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Okay, that's it. Any movie that has low dialogue but loud sound effects and music, loses 2 points off my final score.

posted 3 months ago by samoanjoes (53039)
74 replies | jump to latest

This is now the third time I have had to vent my frustrations about this on this site.

I just saw a movie that I haven't seen in over 20 years, and once again, I have been victimized by a low dialogue and high music/sound effects mix. It doesn't matter if it's a new film or old film, it doesn't matter if I watch it on TV, on a computer or in theatre, it doesn't matter if I use headphones or no headphones, the bad mixing will be there.

The frustrating thing is that the movie I rewatched today didn't have the audio issues the first time I saw it, but now it's suddenly become a problem. It's happened to about 30-40% of all movies I have seen post-2010. It's getting to the point where I'm actually dreading watching movies because I don't want to go through the distraction of having the remote nearby to quickly adjust the volume.

I have now vowed to reduce the score of any movie that is guilty of these sound atrocities by two points. There are no exceptions. I'm sick of it and whoever is responsible for it should spend time in prison. And I don't mean like 6 months, I'm talking a full life sentence with no chance of parole.

Rant over.

[–] VinceD (7801) 3 months ago

Watching Chris Nolan movies again?

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

As much as I give him shit, I can't blame him on this. Too many movies do it. It's like they're actively trying to piss us all off.

[–] VinceD (7801) 3 months ago

I have noticed the same things you have and usually have to watch with English subtitles on, it’s really annoying.

I do wonder if maybe it’s your audio settings? Do you a compressor running? Or other EQ settings?

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Don't call the police on me, but I download a lot of films. The file will do the same thing no matter if I play it on my laptop, PC, or through a USB flash drive in my TV.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

I AM GOING TO CALL THEM...YOU THIEVING PRICK!

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

What did I actually thieve? There's the same amount before I "took" it.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

EWW...YOU'RE ONE OF THOSE.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Yes, one of those people who can count.

[–] Keelai (32704) 3 months ago

Chutzpah is complaining about something you steal 🤣

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I swear your honour, I didn't think digital files counted as stealing.

[–] Keelai (32704) 3 months ago

Your OP reads like a Freudian parody:

"I have been victimized by a low dialogue and high music/sound effects mix."

"any movie that is guilty"

"should spend time in prison."

"And I don't mean like 6 months, I'm talking a full life sentence with no chance of parole."

You sound like you're feeling guilty and want to be punished.

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

Actually, his most operative and telling words are, "I have been victimized..." 😭

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

A sickening clique of sound is against me.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

😂

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

I knew you wouldn't be able to resist responding. 🤨 Attention whores, like pathological liars, always trip themselves up. It's just another example of what a chronic whiner you are as well.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

You're commenting on a thread that I started. It makes sense that I would respond.

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

But so quickly, which I expected? Why haven't you yet responded to Keelai, who posted two hours ago?

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I did.
https://moviechat.org/general/General-Discussion/661c776db760357defc6ebbb/Okay-thats-it-Any-movie-that-has-low-dialogue-but-loud-sound-effects-and-music-loses-2-points-off-my-final-score?reply=661c8c8cb760357defc6ecb9

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

Yeah, pretending to be joking and dismissive, also two hours ago. I'm referring to her post I responded to, which you immediately took more seriously and you know it , you snake.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

That was the post you were responding to.

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

Typical muddying the waters response I'm used to getting from you, snake.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I'm not muddying anything. The response is right there in the link.

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

I responded to Kellai's criticisms of you, which you quickly reacted to, snake. And yet it took you 2 hours to respond to her. Yeah, that requires mulling it over and creating a plan for once again confusing the issue, which is your style.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I responded to Keelai one minute after I responded to you. Yes, there was a two hour gap from my last response to Keelai, but when I logged back in, I responded to you both right away.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

ADMIT IT!....YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT.

[–] db20db (16572) 3 months ago

If anything, he'll try to claim being a "victimized" pos.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

You're the whole shit.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

AND YOU ARE A PIECE OF ME....DEAL.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Just trying to add humour to something frustrating.

[–] SOteric (136) 3 months ago

An antisemite using the Yiddish term "chutzpah"?

Hilarious!

[–] Keelai (32704) 3 months ago

Whose sock are you, troll?

[–] VinceD (7801) 3 months ago

Are you on PC or Mac? If you're on PC, try turning off the enhancements on your sound settings, that sometimes helps, even if you're streaming on Netflix or something.

Also, see if your video player has compression or a loudness filter running, I know VLC player has one, and sometimes turning it off fixes it too.

It probably is a bad audio mix on the side of the filmmakers though.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

VLC is my go to, and doing that works on a few movies.

I don't think it's entirely a filmmaker thing because as I mentioned in my OP, the movie I was watching today didn't do it the first time I saw it 20 years ago. I think who ever is releasing these movies is messing with the volume levels. I saw the film "Snatch" in theatre, then bought it on DVD and never had an issue with the sound. The digital version I have now has the problem. It's been like this the last 12-15 years with movies in general.

[–] Zarkoff (953) 3 months ago

Yeah, I live in an apartment. If I turn the volume up enough to hear all the dialogue clearly, I'll get noise complaints when the movie gets loud. It's a pain.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

WOW...SO YOU ARE LIKE 80?

[–] Valerian (10535) 3 months ago

Something to try. Turn on dynamic range compression. Increase center channel volume.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I've done that, but even the "dead air" sounds louder. I can hear a hissing.

[–] sslssg (30333) 3 months ago

I have that problem, and it doesn't matter if it's a DVD/Blu-ray or I'm streaming. It's frustrating as hell.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I read an article that said they do it so the sound effects have a bigger impact. If that's the case, I think it's pretty stupid. Why would they sacrifice the dialogue just to attempt to make us more in awe? I think the real answer is that they expect us all to have top of the line speakers.

[–] RoboReCop (2882) 3 months ago

I use 'speakeramp' program on my computer, where I watch most of my media, so to isolate voice over music/score, bass. It helps a lot. Using it for years.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I watch most movies on a flash drive connected to my TV. Is Speakeramp available for non-computers?

By the way, thanks for saying "program" and not "app".

[–] RoboReCop (2882) 3 months ago

I think it's just computer-base, but here's the link: https://www.nimblesnail.com/

I don't have a smart tv or use a flash drive, so I'm not sure what programs can be integrated into them. My tv, I have options to choose from like "theater", "music", "voice" etc (like an amp), but then I'm able to reduce/increase treble/bass etc. It helps, but not always. Otherwise, the only other thing I can think of is hooking up a physical amp and speakers to your tv system, even if it's just a boom box to control the audio output.

lol I was dancing around wondering if to use 'app' or 'program', but settled with the latter.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Thanks. I'll try it when I get the chance.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Only available for Mac.

[–] MaximRecoil (4268) 3 months ago

I just turn the volume up so the dialog is loud enough, and as for music and certain sound effects, they are supposed to be loud. An explosion, for example, should be louder than someone talking, like in real life. And music should be loud, which is why concerts are loud. If you have decent speakers and sufficient amplification, loud sounds good, otherwise, it sounds terrible (like if you're using the built-in TV speaker[s]), because it's distorted and missing some of the frequencies that are supposed to be there.

If the mixing is way off to the point that it bothers me, I see if I can fix it myself, by demuxing the audio track, opening it in Audacity, adjusting the volume of the relevant tracks, saving my changes, then muxing it back in with the video stream. You can only do that if you have the video file on your hard drive, which I always do, because I have no use whatsoever for "streaming" when it comes to movies. In some cases you can easily download a movie from a streaming site (like if it's on YouTube), but in most cases you can't do that without specialized tools/knowledge.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I'm concerned if I do that, the audio might be worse depending on if I play it on different devices. If I have a movie I want to keep, I'm scared that in the future any program I might play it from could cause the issue to be worse. But what really makes this difficult is the end of your paragraph. I don't think I have the knowledge to attempt that.

[–] MaximRecoil (4268) 3 months ago

"I'm concerned if I do that, the audio might be worse depending on if I play it on different devices. If I have a movie I want to keep, I'm scared that in the future any program I might play it from could cause the issue to be worse."

By "that," you mean if you change the volume of an individual track or tracks in an audio editing program? If so, you can keep the original unaltered audio stream as well, though it makes the file bigger of course. Modern containers such as .MKV and .MP4 can have up to 16 audio streams.

I have The Terminator (1984) on Blu-ray and it didn't include the original mono audio stream. It only had a remixed 5.1 version, which I like in some ways (it actually has bass, which the original mono audio is sorely lacking), but I don't like that they outright changed some of the sound effects, most notably, the gunfire sound effects, and not for the better. The best source for the mono audio is the LaserDisc release (uncompressed ~44.1 Khz LPCM), so I muxed that in. But I also kept the remixed 5.1 audio stream that it came with:

https://i.imgur.com/ModcePx.png

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

By "that," you mean if you change the volume of an individual track or tracks in an audio editing program? If so, you can keep the original unaltered audio stream as well, though it makes the file bigger of course. Modern containers such as .MKV and .MP4 can have up to 16 audio streams.

Oh, I never even thought of that. I've never tried to add anything for an MVK file myself. The only thing I've ever done was disable automatic subs. How much bigger would the file be if I added a second track and how long would it take to add?

[–] MaximRecoil (4268) 3 months ago

"How much bigger would the file be if I added a second track and how long would it take to add?"

It varies drastically; anywhere from a couple hundred MB to around 1 GB. It depends on the bitrate that you encode it at after you make your changes. If you encode it with a lossless codec (e.g., FLAC), and it's not very compressible, and it's 24-bit, it will probably be around 1 GB. If you encode it with something like Opus or AAC at say, 64 kbps per channel (384 kbps total for a 5.1 audio stream), it will be about 260 MB for a 90-minute movie.

It doesn't take long to mux/demux the audio stream on a relatively modern PC; a minute or two. I usually use MKVToolNixGUI, though sometimes I use FFmpeg (which is command-line; you need to write a script in order for it to do anything). I use FFmpeg if I need to do the same operation to multiple files, since it can easily be automated with a batch file.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I'm too computer stupid to know if I can succeed at this, but I'll give it a try. I have a 4TB hard drive and I'm not a big fan of massive movie file sizes. I probably wouldn't go .flac. I don't even like .flac with my mp3's.

[–] Kowalski (63761) 3 months ago

MAXIM IS A FULL ON TECHIE...SOME OF HIS POSTS REMIND ME OF DOC BROWN.

[–] AndyKing1967 (35058) 3 months ago

“Doc, are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?”

[–] RoboReCop (2882) 3 months ago

"The time-traveling is just too dangerous. Better that I devote myself to study the other great mystery of the universe: women!"

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

If you could go back in time, I'm sure you'd go back before that Everton game. #PickfordIsShit

[–] AndyKing1967 (35058) 2 months ago

No comment 😶

[–] moviechatterer (14130) 3 months ago

"Watchmen" is horrific for this.

And sadly when I watched it it was on a new fancy speaker system I was trying to set up so i blamed my setup / config , not realising the source material was fked.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

This is why I don't believe anyone who says the problem is that we're using cheap speakers. If it does the same thing with expensive equipment as well as in the theatre, then it's obvious the source is the problem.

[–] BKB (7249) 3 months ago

You should pick up a new sound bar, like BOSE?? That's what I have for my 55 Inch Toshiba and it's awesome

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

Sometimes I watch movies on my computer though.

[–] BKB (7249) 3 months ago

Can you hook the laptop or your computer up to the TV to watch the movie for better sound??

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I don't have an extra HDMI cable, but it would be possible if I did. I'd rather movies just get their act together.

[–] M1sterDoct0r (4082) 3 months ago

Ya, that shit's annoying. I even invested in some pretty good sound system, hoping it'll help but it did fuck all.

I mean the sound effects sound fucking amazing but the dialogue is still atrocious & sometimes even inaudible.

At one point, I was even like, maybe it's me. Maybe I'm getting old but found out that my lil siblings (and a lot of people online) have also experienced this issue.

Nowadays, I find myself turning on subtitles way more often.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I have tinnitus in my left ear and I thought my hearing was getting worse like I wasn't picking up a specific decibel level. But then other people started to complain about movie audio and that's when I realized the true scale of the problem. I have now got to the point where I'm dropping 2 points off my final rating if I can't hear the dialogue. They just don't care about our viewing experience.

[–] Mrmojo4700 (20766) 3 months ago

“I have tinnitus in my left”

Same here buddy. I first noticed it in my mid 20s and I thought it was going to drive me crazy. But yeah, in that ear my loss is high frequency.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I got mine when I was 23. When I started to have trouble hearing dialogue in movies, I though for sure it was the beginning of me going deaf in that ear. Thankfully it's just movies with terrible audio and my tinnitus has remained the same since the beginning.

[–] M1sterDoct0r (4082) 3 months ago

I remember watching a video while back that explained it as, ''it's cause these directors & studios have made these films for the big screens & that why they sound like shit on your tv"

Which as is a load of BS. Cause the audio issues are still bad in theatres as well.

Sound mixing has been going down the drain for a while now.

[–] samoanjoes (53039) 3 months ago

I can't stand these "movies are made for the big screen" filmmakers. Are they not aware that 99.99% of the movie's life will be watched on a small screen at home? I'm surprised more movie sound guys aren't speaking out against this because it makes them look bad by not being able to balance basic audio levels.