I thought it was just me going deaf

[scrubb]

Interesting article below about movie soundtracks and how they're mixed. I have definitely lost hearing over the years but maybe that's not the only reason why I can't understand TV and movie dialog. I've often wondered if movies suffer from the "loudness wars", but seeing as I watch most movies via streaming these day, it might be the service provider's compression and not the movie producer's.

Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) - SlashFilm

/Film spoke with several Oscar-winning sound designers, editors, and mixers to learn why it has become tougher to understand what characters are saying.

www.slashfilm.com

 

[alex-z]

I use mostly discs and the dialogue is pretty solid if you have a good quality centre channel. Tried Netflix and the audio quality was noticeably worse. There is some catering for the 99% using TV speakers and soundbars.

Also, terrible MTM centre channels are popular with the remaining 1%. Most people would be better off with a well designed 2 way bookshelf speaker, but the lack of symmetry is apparently too much to stomach.

 

[amirm]

They need to do a simple usability study before releasing the movie. Play it for a group of people in a few setups and see if people understand the dialog. Just using their mixing stages is wrong. They are extremely dynamic and have little to do with what people use to watch movies.

I am having to constantly ride the volume control when we watch movies to understand the dialog. I increase volume by some 10 dB over TV programming.

 

[cochlea]

I can hardly watch a streaming movie without having the subtitles on. Netflix and HBO seem to be the worst for me.

 

[Digby]

I'm not interested in film much, but a big part of the problem for 90% of viewers must be a flat screen TV + soundbar. When you used to have big CRT TVs the dialogue was perfectly audible, now people often have a flatscreen TV + cheap soundbar, I can barely understand the dialogue.

If you insist on a wafer thin TV, then the sound will be crap and cheap soundbars sound far less intelligible than the built in speaker CRT TVs used to have.

They need to do a simple usability study before releasing the movie. Play it for a group of people in a few setups and see if people understand the dialog. Just using their mixing stages is wrong. They are extremely dynamic and have little to do with what people use to watch movies.

Likely this is the reasoning behind the Auratone speakers that used to be in recording studios. They presented an average worst case scenario, that worst case likely being 70-80% of stereo equipment on which the music was to be listened to.

Every day music is listened to 300-1 on equipment people here wouldn't give the time of day and films are watched 150-1 on a flat screen TV with cheap soundbar. This is the overwhelming majority of the audience, not enthusiasts with expensive equipment.

If the latter are struggling to understand dialogue, then something is seriously wrong.

 

[ZolaIII]

DRA on Dolby streamed/broadcast content is very high and we don't have a night (more compressed) switch anymore. The dialogues actually sound better on a cheap TV or soundbar that lack the range. I only hope EBU R128 will become mandatory and applied on all streamed/broadcasted contents. That would also mean the end of Dolby's and MQA alike hopefully. Asking to switch to WavPack hybrid asymmetric is a bit to much straight away but it shouldn't be to hard either (counting couple of generations back in consumer electronics as relatively humble 32 bit general purpose core is needed eventually proper ASIC later).

 

[Andreas007]

After watching DUNE I was almost deaf by the constant drone of the soundtrack.
Anyway, not much dialog to follow anyway. Maybe overwhelming/monstrous/gigantic soundtrack is the new dialog?

 

[abdo123]

it's not the mix, it's almost never is.

In my experience when you want to turn the volume up then your room's decay times are not optimal or the ratio of direct / reflected sound is very poor (on-wall speaker, sitting far from the speaker .etc).

you really need to maintain a 0.2s to 0.4s decay time for the majority of the spectrum or you can't really place the speakers far from the listener. most people have both high decay times and long distances.

 

[tecnogadget]

it's not the mix, it's almost never is.

In my experience when you want to turn the volume up then your room's decay times are not optimal or the ratio of direct / reflected sound is very poor (on-wall speaker, sitting far from the speaker .etc).

you really need to maintain a 0.2s to 0.4s decay time for the majority of the spectrum or you can't really place the speakers far from the listener. most people have both high decay times and long distances.

I disagree. It’s indeed the mix and specially the microphone technique. Movies are shot in months instead of years like it used to be, there is simply no time to take care about sound. They usually capture sound through a mic boom that is very far away from actors, I can clearly detect using reference gear, how on the majority of modern program you are listening to distorted voices because the engineer HAS to ad LOTS of gain to the voice track.It’s as easy as to compare listening the same thing through reference harman curve and low distortion headphones, that rules out room decay times, and the same problem that arises through speakers are present on headphones, thus it is indeed the mix.

What I’m trying to point out is that you can have a reference HT Room, but most modern movies dialogues ain’t reference grade. That’s why sometimes it’s actually much better to listen the doubled version (in different language) because it was recorded inside an studio. Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks kind of animation movies are the few that makes the cut since all dialogue is captured properly at a recording studio.

 

[abdo123]

I disagree. It’s indeed the mix and specially the microphone technique. Movies are shot in months instead of years like it used to be, there is simply no time to take care about sound. They usually capture sound through a mic boom that is very far away from actors, I can clearly detect using reference gear, how on the majority of modern program you are listening to distorted voices because the engineer HAS to ad LOTS of gain to the voice track.It’s as easy as to compare listening the same thing through reference harman curve and low distortion headphones, that rules out room decay times, and the same problem that arises through speakers are present on headphones, thus it is indeed the mix.

What I’m trying to point out is that you can have a reference HT Room, but most modern movies dialogues ain’t reference grade. That’s why sometimes it’s actually much better to listen the doubled version (in different language) because it was recorded inside an studio. Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks kind of animation movies are the few that makes the cut since all dialogue is captured properly at a recording studio.

I just never faced any of the issues or concerns other people here are describing, when I used to fight about the volume with my partner the tonal balance of my setup was wrong and decay times in my room were too high. Now we don't even turn the subtitles on except for shows with made up English accents like the Expanse.

 

[jsrtheta]

The answer is much more fundamental: Once artists became artistes, they abandoned the purpose of storytelling and took up self-indulgence and posing.

It's not really new, though I'm sure the technology does affect it a little. Directors and actors have become self-indulgent and forgotten the point is to tell a story that people can understand. They simply don't give a shit about the audience. Why should they? They've become convinced that their artistic "vision" is much more important than communicating with the rubes in the seats.

 

[TurtlePaul]

I too have noticed that with special effects, action movies are often voiced with the dialog ~20 dB under the special effects. I think it is voiced for a theater with the peak SFX at 95 dB and the voice at 75 dB. If you set your level ~25 bB below the reference level because you don't want explosions and gunshots to disturb your neighbors/wake the kids/bother everyone in your open concept house, then there is no chance to hear the dialog in a noisy apartment. I feel like before DVD dialog, music and peak SFX were all within a 10 dB window.

I think that problem became endemic with the rise of THX / home theaters / Dolby Digital / DTS. There was something to prove to put one scene which shook the house into each action movie. I know that is part of the fun, but not something one can do at 10:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. It would be nice if, like foreign language tracks, they could make a low volume track with either set a limiter or remixed the SFX down for the home realeases of these movies.

 

[Inner Space]

I disagree. It’s indeed the mix and specially the microphone technique ... there is simply no time to take care about sound. They usually capture sound through a mic boom that is very far away from actors ...

Well, not really. They care plenty. The problem is, it's a visual medium, and sound recording equipment can't intrude, even with shadows. Therefore, dialog is routinely re-recorded afterward, and the new takes mixed in. In my experience, anywhere between about 30% and 100% of dialog is done weeks or months later, in a perfect, silent studio, with mike technique paramount.

And the problem isn't necessarily the mix either, but more often the domestic set-up. Both the screen and the center speaker need to be in the same place, and they can't be. Therefore the dialog, i.e. the most vital track, is generally handled by a compromised and badly located reproducer.

Also culpable are the various mix-down algorithms used by those not listening in native multichannel. The center track should be given far more prominence. But the assumption is the audience wants FX and explosions.

 

[JeffS7444]

Don't forget to check your AVR's settings before pointing fingers at the movie soundtracks! Default Audyssey response as implemented in Denon/Marantz AVRs looks something like this:

That 2 kHz dip is referred by DM as "Midrange Compensation", and if your receiver can utilize the companion Audyssey app, it can be switched off on a speaker-by-speaker basis. I wound up switching it off entirely because I thought that the only instance in which it arguably improved things were with certain BBC nature documentaries.

Another DM feature that I ended up switching off was "Dynamic Eq" aka Loudness because I decided that it simply made the bass overbearing, and actually made it more likely to annoy neighbors.

The combined effect of deactivating Dynamic Eq and Midrange Compensation is not subtle!

 

[FrantzM]

I can hardly watch a streaming movie without having the subtitles on. Netflix and HBO seem to be the worst for me.

I watch all movies with subtitles on... Regardless of language, a convenience on Bluray or 4K media, a necessity on streaming. Raising the center channel volume for better dialog, disturbs the immersion and sense of soundstage in many movies in my experiences. Too much of the sound , then comes from the center...

Peace.

 

[tecnogadget]

@Inner Space Fine, but that doesn’t apply to my case, where I talk about the experience of two different HT rooms, one with full acoustic treatment, both have ultra low distortion coaxial center with great directivity and harman target curve at proper tweeter ear height, no obstruction from screen, ITU multichanel layout, etc.

What I feel with certain movies is some sort of grainy, like if the gain was maxed out and resulted in a distorted signal from the voices (not gross distortion, sometimes it’s subtle but enough to make it unnatural or annoying, not crystal clear), add this up with whatever decision at the studio like applying effects to the voices (change tone, cut or add some low end, touch the presence region, etc). And please don’t make me start to talk about clipping during shouting scenes, which happens very often with new movies.
When I detect this scenes, the same is replicated if using neutral IEMs, or good over the ear headphones, so its not the gear to blame. Maybe I’m too nick picking about this and people just relax and immerse into the movie, but I can’t help it, I correlate dialogue quality reproduction with something I can hear every single day of my life…real voices.

It’s not uncommon to find lower budget or indie movies with better dialogues than Blockbusters movies because they are less processed and more natural. Sometimes I even find older movies (10/20/30 years) having less issues than contemporary. Netflix killed dialogues, there is SO MUCH new content created every single year this is becoming a cheap Chinese factory. Also the old gen of good audio professionals is retiring and opening the door to the new gen…and that can be heard by itsef.

 

[MarcT]

After watching DUNE I was almost deaf by the constant drone of the soundtrack.
Anyway, not much dialog to follow anyway. Maybe overwhelming/monstrous/gigantic soundtrack is the new dialog?

You got that right. My wife and I(both of us admittedly older now) watched Dune at a commercial movie theater and there was almost constant loud surround channel sound, which drowned out the dialog for us. What also didn't help was that Rebecca Ferguson, one of the main actors, mostly did what we call "whisper talking" throughout the movie. We barely understood a word she said. I plan to rent the movie on Blu-ray when it's released and engage the subtitles so that I can understand what she and the other characters are saying. And she's not the only one doing that now days. A lot of movies have people whispering their lines.

 

[audio2920]

Bit late to the party, but as I consider it page 1 of my day job to make dialogue audible in films, I could talk on this subject for days.... but I'll try my best not to!

I like Amir's idea of a usability study, but sadly we have to press on fast with a mix if we even want to listen it ourselves and make tweaks before it goes out the door! Schedules are stupid & film mixes are not usually a refined work of art (as much as I would love to pretend otherwise!) They are a commercial product done to a schedule, and that schedule probably isn't based on the specific requirements of the film.

That aside (and I don't mean to pass the buck entirely) but as others have said or alluded to, the bigger problems with dialog intelligibility usually come from the performance and it's capture.

If I can't understand the dialogue on the raw recording in isolation, it's unlikely to get more than a few percent better in the mix. Our toolkit is mostly EQ and compression, and there's cost (trade off) in using them.

Regarding dynamics of the Home Ent mix, we're in a difficult position. Some HT owners love it when we have wide dynamic mix, but a larger percentage of listeners prefer a mix more like what you get on YouTube with nothing being louder than the dialogue.

So what do we do? We just have to compromise of course. Personally I generally err on the side of lower dynamic unless there's very good reason not to. I just don't think the dynamics of the piece move you in the same way at home as they do in the cinema. And if I have to reach for the volume control myself, I've failed.

Moving on to replay, I think one thing that's sometimes overlooked is that 2 way speakers often have an FR dip / directivity error somewhere in the critical 1 to 4k range. Even if the speaker is relatively good and it's +/- 3dB from like 150 to 15k, it could be that e.g. 2k is as much as 6dB down on 200Hz, and obviously this will have material effect on intelligibility if it's not corrected in-room.

I've also found dialogue hard to hear on flatscreen built-in speakers but I'm not entirely sure why... I guess the simple answer is they're rubbish. But given they tend to favour dialog frequencies I'm often surprised at how hard it is to hear even on sparse mixes, played in a quiet room, where I know intelligibility to be fine on the recording.

To touch on what @tecnogadget pointed out: In the case where the recordings are OK, I think where things *can* go wrong in the mix is that younger mixers (and I've fallen in to the trap myself before now, so I don't mean to be too critical) end up using too many plugins. It's quite easy to over-denoise, and the thing is, it makes it easier to mix if you do. When dialogue is noisy you can end up accidentally mixing the noise not the dialogue. So if time is tight, putting de-noising on everything can bring the noise floor changes from take to take down to below an acceptable ambience cover level. But dialogue quality suffers of course. (Most denoisers impart an low bitrate MP3-like quality) Then, you end up adding de-essing or multiband dynamics to fix the horrible stuff, and the whole thing is just way over processed. It takes conviction to sit in a mix and do almost nothing to the dialogue, but often that's exactly what's needed. I suspect the more experienced a mixer is, the more likely they are to do what's right, rather than showing off their plugin arsenal.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me.. I said I would try not to, but I've not really succeeded

 

[scrubb]

I think where things *can* go wrong in the mix is that younger mixers (and I've fallen in to the trap myself before now, so I don't mean to be too critical) end up using too many plugins. It's quite easy to over-denoise, and the thing is, it makes it easier to mix if you do

I'm a bit of a Star Trek fan and have noticed this in the new ST: Discovery series. It seems the dialog track is so full of sounds beyond dialog its difficult to hear the dialog. Also the music and effects tracks are louder than they should be - drowning out the dialog. It's almost like they can't stand to have any part of the soundtrack quiet. When I watch ST: The Next Generation (from the early 1990's) on the exact same equipment, from the same streaming service, this isn't a problem at all.

 

[audio2920]

It's almost like they can't stand to have any part of the soundtrack quiet

Totally.

It's easy to have too much density from the FX (or Music) side. IMHO directors, editors and mixers can mistake "coverage" for detail. By coverage, I mean having a sound for everything that possibly could have a sound.

Most mixers would probably agree that "detail" comes from the opposite; you hear more in a mix when less sounds are played simultaneously.

Of course, trying to stay on topic, this is one key difference about older mixes; the sound editors simply couldn't over-populate the FX track even if they wanted to. On analog the time it took to source stuff and lay it in sync was enormous, and even on early digital the available track count prohibited it. Now we have essentially unlimited channels, it's something we all have to (*should?) actively work a bit more at to keep a handle on.

But yeah, I agree with @TurtlePaul about pre-HT mixes. The dynamic range was 10dB ish. For me, this was pretty much fine for watching at home most of the time. No, it wasn't ever gonna knock your socks off, but it kinda did it's job. These days though we're expected to create a mix that keeps folk [with their kids asleep in the room upstairs] happy watching at 60dB as well as the dedicated HT owners who mostly seem to want something approaching a cinema mix. It's an impossible ask and there is no magic, sadly.

[Again IMHO] however while it may be a contributing factor, I don't think dialogue intelligibility is going to be fixed just by making mixes less dynamic.