We all know the modern complaint: movie sound sucks now unless you have a high-end sound system. Frantically turning down the volume after turning it up to hear the dialogue only to need to turn it up again can be frustrating. Now, this doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but why not have a “Volume A” and “Volume B” you can easily set and toggle between with the simple press of a button?
Here is my preferred solution that will never happen:
Divide all media audio into separate tracks for dialogue, music, sfx, etc., and let the users control the volume of each separately. To avoid having an easily ripped pure music track, perhaps premix the other tracks in at 10% or so (in a logarithmic scale) and make that the minimum volume of any track other than music.
Many shows broadcast in surround sound. This includes a center channel where most voices are. Unfortunately if you don’t have a system to support this, audio is “down mixed” to stereo, and the center channel gets merged into left and right. When this merge happens, you lose definition between the streams.
It would be nice if you could boost the center channel, like you would in a home theater, but before the down mix occurs.
Yep. Dialogue should be loud enough that you can comfortably follow the plot without making your ears bleed. Gunfire and music makes that a bit tricky though. Those should be toned down, but I can see why they’re so loud all the time. Most likely many directors want to make the movie feel more impactful and intense, so they just do it by cranking up the volume those other things.
My Peloton can do this, how come my TV can’t? This technology exists and would not be that difficult to implement for digital media.
You underestimate big tech. Judging by the headache inducing track record of AV technology, this would end up as yet another garbled mess of eleventeen different competing codecs with bad implementations, inconsistent specifications, misleading marketing, horrible licensing, and predatory DRM.
My problem with that is how far can you go? Will artist integrity shatter? Will people mod Thomas the train on movies? Will we get those god awfull billion page settings?
I guess I’m not understanding your concerns. People with artistic skill can already do anything they want to any audio they want. (Note: that was Way before all this AI junk existed) And I don’t really see how this affects that much.
As for settings, I’m thinking three/four sliders. Much less than a graphic equalizer. It’s just volume control.
How loud specific things are in comparison to other sounds is one of the things that a director dictates to set the mood for their movie. We all agree that it’s gone a bit far with most things nowadays, but having something be piercingly loud or eerily quiet can be used really well, and if everyone from Tommy Teenager to Granny Gertrude can alter these settings with a TV remote and zero knowledge on maybe what they’re even doing (“I thought I was changing the volume and now the people don’t talk anymore!”) it would greatly diminish the director’s ability to control that.
Clearly the directors are either making bad choices or choices that only make sense in an actual theater. (In my opinion it’s that first thing)
However this is implemented, it wouldn’t be the default volume control on the remote - that would stay as-is. I’m thinking an on-screen menu with clear labels or something.
You may be underestimating Granny Gertrude’s powers. She will change a setting in a menu you didn’t even know existed. /s
In my opinion, most modern movies and the like sound perfectly fine, like you said, when in a theater setting. I have a pretty decent home audio setup, and I enjoy going out to the movies for ones that I think will be fun or interesting. I usually do not have much of a problem hearing dialogue (well, I’m hard at hearing, so at least not more issues than I have hearing real world dialogue) and the only times things seem uncomfortably loud is when it seems to be done artistically.
The problem comes from the fact that most people don’t have a “theater setting” at home, and since media is premixed for theatre setups with no way to adjust it, you’re left with the worst of both worlds. I think that, rather than passing the buck onto the inexperienced user who might not know how or want to fiddle with audio track settings, studios need to start taking people’s actual equipment into consideration when putting out home releases. Most media players give you the option for surround and stereo, but that does not help when the original media file has bad audio mixing from the get-go. If the actual audio tracks were mixed for “theatre” and “home”, I think we’d be in a much better place.
I wouldn’t give full control, maybe 3 faders that allow for a 10% reduction in dialogue, music and SFX. Will if affect artist integrity, absolutely, but so does listening on our consumer speakers and watching the content on our consumer grade displays that aren’t perfectly color balanced in a pitch black room.