There is a lot that goes in to sound engineering in order to make a movie going experience really good. Basically the sound is engineered to sound really good on the 100ish channels that movie theaters have, but when going to a home they have to crunch all that down to work with a 2.1 or 5.1 etc and there is inevitably loss due to overlapping frequencies and even immersive aspects. How can a voice seem to be as loud as an explosion for example.
On top of those difficulties you have directors like Christopher Nolan who has said that he doesn’t care about home audio and that his movies are made to be seen in a theater.
But why do they do it in TV series as well? It’s not like I’m watching better call Saul in cinema.
The people that made it probably wanted to make the audio sound best for the one person that has a great sound system, there’s a good YouTube video about it https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8
Exactly! My comment above was in reference to Breaking Bad (not something in theaters). I’m watching this thru probably for the fifth time but the really quiet skyler and walt whispering dialogue (crank to 32 to hear) takes time so i missed part of it. Volume averages at 10 in my living room. Then have to be johnny on the spot and hope that 32 gets back to 10 before the whispering is over. And good help you if you’re watching subtitles because the volume indicator appears right over them.
There is a lot that goes in to sound engineering in order to make a movie going experience really good. Basically the sound is engineered to sound really good on the 100ish channels that movie theaters have, but when going to a home they have to crunch all that down to work with a 2.1 or 5.1 etc and there is inevitably loss due to overlapping frequencies and even immersive aspects. How can a voice seem to be as loud as an explosion for example.
A simple sound compression of the entire signal would solve the issue. VLC player has this feature and it’s working perfectly.
Yeah, unfortunately while it’s very simple to set up compressor levels in a DAW or even in feature-rich players like VLC, I haven’t come across any easy way to blanket apply one to your computer’s output without weirdly looping it through something like Ableton.
It seems like it should be so simple to have in Windows sound settings, but it’s never been an option. Sometimes there’s a toggle for “normalization”, but that gives you no control at all. You at least should be able to set compression ratio, lower threshold (in dB), and upper threshold (in dB).
I was wondering if there’s a software compressor for the master channel of a computer. Like many, I usually stream movies nowadays, so VLC is of no use unfortunately. Any ideas? I’m on windows, if that matters.
Windows actually has this function in the sound settings. I tried it once, but it was way too harsh. It basically removed the entire dynamics, which is pretty bad in its own way. I tried the feature quite some time ago, so maybe it’s better now, I don’t know.
unfortunately it sounds like this in the cinema too. Dialogue is barely understandable and 80% of the scenes are so dark, it looks like shot with an iPhone under moon light.
Just compare with any movie from the 80’s or early 90’s.
I personally reached a point where don’t even bother to pirate those movies anymore.
Who watches movies anymore? Costs a fortune, theater is dirty, people are annoying, food is overpriced, show times are inconvenient, …
At home you can just choose another movie to watch, pick another video.
