Fuck your dynamic range, it doesn’t enhance the media what so ever.
enables loudness equalization
Mr. Lovenstein version
“It’s called dynamic range, you philistines!” quoth the audio engineer who hasn’t consumed his own work on consumer-grade hardware since his early teens.
What I hate most about this attitude is a disregard for the fundamentals that make a film hold up over time: the story/plot/world building, way, way, way more than the graphics or other bells and whistles.
Sound design and graphics are very important, but if you’re sacrificing dialogue for the vast majority of watchers, for you to have a wank over dynamic range, then you don’t have your priorities straight.
They really ought to release multiple audio mixes. This is really getting annoying, and if wanting to hear dialogue is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
Preach, brother. I don’t get the fetish with aiming for ‘natural’ dynamic range in a movie in the first place. I need these people to explain to me why reproducing the relative sound pressure of a fucking explosion relative to normal speaking volume is somehow desirable to me.
Yep. I think this is the real problem right here. Whenever I’m producing my first pass at a music project, I do it on my laptop speakers or similar. That way I know the core idea of the track still works on basic speakers. I’ve tried going the other way and all that comes through is a melody if I’m lucky.
I also check in the car and on a crappy BT speaker after. The fact that they’re producing entire movies and shows without ever seeming to do a consumer audio check is just annoying.
Yeah, my test checklist after mixing/mastering using my studio headphones is:
- Laptop speakers
- Apple wired earbuds
- Cheap bluetooth headphones
- TV soundbar
- Car speakers
It’s only final until it sounds good on all the above.
- Bus station loudspeakers in Pondicherry
I hate audio dynamic range. And i also hate how they don’t ensure dialogue is audible over other noises unless it’s dubbed.
This last one is so bad that I basically don’t watch any American content in the original language anymore, because the French dub has clear voices and doesn’t force me to use subtitles. So ridiculous.
You don’t hate dynamic range, you hate bad mixes, two different things, without dynamics audio sounds like shit. An explosion is supposed to be louder than talking speech.
It’s just not supposed to try to mimic the absurdity of an actual explosion, to the point of discomfort.
Also, like said before in the parent comment, most consumer systems don’t even even have the dynamics to reproduce it without distortion (or damage the woofers).
Imma be honest, I don’t see why the explosion should be louder than speech. I can see the boom; I can tell that it’s an explosion. It doesn’t need to be reinforced to be through volume.
Because cinema is supposed to be immersive, it’s supposed to take the audience into the action, it’s supposed to make you feel like you’re there. Dynamics play an important part of this.
It’s not enough to acknowledge that there has been an explosion or a monster has screeched, it’s important that the viewer feels in danger, like the monster can actually harm the viewer. To get that adrenaline pumping.
Ofc when your levels are ridiculously exaggerated and you stretch over to the volume control all the time, then the immersion is broken because instead of watching the film you’re too busy riding the fader.
That should be optional. I don’t wish to be “immersed”. I just wanna see the story. Sure, make the “extreme” experience a possibility for those with a taste for the subtle things in the art or whatever, but don’t push it onto all of us.
Because ANYTIME there are sounds that are way louder than dialogues, of course I’m gonna reach for the remote, because holy shit.
Plus, that idea of dynamic range is what allows ads to be so damn loud compared to everything else.
Well, it’s now cinema is supposed to be.
Ideally they could make two mixes, one for serious viewing and good systems and another for bringe watching or bad speakers. But since that would cost more money and isn’t done, a good dynamic mix is preferable because you can always throw a compressor and some limiting to a dynamic mix, but you can’t recover information after it’s lost. And as a film and series enjoyer I don’t want my experience to be nerfed.
As for ads, I have no idea? I haven’t watched an ad since I got internet many years ago. Idk how you’re getting your media, maybe get an adblocker or use torrents?
Tbh if you only have the budget for one mix, it should be the mainstream one for 90% of viewers. If the producers wanna be artsy, go ahead, include an artsy mix with the BluRay or something.
Imagine if they did something as extreme as they do to movies with music. You basically only hear the bass and the lyrics are incomprehensible unless you have an expensive sound system? Sheesh.
By the way, normal people like me don’t even know what a compressor is. To me, even the hassle of having a speaker outside of my TV isn’t worth it. Most people are like this.
lol, I posted simultaneously with you. And basically posted that. 🤣
This being the Internet - and great minds thinking alike - it was bound to happen sooner or later :)
Nah, Christopher Nolan says it’s our fault that we don’t have IMAX theater setups at home.
Or–and hear me out here, Mr. Nolan–maybe have the important dialogue take place once the characters are off the speedboat.
(I assume that wasn’t actually important dialogue, but I’ll never know.)
Hence subtitles.
It’s not the broadcasters fault you don’t have a 7.1 audio setup and they refuse to allow channel selection. That would involve remastering, dammit!
Yeah I can’t hear the dialogue, but when those two characters kissed I could hear everything happening in their mouthes and that’s what’s really important.
Two characters kiss in deep space 9 and it sounds like a kiss irl. Two characters kiss in superman (2025) (or almost any modern media) and I’m listening to a 30+ second close-up of the actors trying to wetly suck the other’s lips into their mouth. Why??
No idea why anyone thinks the kissing audio needs to be so pronounced. Drives me up the wall. Watching a tender scene, only to be ripped out of the moment by kissing audio that was recorded by having toddlers eating fettuccine alfredo for the first time.
Those slurping noises are definitely something else 🤣
Because DS9’s tagline is “To wetly suck what no one has sucked before.”
What you need is dynamic range compression. You can get a browser extension to apply it to everything you watch in a browser. VLC also has a setting for it, but I think they call it something else.
If you’re using an app or a smart tv, then sucks to be you I guess.
Do u know where that setting is in vlc?
I’ll do you one better, i give you instructions:
https://www.geekality.net/blog/settings-for-vlc-dynamic-range-compression
Thx a bunch! Will try with Inna
all hail before the holy VLC googler 🙏🛐
The hero we deserve, and the one we need!
I thought it was quite bad already in the EU but we at least have standards for it. I’m currently in the US and watching TV I have to turn on closed captions for everything because voices are just so damm silent, while Ads and stuff just blast your face off.
I think the US passed some sort of standard, under Obama, to normalize the volume for commercials on broadcast TV.
That worked for a while, but now that everything is streaming, they’re fucking doing it again. Because of course they are.
Tbf before that standard it was ROUGH. You’d have advertisers that would absolutely CRANK the volume on their sound, even distorting it, just to make it the loudest thing on earth. You could literally be somewhere in the house and just hear “mnmmmmnmnmnm…BIG BOBS CARPET EMPORIUM TWO DAYS ONLY” like it was some kind of stadium speaker system, like the neighbors hearing it was gonna help the ad reach more people.
It’s like that again on streamers like Prime
And now they wonder why people use adblockers whenever they can
DuckDuckfuckingshutupyoutubeGo player
There also the fact that speakers on modern tvs suck because they want only a little black frame around the screen. CRTV speakers pointed at the viewer and modern tvs point downward or behind the screen, so everything is a bit muffled. It’s like they forgot that audio is a big aspect of watching shows and movies or they are wanting to make a ton of money off a separate speaker system.
Very good point. Didn’t even think about that. At home we use a soundbar because of that.
but we at least have standards for it
Holy shit. I didnt know that. We’re on the baby-mode kiddy-gloved nanny-state-in-muh-TV mode?
Poor Americans. They must be going deaf.
The standards are still pretty bad, and most producers of movies and tv shows still don’t balance their audio for home TVs, but I do believe Ads have a limited allowed “loudness”.
If it was real baby mode we would have a regulated minimum and maximum loudness for everything, so we don’t have to change volume constantly.
I want an automute for ads.whatever they are selling they can shove up their loud ass.
Lol yeah. Surprised no one made that yet.
Very good explainer from Tom Scott.
Dynamic ads in podcasts are absolutely terrible for this.
I am driving along listening to a podcast, and suddenly the ads appear at 50% higher volume, with zero warning.
I wonder if you could sue a podcast provider for dammages if you are hard of hearing and need the podcast playing loud, and the ads come on and blow your speakers out…
What should be especially illegal is those ads that use “alert” sounds. Door knocks/bells, phone rings, and worst of all, fucking car horn and other alarm noises.
Anything beeping or sounding like a siren should be completely forbidden for safety reasons.
It’s literally the non-verbal equivalent of the classic “crying fire in a crowded theatre” scenario, it should already be illegal by existing law imo.
“Honking horn at the operator of high speed multi-ton machine on their radio” seems pretty clear cut recklessness in my book.
What about video players with no volume control? Or video that starts off at 140dB SPL right off the bat with 250% THD as well?
Can someone tell me why I’m an idiot: streaming services have access to the entire video you’re about to watch. They know the max and the min volume of that video. Why is there no setting to shrink that range? Is it going to degrade the audio really bad and they don’t want to be blamed?
This goes double for home theater software like Jellyfin, Kodi, and Plex. They have 10,000 customizations and settings, so why can’t I define my own custom audio range in them?
Technically speaking it’s very easy to implement, it’s just a compressor, oldest thing in audio after maybe the EQ.
VLC has a compressor under effects, if you’re using Linux you can add effects to pulse or pipewire really easy too.
I use Easy Effects for maximum control of inputs and outputs. It can do wonders if combined with qpwgraph.
Even if you can hear them, you’ll still need captions because actors today mumble so much.
You leave Timothee Chalomet alone! Vocal fry is acting!
This is good for the source audio itself for complicated reasons, but why tf isn’t stable sound more standardized?? It’s just a compressor!! Just send the values for the compressor in the metadata!!
Yes it’s dynamic range but the most common cause is listening to a source that’s been mixed for a centre vocal speaker.
It will play on a stereo (Left and right speakers only) but you will have very little vocals and lots of special fx.
This is also completely ignoring the us lack of lufs standards for advertising (apparent loudness.)
Not necessarily the end users fault. If the wrong audio source is selected/streamed then you are stuck. There are workarounds but no real solution
Except I have Dolby 5.1 set-up and it’s still dogshit
Have you checked that all your speakers are in phase? Specifically that the positive on amp cable goes to the positive connect on on the back of the speaker?
If your system is otherwise matched especially the left/centre/right then it should function.
Depending on your surround sound amp/processor some of them can get stuck in stereo vs surround.
A quick test is here.
Verify the dialog with a well mixed movie or dvd though that adds another level of possible issues. (most appletv stuff works as expected)
Good luck with it.
If you don’t have a 649.2.2 Atmos setup, that’s your fault. Get hearing loss, scrub!
/s because… sigh…
If you have a true 5.1 setup then increase the centre speaker levels relative to the others. Or get a much bigger centre speaker.
Most centre speakers are woefully small compared to the left and right fronts being towers.
Center speaker is matched to stereo front, rear are intentionally under powered… as someone who appreciates good sound - the mixing on most every movie is fucked (and some TV - HBO looking at you). It’s not a set-up issue.
Interviews with sound mixing techs indicate this is because everything is optimized to theatres and then only slightly remixed.
For the basic consumer we would much rather have audible dialogue than ear shattering gun shots…
