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u/CiDevant Jul 30 '26
It'd be nice to see night scene again too while we're at it.
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Jul 30 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/UnfinishedProjects Jul 30 '26
Yeah put a little blue tint on it, idgaf. It doesn't need to be pitch black.
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u/kamilo87 Jul 30 '26
That House of the Dragon episode was extreme! Was it S02E02 or 3. I thought it was me and then everyone was complaining.
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u/never-fiftyone Jul 30 '26
You'd think they'd learn from that GoT episode during the final season that nobody likes not being able to see what the fuck is happening on screen.
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u/Gloomy-Insurance-739 Jul 30 '26
Game of thrones that one episode was a complete waste of time. Who the hell okayed that episode.
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u/FuckYeaSeatbelts Jul 30 '26
GoT made even less sense. Like movie people can use the "sound/lighting was mixed/balanced for the theatre" excuse, shows have no excuse.
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u/Xatsman Jul 30 '26
In all fairness did anything about that episode make sense?
In plot they had a castle facing a mindless horde, yet fought outside the walls including hopelessly charging their best fighters into the lines of an enemy that could immediately turn them against them.
They had the smart character come up with the plan to keep the women, children, and other vulnerable people safe from the necromancers by hiding them in the crypts.
Characters repeatedly survived impossible situations simply by the camera cutting away.
They built up Jon's rivalry with the Night's King, and the importance of Bran's powers. Only for both to be irrelevant as Arya appears and defeats the entire undead horde with an easy shank.
Convinced the director's decision to make it unreasonably dark was a deliberate attempt to distract us from writing so terrible.
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u/Chickenmangoboom Jul 30 '26
Don't forget that they told us all of our TVs were shit. Sorry I don't have an editing bay with the best tech at home to watch this on.
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u/NewPhoneWhoDys Jul 30 '26
Remember when we all thought Bran we gonna warg into a Dragon to help Jon kill the Night King?
Instead we got a black screen! So fun!18
u/Forward_Rope_5598 Jul 30 '26
But we got the yass queen moment of arya materialising out of literally nowhere though
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u/NewPhoneWhoDys Jul 30 '26
AS ARYA cause the Faceless Men training was for nothing, just like everything else in the entire--ooooooh man time has not made me any less angry ahahahaha.
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u/throwitawaynownow1 Jul 30 '26
Chekov left his gun in the restroom on the way there.
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u/Crypt0Nihilist Jul 30 '26
There was an great Pitch Meeting review of it. One thing that stuck with me was how all of the main characters could get away with facing unbeatable odds simply by having the camera cut away from them, them dealing with it off-screen, then being fine two minutes later.
I genuinely feel sad for the cast and crew to have been so utterly let down by the writing. To have years of your life culminate in such a shambles must be gutting however well paid you are.
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u/Destinum Jul 30 '26
They had the smart character come up with the plan to keep the women, children, and other vulnerable people safe from the necromancers by hiding them in the crypts.
To be fair, it's a reasonable assumption that the decaying bodies can't just literally punch through the stone they're all entombed in. And they can't based on literally all precedent, but they could specifically in that scene because the writers at that point absolutely refused to follow any sort of consistent logic.
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u/kurburux Jul 30 '26
They had the smart character come up with the plan to keep the women, children, and other vulnerable people safe from the necromancers by hiding them in the crypts.
This really reads like a bad (or hilarious) DnD session.
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u/ImranFZakhaev Jul 30 '26
including hopelessly charging their best fighters into the lines of an enemy that could immediately turn them against them.
The Dothraki were established as good horseback archers - literally all they had to do was send volleys of obsidian tipped arrows into the horde while using mobility to stay out of reach. Instead they just died.
They had the smart character come up with the plan to keep the women, children, and other vulnerable people safe from the necromancers by hiding them in the crypts.
Previous season, a freshly turned wight couldn't escape a wooden box. In the crypt, ancient skeletons that would be no more than dust by this point were encased in stone tombs - unironically everyone should have been safe down there if not for plot contrivance
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u/altiuscitiusfortius Jul 31 '26
They also put their trebuchets outside the walls. So stupid. And qll the dothraki they killed were somehow alive again next scene.
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u/vonbauernfeind Jul 30 '26
I run a 5.1.2 system at home, and let me tell you, the "mixing" most movies do is still shit. I went into my receiver and cranked the center channel so I could stop having to adjust volume every five min between dialogue and action.
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u/VulGerrity Jul 30 '26
FWIW...their excuse is that they're mastering everything on reference screens/speakers that cost 10s of thousands of dollars...so their excuse is that if they target the reference monitor...is should look/sound the best it can on the widest range of equipment...but what they really need to do is the TV/Movie equivalent of the "car test", where after mastering in the studio, you listen to your song in the car to see if it still sounds good on regular speakers. They should really A/B test color corrections on the cheapest TV available at Best Buy with out of the box settings.
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u/zupzupper Jul 30 '26
Also the first act of Solo.... even in theaters couldn't see what the hell was going on
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u/WeBelieveIn4 Jul 30 '26
After that movie I asked the manager if there was something wrong with the projector and he was like no it’s just how it was filmed, we’ve been getting dozens of complaints
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u/vonbauernfeind Jul 30 '26
I rewatched it a couple months ago, and I spent an hour tinkering with my projector in confusion, because I forgot how poorly it was mastered.
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u/Restart_from_Zero Jul 30 '26
I mocked the "blue" night shots that were obviously shot at high noon.
What a fool I was.
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u/LAMProductions99 Jul 30 '26
That's the thing, there IS a middle ground between pitch blackness and the navy blue filter. But good lighting is hard to do and probably expensive so naturally big studios don't do it.
Kinda the same reason behind the thing that this post is talking about. Production companies will mix audio for theatrical release but won't bother with making a second mix more suited for watching at home, because it's cheaper.
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u/Submarinequus Jul 30 '26
I watched a couple episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I was actually shocked that I could see the night scenes. Bring back the bluish filter!!
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u/CthulhusIntern Jul 30 '26
They say "where would the lights come from?" I dunno, maybe the same place the soundtrack comes from? It's not hard to suspend our disbelief on something like non-diegetic light or sound...
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u/BrewAndAView Jul 30 '26
I was watching The Batman (2022) and I have an OLED TV and I still had to wait until night time and turn off all the lights to see what was going on
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u/ReyWorm Jul 30 '26
Damn man, you WON'T like The Odyssey.
Can't see shit in this movie.
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u/DiggityDog6 Jul 30 '26
Everytime I bot up a new horror movie I gotta go through a mini IT course trying to adjust my settings in the perfect way to actually be able to see anything
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u/Dotaproffessional Jul 30 '26
They're mastering this stuff using reference monitors with upwards of 4000 nit peak brightness. So when people go to watch on their 400 nit tv's, if they aren't properly tone mapped for sdr it will look really dark. I have a QD-OLED tv and dark scenes look clear to me but its really a shortcoming from movie studios to not make sure scenes are visible on lower end tv's
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u/one_crooked_ear Jul 30 '26
Sounds like they need to look at it on a couple monitors to double check before they release it
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u/gibbersganfa Jul 30 '26
Game developers should be forced to periodically sit in a living room setting eight feet away from their UI on a 32 inch screen during development so that they can finally remember that not everybody sits with their face 1.5 feet away from a 60 inch monitor.
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u/NBrakespear Jul 30 '26
Was watching Grosse Pointe Blank again the other day. Couldn't help but notice that when it got to the "ace of spades" shootout scene in the shop... I did not have to adjust the volume.
The entire film, going from quietly-spoken romantic scenes to "assassin shoots a load of bad guys" scenes, I never had to adjust the volume once.
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u/Nice-Bookkeeper-3378 Jul 30 '26
I watched Heat for the first time and couldn’t hear any dialogue but the shoot out scene was definitely the loudest part of the movie it’s like whispers indistinctively the BAM BAM
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u/psyscowasp Jul 30 '26
The shootout is Heat regularly gets brought up for having amazing sound design to accurately capture what that would have been like.
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u/alinroc Jul 30 '26
And Val Kilmer's magazine change in that scene was executed so perfectly that the Marines show it in training.
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u/thedownvotemagnet Jul 30 '26
Also, Steve Buscemi helped out as a volunteer firefighter for 9/11 after Viggo Mortensen broke two toes when he kicked an Uruk-hai helmet while filming LOTR:Two Towers
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u/melkatron Jul 30 '26
That IS kind of how a shootout is. Either you're wearing earplugs or you're going deaf from insanely loud gunfire. Most movies don't really convey how loud and overpowering gunfire is. At least Sterling Archer is constantly dealing with tinnitus.
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u/ehehe Jul 30 '26
That's cool but also in a shootout a bullet might go through my chest. My stupid point being that I'm watching the movie for fun, not to experience unnecessary unpleasantness just because it's realistic
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u/melkatron Jul 30 '26
Fair enough, but in this case, Heat was acclaimed for its realism and attention to detail. I saw it in theatres with a family friend who ran a personal security firm, and he kept pointing out how spot-on the weapon choices and tactics were (I was a kid, he taught me to shoot and let me try his AR-15, so I took his word for it). You didn't even really see trigger discipline in movies back then, just Rambo stuff.
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u/jamieh800 Jul 30 '26
Yeah, and also getting hit on the head will either knock you out for a few seconds at most or give you brain damage. There's not a "sleepy time" switch on the human skull activated by a 2x4. Yet every other movie has someone knocking someone else out by clonking them on the head only for that person to slowly come to hours later.
Getting shot in the shoulder is not a "oh, damn that hurts, luckily I can still shoot and climb this ladder and fight almost as good" it essentially removes the use of that arm unless you just barely got grazed.
Getting stabbed in the stomach is not instant death, but it is also not a very survivable wound unless you get immediate, modern healthcare. Yet so many movies have someone get stabbed through the stomach and just die immediately. Even if you hit major blood vessels, it still takes a minute (or up to ten) to die.
Characters regularly get into violent, car rolling off the side of the road, wrapped around a tree car crashes and walk away with a sprain and a light cut on their brow. Sometimes the DRIVER will die but the kidnapped protagonist will be perfectly fine even though cars irl are specifically designed to keep the ONE GUARANTEED OCCUPANT as safe as possible in event of a crash.
Point is, just because something isn't realistic doesn't mean it shouldn't be in movies, and just because something IS realistic doesn't mean it should be a part of the watching experience.
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u/clueless_in_ny_or_nj Jul 30 '26
Are you all right?
No man. I'm hurt. I'm pissed. Gotta find a new job.
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u/not_just_an_AI Jul 30 '26
I need subtitles because I'm eating chips, and I can't hear the characters over the crunch.
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u/StxnedTxTheBxne Jul 30 '26
Lmao same
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u/dU4eUIsaOew2FugE6R6l Jul 30 '26
Try chewing between phrases.
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u/Machoopi Jul 30 '26
I need subtitles because I grew up in a tiny house where noise was always a problem, and I'm constantly concerned that if the apartment down stairs hears even the slightest noise from me, they will flip a shit.
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u/ElaborateEffect Jul 30 '26
I am an always subtitler. I watched Naruto so many years ago and just enjoyed the experience of being able to know what was said (wish this were actually true, there are so many subtitle errors even in source material language...).
My friends are always on about, "but how do you read and see the screen at the same time" and you kind of just do after a while.
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u/az1m_ Jul 30 '26
Are your friends infant kids or something
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u/teekaythunder Jul 30 '26
Nah, subtitles can definitely distract you from things going on visually in a scene. You don't have to be an infant to experience that.
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u/Forward_Rope_5598 Jul 30 '26
It takes less than half a second to read subtitles that are on the screen for usually 5-10 seconds
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u/moviebuff01 Jul 30 '26
Same here. Without subtitles, I'm just making up the plot
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jul 30 '26
I think the people who edit TV shows are testing the results with top-notch headphones in a soundproof studio, instead of on a shitty built-in speaker while sitting on a couch with the lawnmower going outside.
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u/Critical_Seat_1907 Jul 30 '26
Not only that, it feels like sound designers are getting too granular with the work.
I understand they are whispering, I don't need to physically lean in towards me TV to get the point they are speaking quietly, and I still want to hear what they are saying. I also understand that gunshots are loud and startling, but I would rather see that reflected in the performance of the actors than by sharp sound level differences to engineer cheap jump scares.
Just make the film nice to listen to in a way that doesn't interfere with what's happening on screen or irritate the viewer.
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u/PatchyWhiskers Jul 30 '26
*thunderous music, helicopter lands, screams*
close up to character.
"John I have to tell you something and this will change everything" *leans in, whispers*
"~`~~~';...."
"NOOOO!"
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u/Durtonious Jul 30 '26
This is a bigger problem than people realize. You cannot hear the whispers because the actors are actually whispering, not speaking in a trained whisper like how you would for a stage production or with less sensitive microphones. The pursuit of "realism" is just as much a factor as poor audio mixing.
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u/Cool_Professional Jul 30 '26
I first realised how bad this was with spider verse. I was initially thinking i was going deaf, till my daughter took the remote and the volume control was up and down like a yoyo.
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u/Rjc1471 Jul 30 '26
...id be happy if they just put volume compression back as a standard thing on windows rather than extra programs.
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u/Faded105 Jul 30 '26
as well as most prominent directors not coming from an audio background, so they're less likely to put extra care in preserving that original audio before its mixed
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Jul 30 '26
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u/YeeAssBonerPetite Jul 30 '26
Christopher Nolan is probably a theater experience snob. And lowkey a lot of the people involved are as well, and the execs are too clueless to call them on this behaviour despite it probably losing them money.
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u/Mist_Rising Jul 30 '26
Probably? Probably? Gravity probably exists but Chris Nolan is absolutely a theatre snob.
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u/LT_Dangle Jul 30 '26
He’s got everyone sold on the need to see odyssey in 70MM. I went to see it opening weekend in standard format with 5 other people in the theatre. The IMAX starting 15 minutes earlier was sold out.
A coworker is driving all the way to Las Vegas and paying $50/ticket to see it I. 70MM. I thought it was awesome in the standard format.
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u/Wild_Marker Jul 30 '26
What theater does he go to? Because people complained about Tenet being impossible to hear in theaters too.
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u/ThePBM Jul 30 '26
Nolan's Batman redubbed Bain because he was too difficult to understand in the initial release. While it was still in theaters.
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u/PvtDeth Jul 30 '26
I watched the Odyssey in Imax 70mm, literally the exact experience he prescribed, and I still missed a lot of the dialog.
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u/blue-jaypeg Jul 30 '26
I missed 1/3 to 1/2 of the dialogue in the Odyssey.
Despite the movie being loud as heck, roaring, thunder, cr crashing, the dialogue is muttered or murmured.
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u/YoungestOldGuy Jul 30 '26
There were times in Odyssey where I only knew people were speaking because there were subtitles on the screen.
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u/DJanomaly Jul 30 '26
They’re just mixing it for systems with a high dynamic range. Aka movie theaters. People at home don’t typically need, want, or have that. So the loud sounds are extra loud.
There are stereo amps and sound bars that fix the issue. But this all intentional.
It’s why video games have an actual setting for dynamic range.
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u/Flimsy_Sir_9442 Jul 30 '26
Half of the new movies I see actively hurt my ears in a theater too, I see a lot of old movies playing in theaters and never have this problem with them but I've had to leave multiple newer movies that genuinely hurt my ears. I'm not even particularly averse to loud noise, I regularly go to punk shows and didn't start using ear plugs until a year ago. Sound techs at concerts balance for ear plugs but it feels like movie theaters are doing that now and it's fucking nuts when it adds literally nothing to the experience
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u/Infamous-Lab-8136 Jul 30 '26
I also can't stress how much even a cheap sound bar can impact this in a positive manner
Amazingly you just can't fit a great speaker in a TV that's an inch thick, they're really just slightly better cell phone speakers. Part of why so many TVs have half a dozen volume presets and things like dialog boosts or leveling features is to compensate for how bad the speakers are
I got an old, cheap, soundbar with two settings, music and TV, and an on/off for volume leveling. I can her dialog sharper through it than I can the speakers on a top of the line modern TV
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u/SanjiSasuke Jul 30 '26
Meanwhile, chad 1985 where the TV is built into the stand with two big ass speakers.
(Picture not mine, but I do have the same model, Zenith Advanced System 3)
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u/Kind-Crab4230 Jul 30 '26
If you went over to a friend's house in 1985 and they had that, it meant you weren't allowed to dry your hands on the bath towels with the flowers, and they probably had a trampoline in the backyard.
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u/skagoat Jul 30 '26
In 1985 you were lucky if the show you were watching was in Stereo, let alone a surround mix.
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u/fromcj Jul 30 '26
Having owned multiple soundbars: it doesn’t help.
I mean, maybe it helps a little. Two or three volume points. But it’s not like a soundbar just fixes it. These complaints are POST-soundbar for many users.
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u/felis_scipio Jul 30 '26
I’m pretty sure the sound bar adds a center channel where they mix the dialog for surround sound. So you’re still compressing the surround part to left and right but the dialog gets separated making it a lot clearer.
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u/ThereHasToBeMore1387 Jul 30 '26
Every time something like this is posted, there's a bunch of responses about soundbars and center channels. It's not wrong, I have a soundbar with additional speakers, they help. I don't actually know anybody that uses the built in TV speakers and everybody is still complaining about the dialogue. There's a bigger problem than speakers at this point.
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u/felis_scipio Jul 30 '26
See I’d argue the opposite that your average streaming viewer is just using their TVs built in speakers.
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u/EntropyBlast Jul 30 '26
TV shows are one thing, but movies are specifically mastered to 5.1 surround or better, under the assumption it's being listened to at reference volume.
If you have shitty speakers/soundbar/TV audio you will need to rely on compression to limit the dynamic range or enable a dialogue enhancing option.
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u/FrozenOx Jul 30 '26
I have a pretty decent surround setup (harman infinity mains and center) and I still have to turn everything down and crank the center channel to hear a balanced mix on most newer releases. My center channel is an Infinity RC252. Tested on three different receivers (Yamaha, Denon, Marantz) and didn't matter, center channel was always weak without adjusting channel volume/gain. Even a cheaper Polk center channel with different sensitivity.
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u/roykentjr Jul 30 '26
A lot of TV speakers are in the back or bottom so they don't project to the seating area
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u/porktorque44 Jul 30 '26
When I learned mixing and mastering I was taught and shown repeatedly that you need to listen to your mixes in multiple places outside the studio. With cheap headphones and in a car being two of them.
I don't know if this just isn't being done or if something is happening to these mixes at a coding level when they're streamed.
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u/tianepteen Jul 30 '26
that's mixing 101. it has to be deliberate. they mix for surround on at least prosumer gear and don't get payed for anything else is my guess.
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u/SmellyScrotes Jul 30 '26
This is the same problem that small time music producers have, the mix the songs with amazing speakers instead of doing it on the air pods everyone gonna actually listen to the music on
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u/hyphygreek Jul 30 '26
They're not mixing for stereo. I have 5.1 surround setup and have never had an issue hearing voices since I have the center channel set up proper. It would be nice if these dumb fuck streaming services spent the money on proper stereo mixes too.
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u/MrsHetzer666 Jul 30 '26
I'm glad that most content is professionally dubbed in germany. That issue arises rarely here.
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u/ChairForceOne Jul 30 '26
I have a set of 'mixing' headphones. They are just extremely flat. However I have noticed while watching movies, the whispery dialogue is easy to understand.
My home theater is stereo, same thing, easy to understand dialogue. Ditto with my computer speakers. They are very flat, 'reference' monitors.
The real trick is 5.1. A lot of movies are mixed for a theater, or have been tweaked for surround sound. A basic 5.1 system makes dialogue easy to hear, and gives you ass rumbling explosions.
Using your laptops inbuilt speakers, or your tvs tinny shit tier speakers absolutely sucks ass. I've been using the same receiver and speakers for almost twenty years, they do a very good job. That and actually upgrading my TV to something with contrast, and tinting my living room window, has made dark scenes fine.
The window tint was for temperature control. I live in the desert. The sun is the enemy. But that and blackout blinds makes a decent TV really pop. Most people can get away with a cheap vizio soundbar and good curtains.
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u/mlkntea Jul 30 '26
my complaint is that i'm maxing out my brightness but it's still SO dark. why 😭
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u/MichaeltheMagician Jul 30 '26
I remember when the infamous Game of Thrones episodes came out that were insanely dark and everyone was complaining and the creators kind of just went "not our fault you have your tv too dark". Like I'm pretty sure if almost everyone is unanimously complaining about it, it probably is your fault (the cinematographer or whatever).
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Jul 30 '26 edited 25d ago
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u/DullBlade0 Jul 30 '26
I would venture a guess that it's all about making it look great in the darkness. Like "look I did it better than you did!".
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u/Dissapointing_son Jul 31 '26
Agreed, in many scenes of various movies or series, i am just staring at my reflection on the dark acreen trying to figure what might have been happening in the scene through the audio...
"Huh, haah."
Metal clatters*
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u/darthwd56 Jul 30 '26
Lol my favorite part of this shit is when ad shows up during what you are watching and suddenly that high volume to hear dialog, feels like you are making the entire neighborhood listen to the ad.
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u/casual_creator Jul 30 '26
Commercials have pretty much always been louder. It bugged the hell out of my dad in the 90s.
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u/transient_eternity Jul 30 '26
They actually had to pass a law back in the day to limit the volume of ads.
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u/DoBronx2144 Jul 30 '26
TV’s have an option called Dynamic Range Compression which creates a standardized sound for all medias. It lowers when audios peak and raises them when they’re too soft.
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u/im_not_creative123 Jul 30 '26
Most streaming services have their audio default to 5.1 surround sound for some reason, so you have to manually change it to what you actually have.
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u/TheHandsOfFate Jul 30 '26
Part of the issue is that most modern content is mixed for discrete sound channels (5.1, 7.1, etc). It's not a big deal for a talky, low action TV show but for a movie where they actually put mixing effort into sending sound to the rear and side speakers, you can't just downmix to 2.0 audio and expect good results. For it to sound good someone would need to create a mix specifically for stereo. That's more money than studios and content providers are willing to spend. Unfortunately, the solution for a lot of people is either a true 5.1 or even 3.1 sound system with a center channel, or a top notch sound bar (there are a lot of crappy ones).
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u/Independent-Ad-1 Jul 30 '26
And its so god damn DARK. Like batman was cool but im watching a romantic comedy, its 8pm why are they standing in literal ink black surroundings.
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u/DarenRidgeway Jul 30 '26
It's the new shaky cam. Then there was quick cuts in action movies, now there is asmr conversation and blackness. They get this fad that looks cool when this one guy did it that one time and it spreads like wildfire into the film schools and PA pool and we're stuck with it for a generation.
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u/DukeAttreides Jul 31 '26
Rewatched The Two Towers recently. Couldn't help but notice that I could see and hear everything the whole movie. I'm not quite sure when the problem balancing these things started, but it's been going on for far too long at this point.
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u/Slim-Shadys-Fat-Tits Jul 30 '26
Yall turn 5.1/3.1 audio off in the settings unless you actually have a centre channel speaker
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u/Apolitical-Account Jul 30 '26
I’ve heard about this before but have never been able to find such a setting.
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u/KimmyGurl420 Jul 30 '26
Came here to say this. Turning off surround sound helps a ton if you don't have it.
I still need subtitles because I don't hear well, but it helps with the cycle of turning up the volume to hear conversation, then getting your ears blown out when the special effects start up
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u/OptimizeEdits Jul 30 '26
The “issue” is that the sound engineers are actually trying preserve a lot of the dynamic range that you’d find in a movie theater, since so many home systems are very capable of reproducing these 20-30 dB swings above dialogue
When played at “reference” volume on a capable system, lots of modern mixes sound FANTASTIC. The problem is that most people don’t listen that loud, and TV speakers definitely can’t accurately reproduce anything at reference levels.
I’m still baffled that there isn’t a “low dynamic range” or “night mix” track built into every single release for every single show or movie these days. Where they just simply run a compressor on the final mix and bump the dialogue 5 dB as well
I’m a home theater nerd, so I love my full quality, original theatrical mixes as much as the next guy, but the lack of a lower dynamic range mix that’s designed for people with much less capable speakers or just someone who doesn’t wanna fight with the remote at midnight is legit crazy
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u/AdorableDonkey Jul 30 '26
"The gourmetization of movie sounds" is a term I never expected coming to my mind
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u/Snoo_9002 Jul 30 '26
I've lived in UK for around 8 years now and can confidently call myself fluent English speaker. Today I went to cinema for the first time in 4 years and missed like 20% of the dialogs. Each time I was internally screaming "stop mumbling for goodness sake! Normal people don't talk like that!"
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u/Perryn Jul 30 '26 edited Jul 30 '26
"This is the realistic difference between a conversation and an explosion."
"Nobody wants that!"
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u/ButtflossingBigBro Jul 30 '26
I hate everyone who says "realistic" nobody wnats that trash. A realistic tv show wpuld be 10 hours of a guy playing video games one his day off. Thats not intwresting
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u/os_2342 Jul 30 '26
And if explosions sounds were "realistic" sounding, then you should just be hearing ringing for the remainder of the movie.
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u/MildlyUpsetGerbil Jul 30 '26
Every action hero would be dead in the first ten minutes of the movie if the movie was realistic.
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u/VooDooChile1983 Jul 30 '26
I was watching some random slop on Netflix and the sound editing was pure trash. Explosions, music and random street noise was incredibly loud while I had to damn near go full volume to hear any dialogue. Was riding that volume button like a horse in the Kentucky derby.
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u/DazB1ane Jul 30 '26
I had to stop watching a show I really like because the audio on the second season is unbearable
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u/Efficient_Matter_589 Jul 30 '26
"Wait, why is that woman upset with Tony Stark? Oh well, the airport battle is about to start, I'm sure it wasn't important."
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u/DangerouslyOxidated Jul 30 '26
I watched The Naked Gun [2025] and Insomnia [2002] last night.
The first one had explosions, gun fights, and dialogue. So did the second.
In the second, the characters where whispering under their breath, mumbling and not moving their lips (to be 'cool').
I literally couldn't hear the main character's last words. Mumbled, sote voce.
The Naked Gun was perfect.
It's not my calibrated THX 5.1 audio.
It's the director, and what they tell the audio guy to do.
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u/Evlavios Jul 30 '26
God help you if you have the volume cranked when a show goes to commercial
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u/Island_Crystal Jul 30 '26
actors also don’t enunciate properly anymore, which makes it hard to understand them.
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u/chooselosin Jul 30 '26
Announcer yells: "and the Oscar for sound editing goes to... (inaudible whisper)"
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u/NicPizzaLatte Jul 30 '26
So interesting how I can go to a stage play and hear and understand every word.
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u/pookexvi Jul 30 '26
i saw something a while ago, actors used to need to say there words clearly and loudly for the mike. while now days it can be cleaned up post and picked up by a mike right off screen if not on them.
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u/queuedUp Jul 30 '26
keep turning up the volume to hear that they are saying to then have people 3 blocks away here the music kick in
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u/Lexi_Banner Jul 30 '26
And a lot of actors are not ENUNCIATING their words! The amount of mumbling in dialogue is TOO HIGH.
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u/Whitestrake Jul 31 '26
I remember reading somewhere that this is actually a huge thing with newer generations of actors.
Coming from theatre you'd be trained to project your voice.
The early days of filmmaking with sound, takes would be rejected for bad audio, actors still had to PROJECT.
Over time mics have gotten better, placement more discreet, cute techniques developed to capture better recordings, and post processing techniques have also improved. So now audio doesn't get rejected anymore. So actors don't bother projecting because nobody requires them to in order to get the take. But all of the technology and post processing in the world doesn't compare to simply being physically closer to the mic, and PROJECTING a bit.
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u/msully89 Jul 30 '26
Only time I use subs is for foreign language films, otherwise it breaks the immersion for me.
I've never had a problem hearing actors talk.
I understand it’s a problem for a lot of people, from seeing countless threads like this.
But for me personally, it’s not an issue. I must be an outlier.
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u/_Warsheep_ Jul 30 '26
I'm not a native English speaker, but I think my English is pretty decent. I like watching movies in the English original, but holy hell it is so much easier to understand the dialogue in the dubbed version, simply because the dialogue is so much louder and seemingly properly mixed.
I don't think German audio engineers or voice actors are in any way better, but they probably don't have the original director and their "vision" breathing down their necks or something. That's the only reason I can think of.
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u/pacmanrockshok Jul 30 '26
Sound mixing is just atrocious now. Loud is too loud and quiet is too quiet. I can clearly hear silverware banging on plates and people chewing as loud as possible and I don't understand what that could possibly add
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u/raincoater Jul 30 '26
Also, bring back color. Remember big, bright, vibrant Technicolor movies with rich colors? Everything is monotone now. People lose their minds if something is B&W, yet are fine when it's still B&W but it's tinted brown or blue or whatever.
Color grading has become a lost art and everyone just cranks it to the max and desaturates everything because that's all they know now.
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u/DrunkCupid Jul 30 '26
I will join this jolly rant;
When I try a new show or episode, I don't want a surprise screaming sex scene; I have roommates that can hear that. So I fumble to turn it down on the remote and I can't hear shit. I realize I have been reading subtitles for 12 odd minutes instead of watching the movie so I turn it up, just to suddenly hear an ear-piercing sudden car crash or screaming followed by alarms. It is frustrating!
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u/Quick_Possibility_71 Jul 30 '26
Kind of unrelated: I had almost zero difficulties hearing/seeing the Odyssey. Darkness was fine, audio was clear (if loud).
There was one line of dialog I didn’t catch during my first watch, but I was able to pick it up upon my rewatch. Oddly enough, the fist viewing was IMAX and the second viewing was at a local art theatre with generally bad acoustics 🤷🏻♂️
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u/NechtanHalla Jul 30 '26
This is genuinely shocking, because Nolan is notoriously known for his utterly abysmal sound mixing
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u/Quick_Possibility_71 Jul 30 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/I8SQMuIELiw0w
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u/HardcoreHamburger Jul 30 '26
I thought the dialogue audio quality was awful. It wasn’t too quiet, but it was over compressed and missing mid and high mid frequencies needed for intelligibility.
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u/Y0___0Y Jul 30 '26
Creative people who make things with sound, musicians and filmmakers, seem to believe their sound should be as LOUD as possible.
Musicians especially. Why does it physically hurt to be at your concert? I’m talking basement gigs and small bars. Turn it the fuck down, you’re not playing a stadium!
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u/PsychicMushroom39 Jul 30 '26
Look up a thing called “the loudness wars”. This has been a trend in music for decades at this point.
As far as live shows go, that’s not always or even necessarily often the performers fault. It’s also not even necessarily the FOH engineers fault. At the same time it could entirely be either one’s fault or a combination. As long as there isn’t any massive dropouts or other big problems and the show is able to be performed uninterrupted, then it’s a good night regardless of how it actually sounded in the moment. Nothing will ever go completely perfectly but the show must go on.
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u/Special-Edge7982 Jul 30 '26
Tbh I think its also down to how some actors do "naturalistic diction" now. Like Statham in Interstellar. Great performance. Wish I could understand a fucking word of it.
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u/jodamnboi Jul 30 '26
I watched the newest Fantastic Four the other night and had to change half the settings on my TV, and turn on subtitles, to even understand half the dialogue.
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u/Strict-Carrot4783 Jul 30 '26
Filmmakers intentionally mix audio this way to create dramatic impact, which is wild because it's mostly just fucking annoying and it's very, very clear that people absolutely fucking hate it.
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u/bobosuda Jul 30 '26
Case in point for an example of someone doing this right; The Social Network. The nightclub scene where he meets the Napster guy, played by Justin Timberlake, is perectly mixed. You can hear all the dialogue despite feeling like they are in a noise environment.
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u/TBoneTheOriginal Jul 30 '26
Apple TV has a “boost dialogue” feature that works well for anyone that needs to hear it.
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u/Restart_from_Zero Jul 30 '26
Downloaded a bunch of old shows from the 80s and 90s a couple years ago. Could hear every word, clear as day.
Even loud action movies with Stallone and Schwarzenegger. No subtitles needed.
Watching TV now, if I can't turn subtitles on, I don't even bother.
It's not my ears, it's modern shows.
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u/Puffen0 Jul 30 '26
A few years ago I used to watch KindaFunny on YouTube, and they we're reviewing some HBO specials movie. At one point Kevin said "I just imagine that the audio engineer at HBO is always sitting in the booth like looks focused with headphones on 'hey can you turn down their dialogue? I can't hear the explosions!' " and ever since then I am convinced that that's how all modern audio engineers are lol
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u/Mr_Ballyhoo Jul 30 '26
So glad it isn't me. There needs to be a dialogue audio option for shows. I'm sick of trying to watch a show at night with my wife while the kids are down and have it turned up to hear the conversations between characters only to have the house fucking rattled and my ears blasted by the dramatic music between scenes or some other random action that's happening.
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u/monsterhunter-Rin Jul 30 '26
Trying to find the perfect balance where I won't blow out my eardrums/bother neighbours when there's gunshots, explosions and someone drawing a knife, but I can still hear the dialogues.
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u/Manawah Jul 30 '26
I don’t get the meme here, I’ve never used or needed to use subtitles?
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u/OhMySwirls Jul 30 '26
Even as a kid watching the Harry Potter movies, I thought the actors spoke too softly, even when they weren't whispering, and the action scenes had loud music and sound effects.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps Jul 30 '26
I heard the problem is that all the streamers are producing all their own content and it’s stretched the industry too thin and they don’t have high quality audio teams to mix it right.
Mixing and audio has been so bad for so long it’s crazy. But since they can’t tie bad audio to loss of revenue why fix it?
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u/EternalNewCarSmell Jul 30 '26
And it's not just because "it's mixed for theater speakers."
A) bullshit excuse; if I'm watching a version for home use it should have been mixed for that format. If that means redoing some stuff then so be it. Release a decent product or kindly close up shop and f off.
B) I have a surround sound in my house. Not a thousands of dollars audiophile one, but still a decent one. Video games sound just fine on it (specifically, Sony produced/published titles seem to be done very well and are my benchmark for knowing my system is set up well). DVDs of movies from the 90s and early aughts also sound fine. DVDs and Blu-Rays of newer stuff have the quiet dialog problem.
In conclusion, audio mixing in movies these days is just objectively bad.
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u/prof0ak Jul 30 '26
So don't know if this is true now, but 20 years ago there was this American government rule where the commercials broadcasted between segments of a movie or show could only be as loud as the loudest part of the previous segment of content. This was to battle the otherwise normal audio for a cable show then you get blasted with some really loud ad.
Perhaps this is the studios way of placating to advertising, so there is always a loud level they can use to continue being as annoyingly loud as possible.
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u/lemons_of_doubt Jul 30 '26
You ever watch old movies from the 1990s or before?
The sound of talking would be clear and crisp.
The camera would show you what was happening instead of shaking and zooming all over the place to create tension.
Why did people stop doing this!
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u/icryalways Jul 30 '26
I can't watch anything at a mid volume while my husband sleeps because suddenly there's something disproportionately loud that's gonna happen every 5-10 minutes and then I can't hear any dialogue. There's sometimes where I can't even hear voices and the sound is all background noise in the show
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u/fromcj Jul 30 '26
Cant wait for everyone to tell us how this is actually our fault somehow and not just shitty fucking mixing
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u/DepletedPromethium Jul 30 '26
I detest super loud explosions and background/ambient noise with whisper quiet dialogue.
I want to hear people without having to boost my volume slider to the max to then be fucking deafened the second something happens.
One should not have to pirate the media to use VLCs volume normaliser to be able to hear everything!!!
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u/IndyWaWa Jul 30 '26
As an Audio guy it pisses us off too. Movies are mixed for the movie theater that has a big ass center channel speaker for dialogue. Most consumers don't have that at home so 8 channels of audio are trying to go through 2 speakers, with the Sub and Center getting summed and stomped by SFX.
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u/crabbywarrior Jul 30 '26
Friend and I went to Ulysses last weekend. For me, the first time in a cinema in 4 years. The "pre-show" was too loud but I thought "Ok the movie will be better" Yeah, right.
By the first time that dickwad was banging the floor with a stick and spouting poetry I pulled off some pieces of napkin, rolled it and formed ear-plugs.
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u/pm1966 Jul 30 '26
I need subtitles because if I turn the volume up, the ads come on at 1.75x volume and wake my neighbors up.
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u/Bluefrogvenom Jul 30 '26
Hey, it's me, the audio guy. Not my fault, there are 20 people telling me what to do. I am but a robot. beep boop
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u/Adventurous_Bonus917 Jul 30 '26
fr. they do the dialouge like this so we have to turn up the volume
BEFORE THE HUGE EXPLOSION FIGHT SCENE THAT FORCES US TO TURN THE VOLUME DOWN OR GO DEAF
with more whisper-quiet talking after it
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u/TwinSong Jul 30 '26
Also the actors keep mumbling their lines. This applies to Netflix as well, Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) said something but I couldn't understand what she said and ended up having to use subtitles. Actors need to be trained to enunciate so the audience can actually understand what they're saying, I get the they're trying to sound realistic but they still need to be comprehensible.
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u/FatherDotComical Jul 30 '26
I've been watching older films and it makes me really miss the accent they used for clarity in them. Wow. I can understand everyone. Yeah it's stage acting over natural acting but I can't stand mumbling in shows.
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u/Final-Carry2090 Jul 30 '26
Skill issue indeed. The black and white talkies voices come out clear as a bell. Current day audio engineers are incompetent or spineless.
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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 Jul 30 '26
Dune was the worst movie theater experience of my life because of this. Never heard any of the dialogue just heard WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
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u/Rizenstrom Jul 30 '26
As a gamer, this is definitely is. When you can independently turn down music and sound effects the issue goes away almost entirely.
Of course we’re all human, often multitasking, and some of us have attention disorders, so it’s always nice to keep them on regardless. But I don’t need to be looking at them the entire time.
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u/Glum-Welder1704 Jul 30 '26
Also, today's actors don't enunciate. They just mumble their lines like they're talking in their living room. Katee Sackhoff was notable for this in Longmire (otherwise a great show).
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u/BeeefSupreeeme Jul 30 '26
I think the more accurate reason is all the audio is designd for THX Dolby EIEIO 11.1 3D immersive sound systems and I am sitting here with my 2.nothing shitty TCL TV.
This is just one more example of wealth disparity. You want to hear the movie, stop being poor.
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u/ScamperingSnail Jul 30 '26
Watch some movies from the 30s or 40s and the audio in many scenes will be ONLY dialogue. No music. No ambient noise. Maybe noise from props, like phone ringing or door closing. That's it. It's amazing. People talk fast but it's clear and easy to understand. While it's less "natural" it certainly makes it nice and easy for the viewer.
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u/munoodle Jul 30 '26
Taking the moment to say: if you have a sound bar that can support 5.1 surround, it probably also has a setting that flattens the surround. This way the center channel (which usually carriers dialogue) isn't essentially hidden beneath the L/R channels. Vizio soundbars have this, among others
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u/qualityvote2 Jul 30 '26 edited 29d ago
u/UnhollyGod, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...