No, it's Not Just Me/You: "Why Can't We Hear Movie Dialogue Anymore?" (YT Vid)

[SorellaLaBefana]

"Have you ever cranked up your volume just to hear movie dialogue, only to get blasted by the music and sound effects?

This video dives into why modern movie dialogue is so hard to hear, breaking down Hollywood’s sound mixing changes, mumbling actors, and home audio setups—plus what needs to change to fix"

Youtuber presents clear insights into why this is true (from director's creative choice, to audio compression), and why it won't be getting better.

We don't have a 'home theater' (just a telly without a sound bar) but apparently even those with more sophisticated setups often end up doing the same as do we: always turning on subtitles, even when not a foreign film

It's been years since we've gone to a movie theater—the music and special effects were painfully loud (even with earplugs)...$5 boxes of popcorn did not add to the experience.

[InAbLuEsTaTe]

1. Theaters are WORSE!! Waste of $$$!!

[House of Roberts]

2. I watch live railcams on Youtube.

Some of these cams include scanner audio of the trains' radio traffic with their supervisors and dispatchers. You get the audio level so you can hear the radio traffic, and Youtube blasts an ad at you at about double the volume every ten minutes. Ads on tv shows do his too.

[patricia92243]

3. The audio is bad, and they are filmed so darkly that it is hard to see. Can't listen, can't see -what a mess.

[SorellaLaBefana]

5. This is SO true. And also a deliberate choice

The end result—films too dark to see (with inaudible dialogue)—is a result of both deliberate creative choice of the movie makers (starting, as I recall reading, sometime in the early 2000s) and the difference in the technical capabilities of the displays in theaters vs homes.

I don't recall when I first learned this. A quick websearch (using duckduckgo, of course) turns up this reasonable discussion from Variety in 2022

Don’t Adjust the Brightness: Here’s Why TV and Movies Are So Dark Now

Have you ever been enjoying a film or TV series, only to suddenly find yourself squinting at the dark screen? Recent releases including “Euphoria,” “The Batman” and “Handmaid’s Tale,” as well as classic films including “Alien,” “Taxi Driver” and “Seven” all utilize dark imagery, but what if the visuals are simply too dark to see everything in the frame?

While dark scenes are usually due to the filmmaker’s vision, there are several factors both at movie theaters and when viewing at home that will affect the viewer’s ability to see what’s going on onscreen...

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/why-movies-so-dark-hard-to-see-batman-1235195535/

We call these films "Worlds Lit Only by Fire" in reference to William Manchester's brilliant book on pre-Renaissance Medieval Europe.

It is sobering to recall just how recently it was the literal truth that the world *was* lighted only by fire. This is not somewhere we want to go!

[mwmisses4289]

4. Going to college early 2000s,

old lady in class, was mentioning this to my much younger classmates, and was shocked when they said basically, yeah it's not you, it's why we don't go to movies very much anymore.
The worst to me is when there is music playing while dialouge is also happening. Music is so loud it drowns out whatever the dialog is supposed to be.

[snowybirdie]

6. The term

Older student might be preferable to old lady. Good for her!

[mwmisses4289]

10. Ah apologies, I was referring to my self as the old lady.

I was a a good 15 to 20 years older than my classmates.

(On a lighter note, I was shocked when many of them knew the movie Monty python and the holy grail, loved it and could quote lines from it- most of them hadn't even been born when it came out, lol).

[snowybirdie]

12. Ha

Me too Graduated at 40! Totally worth it. Sorry don't like a young whippersnapper calling me old lady. Gracious Senior Citizen, perhaps?

[mwmisses4289]

13. Gracious Senior Citizen. I like it! 👍

[doc03]

7. Then there is all the texting, they show the phone for a nano second and you can't

see it unless you are 5 feet from the TV or have a 90" set. At least they could show the text in the sub-title.
I haven't gone to a theater in years, they have the volume set at 150%, temperature set at 55 degrees and
popcorn at $10.

[Mike 03]

8. The first time I noticed this was when I attempted to watch

"TENET" on a streaming service. The mix had put the music and effects up front and the dialogue was a barely audible hum. Used the subtitles and eventually even purchased the paperback screenplay. Others complained about the same thing--yes, in the theater too.

[nuxvomica]

9. I always have the subtitles on except for comedy and news shows

One of the problems with that is that so many movies and streaming series make profligate use of non-diegetic vocals (music only the audience hears) so the lyrics get mixed in with the dialogue.

[Phoenix61]

11. Yeah! It's not just me. It is beyond annoying.

I have a surround sound and the best audio is regular stereo with the treble high and the bass low.

[LizBeth]

14. Finally turned off the Sherlock Holmes movie because I could not hear what Downey was saying

Tried to watch twice.

[hlthe2b]

15. This trend--along with the near constant TOO dark cinematography that renders nothing but occasional

shadowy forms--for all too long and in too much of the movie are my two pet peeves.

Unfortunately, these defects make watching on smaller screens even more miserable when they make it to streaming services. Naturally this trend has been increasingly echoed for productions intended for the small screen.

Do they ever look at their own "product?"

[tanyev]

16. Also, WHY ARE SOME MOVIES/SHOWS SO FRICKIN' DARK?

I don’t mean the subject matter, I mean you can’t SEE anything that is happening.

I’ve noticed this in a lot of things, but I guess most recently in The Rings of Power. Scenes that were lit well were beautiful—obviously a lot of money went into that production. But there were a lot of scenes that took place at night, or underground, or for some reason needed to be darker, but they were so dark you couldn’t see anything that was happening. Why??

I just keep my tablet handy now. If the screen is too dark, I’ll check the new posts on DU until they get back to something that’s visible.

[SorellaLaBefana]

17. Similar combination of Creative Statement and Tech Assumptions that makes dialogue inaudible :)

For bit more info, see reply to Patricia's comment above

Seem to recall a clever observation about 'assumptions' that i heard somewhere?

[bif]

20. Mood lighting

[hunter]

18. Movie producers forget that the story is more important than the spectacle.

Or maybe that's not true any more.

We are, after all, the nation that elected Trump.

Stories can't be complex, they have to be something you can fit in a ten second sound bite. Ronald Reagan proved that.

""Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Anything more complex is noise. Why should anyone care what the actors are saying?

Besides, anyone who doesn't have a $75,000 home theater system is a nobody.

[justaprogressive]

19. Audio: Add some brightness 3Kand presence 6K

then bring up 1k until the sibilance sounds "normal" to your ears...adjust Bass as necessary..

careful: the 500Hz band can make things boomy obscuring words.

Video: Turn up the brightness and the contrast to see the dark patches...