malenurse said:

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YouBet said:

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Fascinating because this tells me I'm not crazy. I would add one more random element to this from the streaming platform side of this. Certain streaming platforms are lower in volume than others. Case in point is Disney+. We watch anything on Disney+ about 10 clicks higher than other platforms. For whatever reason, they have a natural lower starting point with volume. And others have noticed the same thing so it's not just me.

Also, the sound compression via streaming is shockingly noticeable if you aren't blessed with a good sound setup at home. You simply don't realize how utterly different it is to watch a Blu-ray movie fully uncompressed with high-end sound codecs vs just streaming it. We have a great home theater set up, but as streaming has become ubiquitous and with 4k video quality increasingly becoming a commodity with AppleTV and Disney+, it's just easier and cheaper to compromise and rent.

And then taking that a step further not all Blu-ray movies with the best sound standards and codecs are created equally either simply because it depends on how good the sound editors were. My reference movie for sound in the home theater is Master and Commander. Specifically, the opening attack scene where his ship is shredded by cannon will blow your mind in an appropriately equipped home theater with good speakers.

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Dang, now I finally understand why I could never hear anything during The Mandalorian and, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

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Mando's helmet muffled his voice

Need pics and info on your 2 Channel setup

Scriffer said:

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Need pics and info on your 2 Channel setup

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Minidsp SHD
March Audio P452 Purifi amp
Bluesound Node streamer
Revel F208 speakers
Rythmik Audio E15HP2 sub

BoydCrowder13 said:

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Tenet was absolutely the worst I've ever seen. Completely different experience with subtitles at home. I literally missed 50-60% of the dialogue.

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That movie gets worse in my mind the more I think about it.

Nolan sh^t the bed on that one.

Just the prevalence of unprofessionals in the biz. You wouldnt hire a clown to fix your john, why do you pet these hooligans rear down the biz? He may be the Notorious big, but can he crune?

Really interesting article. Thanks for sharing

I've also run into issues with the audio varying per stream.

Like my parents tried to stream Hamilton when it first premiered and turned it off because they said they could understand anything anyone was saying. I watched it and it sounded fine so I told them to try again. They tried the next day and said it sounded fine.

This also happened when they tried to watch The Big Short on streaming. They said it was SO LOUD sometimes out of nowhere in parts. I told them they were crazy, they tried again and it sounded fine.

Then again maybe it's my parents error

javajaws said:

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AustinAg2K said:

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I don't remember ever having an issue understanding dialogue in a theater, but it happens quite often at home, so I've always chalked it up to my home theater set up.

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Easiest solution is to add some broadband sound absorption at the primary reflection points in your room. This could be side walls, ceiling, and back wall usually. It's a complex topic, but simple steps can be taken to get some improvement. Note that a rug on the floor does not count as it absorbs a fairly narrow freq range - robbing your system of high freq detail while doing nothing to the mid range.

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That's why I put rug with a thick pad underneath it. You are absolutely correct that throwing down a 1/2" thick woven rug won't do squat though.

I thought I was just getting old so I had to use subtitles....

YouBet said:

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BoydCrowder13 said:

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Tenet was absolutely the worst I've ever seen. Completely different experience with subtitles at home. I literally missed 50-60% of the dialogue.

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That movie gets worse in my mind the more I think about it.

Nolan sh^t the bed on that one.

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I concur!
And yes sound for dialog was horrible. But not as bad as lead character's acting. Brutal. And anyone who says that was what Nolan was actually going for is just delusional.

malenurse said:

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Image no work

Thanks for sharing this! This may be a hot take but it feels like the same trend with mixing tracks in high profile movies is the same case with high profile music. The tracks do not sound independent of each other and creates a cacophony of white noise making it impossible to distinguish one track from the other. It was mentioned but in movies there's this dilemma of what to sell, the dialogue or the visuals. I feel with music it's just prioritizing what will sell better, the song itself or just the vibe it puts off. The intention to overstimulate seems complicate things.

I've taken to watching movies with subtitles and thought I was just getting old

billyboy2001 said:

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Thanks for sharing this! This may be a hot take but it feels like the same trend with mixing tracks in high profile movies is the same case with high profile music. The tracks do not sound independent of each other and creates a cacophony of white noise making it impossible to distinguish one track from the other. It was mentioned but in movies there's this dilemma of what to sell, the dialogue or the visuals. I feel with music it's just prioritizing what will sell better, the song itself or just the vibe it puts off. The intention to overstimulate seems complicate things.

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There is both mixing and mastering and problems can crop up in both. And both are worse in music due to the more varied environments one might listen to music in: headphones, earbuds, cars, home stereo, etc.

But then there is just bad mixing/mastering engineers and bad tools as well resulting in low quality tracks. Given the sheer amount of music created (and the desire to keep cost down in many cases) vs the number of movies created you inevitably get a wider range of quality due to lack of better mixing and mastering engineers for music. Not everybody gets the top guys for every track released every year.

Relevant