Anyone else think the music is too loud in Amok time?

[M'Sharak]

Sometimes, the music can blend in with the dialogue if one is hard of hearing. That aside, it's not always hard to notice general episodes' volume mixing and when one or two episodes are out of sync.

On top of that it's worse when the music is flagrantly bad (in terms of tonal quality and/or its trying to pull emotional strings, especially sobbing maudlin sap. It's too often forced, especially if the script's content doesn't deserve the accentuation. It feels too robotic.

It doesn't help when, at least in the 1960s, all this was done by imperfect human hands and not by perfect clock-cycle computers with pre-set settings and the rest of it. Or who keeps changing them for editing different shows.

It also doesn't help when all sorts of shows use wallpaper music to increasing quantities and effect for affect. It's worse nowadays, even bombastic - the more bombastic usually means a weaker story, but the trend started in the 1980s and has rarely gotten better since. A good script and solid acting do more for a story than music or visuals ever could. As a design instructor kept telling his students, "less can be more".

In the end, the TV stories are still about the dialogue most. The background incidental music should never compete against it, or be so loud to replace it. It's just at the point where clunky dialogue isn't as bad.

What on Earth are you talking about?

 

[Hofner]

The music is fine, it's more likely your hearing that's the problem.

Hah, not saying whether Thowra wears hearing aids or not but I've heard church organists say when they get complaints that they're playing their organs too loud, a lot of times it's from older folks who wear hearing aids.

Robert

 

[Richard S. Ta]

It's certainly bombastic, but it's also one of the most distinctive (if not the definitive) TOS scores. I love it.

 

[Thowra]

I suppose it’s because both the scripting and acting is so good that I want to be able to concentrate on it!

 

[Extrocomp]

Just rewatching and I find myself wanting to turn the music right down. Turn the volume down and the speaking is too low. The music (which is not bad in itself just drowns out the speaking and this is one episode where I want to listen to the dialogue. I wonder if there’s any way to tune it down in the settings

If you have a Bose speaker system, change the Audio Compression setting to "Smart Volume". That reduces the range of volume levels in a movie soundtrack so differences between loud and soft sounds are less noticeable. Other speaker systems might have a similar setting.