Dialogue in shows and why it's crappy

[valkyrie013]

https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/he...icult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it/
Hi!
So, read this bit of a long article, but basically it talks about Why it seems as of late that the sound of actors/dialogue have been kind of crappy.

How explosions and music can be so loud you have to turn down the tv, then on a talky part, you have to turn it up, or as I've been doing, have the captions on. (When available, paramount + captions are a joke so I don't turn them on)

Article says a slew of reasons from they don't get good audio on set so it's garbage in garbage out.. Director doesn't care, theatres systems not set right, to crappy compressed steaming audio and alot of different sound systems and there settings.

Do y'all have this problem? I know my ears aren't the best but past few years especially steaming its been crappy. Theatres haven't been to much of a problem

So, your thoughts? Solutions? Stories of Woe?

 

[Non Sync]

Most dialogue in programs are re-recorded. With the newer digital audio, there is a greater range available. Unfortunately, most audio mixers want to use the whole range.

TV mixers used to have a pair of standard stereo speakers that would be used to occasionally listen to the mix to see what the audience would be hearing.

For broadcasters in the US, stations and networks are required for all audio, programs and commercials, to conform to a standard loudness for the entire program. See the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM)

 

[Owain Taggart]

In Canada, we don't have a loudness act. Actually, I think we do, but they don't enforce it. And so it ends up being different depending on which cable provider you're using. Mine has had a pretty terrible reputation in having differences in volume between commercials and programs. I've had it be where the actual program was fine, but then commercials would be blasting.

 

[Qonundrum]

Commercials are often louder, but even with 5.1 or 7.1 or 867309.1 decoders, there's still a legitimate problem with explosions and blaring muzak drowning out unimportant things like the dialogue and exposition actors have to spew out to make the story more important than, by comparison, watching a lava lamp with frog under the 40w incandescent light farting for wallpaper music. At least the 1960s had primitive mixing equipment yet they still managed to keep audio levels far more balanced, and they didn't use anywhere near the amount of wallpaper muzak used since the 1980s when story plotting and acting weren't enough to keep viewers gawking...

Also, the lava lamp is always in the same stale combination of dull teal and muted orange and the little blobs have numbers stamped that always flow in the same directions.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In Canada, we don't have a loudness act

Japan sure does!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[BillJ]

I’ve found the we use closed captioning more with newer shows.

 

[Owain Taggart]

What I've noticed is that it's particularly bad with kids programming. They seem to blast it as loud as they can to get the attention of kids. Then they'll make it even louder on top of that by compressing the sound. The end result is everyone sounds like they're yelling even when they're not.

 

[JD]

Yeah, I've run into a few things where the sound effects are louder than the dialogue and it does get annoying. I usually have my TV set around 20, but there are some things, where I have to turn it to almost 30 to hear it clearly. I run into it more often with movies, TV series are usually OK around 20.