood 4y agoSomewhat related, I learned a long time ago that each broadcast station (in the USA) mix their audio in a different way during NFL and college football games. I noticed Fox sports mixes crowd noise at a higher level—-drowning out the announcers; my opinion. The other day I walked into our living room and heard the TV (the the Ohio State vs. Michigan game) and I immediately said to my wife “oh, so the game is on Fox?” She said “nope, it’s ABC…oh, you’re right! That’s why it sounds weird.”
- trynewideas 4y agoThere are a few budget-related factors here - remote vs. on-site production, number and type of field-level mics. One soccer league I watch broadcasts matches in three places: streaming-only, cable-only, and OTA-only. Streams get the smallest budget ($10k) and have the worst field-level audio, just one mic usually positioned away from the loudest fans and near the benches, which means the coaches and bench players are loud and clear but everything else is muddled. A 20k-attendance sold-out stadium in full-volume cheer sounds hollow. They're also remotely produced with off-site commentators, so the director and audio mixer (who only has the one field mic anyway) don't even know if the crowd is _supposed_ to be loud to the viewing audience. The OTA-only matches, at 10x or more budget, get mics surrounding the field and behind the goals, mics on field-level cameras, and depending on the venue additional mics in or pointed at the most raucous section. They're also produced on-site with on-site commentators, who modulate their voices along with the crowd noise. More resources and more on-site attention result in a much more dynamic and engaging mix, the director has options to switch to a field-level camera and raise its volume, and so on.
- tzs 4y agoMany video playback devices or apps have some way on their remote to do a skip backwards of N seconds, with N typically somewhere from 10 to 30 seconds. What I would really love would be a way to do that and at the same time turn on subtitles (or captions if subtitles aren't available in your language) for N+10 seconds. A separate button for this would be ideal, but a setting that makes the regular skip backward also do the subtitle thing would be fine too. Alternatively, I'd be OK instead with a "toggle subtitles" button that toggles between subtitles off and subtitles on (with the language being whatever one was last used).
- c22 4y agoMy Roku TV automatically turns on closed captioning when you use the replay button.
- techdragon 4y agoThis was demonstrated as a feature of the AppleTV … on stage no less… however I’ve never been able to get it to work so I’m not entirely sure what’s up with it beyond the original demo that I can’t find a video link and time stamp for. Pretty sure it was the days before apple put the keynotes onto YouTube but I’m sure someone with better memory may know the exact presentation and which part to skip to.
- scrumper 4y agoIt's a Siri feature, press the mic button and say "What did [he/she] say" and it'll rewind a bit, turn subtitles on, and then turn them off right around the point where you asked. I've found it to be a very well implemented feature. If I use it more than three times or so I'll just tell it to "turn subtitles on" for the duration. Edit: s_weber below beat me to the punch here, I had my draft up too long :)
- s_weber 4y agoThe Apple TV does this (reversing and turning on subtitles temporarily) if you ask Siri something along the lines of „What did they say?“.
- entropicgravity 4y agoI often prefer to listen with a small speaker (sony x12/13 is great) close to my ear. To the sound sounds more natural because we used to hearing conversations in real life at about 130cm. Your tv has to have bluetooth though to make this work or get a tiny computer (Asus makes some good ones) and run Linux Mint on it. Yeah I'm aware this would be beyond a lot of people but for some it can be done. Still though I wish there was a button I could press to squeeze the dynamic range of loud movie sound tracks. Often when the explosion sound comes in the whole house shakes. Hard can it be?
- spicymaki 4y agoI usually need subtitles to understand what is going on these days due to the mixing. This along with TV shows in HDR being too dark I am going to need to go back to reading books.
- whalesalad 4y agoI feel like a lot of this is due to surround sound audio or lack there of combined with your tv or soundbar set to the wrong setting.
- texxtxxet 4y agoMaybe helps explains why a lot of plotlines nowadays are just watching two people send each other text messages
- aidenn0 4y agoI have a 3.1 setup, and I am worried I'll get hearing damage from the explosions at any volume level that will also let me hear clear dialogue. For all of my BD/DVD movies, I encoded a second audio track with dynamic range compression, but that doesn't help me with streaming. My receiver (Denon) doesn't offer DRC, instead it has something it claims is "better" called "dynamic volume" that just means I can't hear any dialog for about ten seconds after an explosion, because it's so slow to respond.
- atoav 4y agoWhat strikes me most as a former professional in film audio postproduction are the national differences on intelligibility standards. German speaking audiences (where I worked) are used to extreme standards of clarity, to the point where a studio recording quality is what you have to go for. Most German commercial shows and dubs would work just fine as audiobooks. Meanwhile in the US originals there is a litany of mumbling, half words, half sentences spit out, chewed down and all, not only would you have to force actors to do this over here, but everybody would also experience it as bad craft. Of course this comes from somewhere: recording clean sound on set where the microphones cannot be in plain view is challenging and overdubbing always produces a clean sound if tou don't put in work to change this. Few directors even in Germany are going to make a compromise on set if the sound guy complains (trust me, I have been there and I tried). The German speaking part of Europe as the biggest dubbing market of Europe employs 52% of all voice actors according to wikipedia. But in the end if an audience and a nation of professionals is used to do it a certain way, thay way might persist. US production companies keep getting away with this, so why invest more and risk for getting a sound that doesn't match a audience's expectations?
- kazinator 4y agoIt's amazing when you watch some science or engineering video in black and white from the 1950's, how crisply understandable the narrator is.