I noticed Blu-Ray discs having "better" surround tracks than DVDs not because the audio format was noticeably better but because most surround tracks for DVDs were mastered under the assumption that many people would listen to the surround track on a two-channel system.
As a result the sounds were never really sent in one direction or another, the bass wasn't completely sent to the subwoofer, etc.
For the case of the oblivious majority (sadly I suspect there are more people who play surround on two channels than have a surround system) that means they can hear the dialog without a center channel, hear some bass without a subwoofer, etc. It means though that the people who bought a surround system and bought a disk with a 5.1 surround track didn't really get what they were paying for.
By the time Blu-Ray came out they got more aggressive on mastering surround which means you get a much better experience with a surround system but if you play that track on a two-channel system you'll barely hear the dialog at best.
I kinda wonder if Netflix has the same problem. My tv is not hooked up to surround sound yet I can’t tell Netflix that this device is stereo only so every time I play something that has a 5.1 audio track, that is what is being streamed.
Netflix sometimes has stereo audio tracks if you look at the list of possible audio tracks, and other times not. I don't have a soundbar or 5.1 speakers so I'm aware of it
I always use subtitles even though my hearing is, as far as I'm aware, perfectly fine. But I'll often notice the subtitles show off-screen dialog or [off-screen sound] that I am completely unable to hear. Without the subtitles I would have no idea it even happened.
I'm sure I've said it here before but I would love, love, love if movies/TV allowed sound control similar to video games: a dialog slider, a background music slider, a sound effects slider, etc. I don't understand why Netflix (or any other streaming platform, really) doesn't make this a priority for their original programming.
Not exactly what you're looking for, but many sports fans have discovered if they disconnect the center channel of their surround sound system, they can effectively mute the commentators without muting the rest of the broadcast.
I used to do exactly that to remove lead vocals and guitar lines in songs I wanted to jam with. I think it accomplishes the same thing as stereos with the Karaoke switch. The mono stuff (in dead centre) is removed by switching the +/- on one side and then recombined in the same way to produce the phase cancellation needed for the center alone, left without center, and right without center for Dolby 3Stereo.
There's another (but vaguely related) trick for getting the rear Left and Right channels, and then add a simple low bypass filter for full Dolby 5.1.
If you don't have a center channel in your stereo, but you do have a setting for Stereo Widening, there is another technique: Reverse the phase of one of your speakers by simply plugging in the + and - to their opposites, and then clicking on Expand or Widen or whatever your kit calls it. The middle / mono content will still be there, but only barely.
> I'll often notice the subtitles show off-screen dialog or [off-screen sound] that I am completely unable to hear. Without the subtitles I would have no idea it even happened.
Agree, it's a feature I really appreciate, especially when an off-screen character says something crucial to the plot but hard to hear. I also get to read lyrics to songs on the soundtrack that I would otherwise have no idea of.
Separate volume sliders would be great for nature documentaries. The BBC doesn’t half over-dramatize with their scores, yet the footage is absolutely captivating. To watch it without the music (or even, dare I say it, without Attenborough’s narration) would create a very different experience.
For me the [off-screen sound] portions are more annoying and seem to be included in most subtitles (I am aware of "normal" subtitles vs. SDH, but often the former also include extra information).
To fix that I usually preprocess them with subclean[1], i.e. extract the subtitles with `ffmpeg -i IN out.srt` in clean and use that srt file. There are some players with cleanup options, but I never found them comprehensive enough.
Also, separate subtitle tracks would be awesome, or a slider for "how much information" you want displayed.
For me, it is definitely audio mixing when it comes to subtitles with English language content. Accents are a close second. Sometimes the person is just unintelligible or the audio is mixed with quiet dialogue and loud sound effects.
I kind of dislike it though, I've grown to use it as a crutch and would prefer to not need to use it.
> Some directors and actors now prefer a naturalistic approach to delivering and shooting performances that might be harder for the sound crew to record.
This is almost the answer.
The answer is, yes, naturalism, but it's not about difficulty recording.
TV and movies used to emphasize diction and clarity a great deal, where every word could be perfectly understood. The problem was that this could all feel a great deal "actory" -- it felt like you were watching actors on a stage performing for an audience rather than real life happening in front of you. Of course, for multi-cam sitcoms, they were quite literally actors on a stage performing in front of a studio audience.
Over the past 20 years, audiences have grown tired of how "fake" it seems. They've demanded more naturalism. "Stagey" multi-cam sitcoms have almost disappeared, almost everything is single-cam now. And with the greater "realism" of single-cam, speech has become much more naturalistic.
In real life, people mutter, muddle their consonants, speak low, etc. And so the same thing is happening on TV and film now, because it seems more true to life. The same way darker environments are more true-to-life, lighting has been trending more naturalistic, accents and ethnic casting are more accurate... on the whole, everything is trending towards greater naturalism. And so this includes diction.
So the problem in general has nothing to do with sound recording or mixing -- the technology behind these is better than ever. To the contrary, it has to do with a conscious artistic choice to prioritize naturalistic speaking over "actory" exaggerated diction. Realism over clarity.
And I suspect that it's actually been partly enabled by the fact that subtitles are so easy to turn on now, that for people who don't like this, they can just turn the subtitles on. That wasn't the case most of the time 30 years ago. (The same way you can turn up the brightness on dark scenes, if you must.)
I have subtitles enabled by default. I don't know whether to place the blame on the acoustics of my room, the mixing of the source, or my hardware... but _I just can't hear the dialogue_.
My setup is wildly unmatched in that I have a cheap Yamaha RX-V683BL AV receiver (which needs to be replaced, but high cost of HDMI 2.1 makes this hard) and a 5.0 arrangement with two KEF LS50's serving as L/R and one more LS50 serving as the center. Now certainly the receiver and speakers should be paired better. However, even if I'm not driving them correctly my setup is magnitudes better quality than the average soundbar I see most people buying up.
Most of the stuff I'm watching is Blu-ray so the quality of the source isn't to blame here. So the question remains, is my equipment that poorly matched, is the mixing terrible, or do I just have hearing loss in the vocal frequency range?
I just cleared up my own confusion between subtitles and closed captioning. Before, I thought "subtitles" referred strictly to translations of foreign language dialog, and that the feature for hard of hearing was called closed captioning. But in fact SDH = Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, so it is in fact a form of subtitle.
In short, subtitles are for when sound is avavilable but hard to understand, while captioning is when sound is not available (such as the viewer is completely deaf). This is the definition from HTML5.[0]
Of course, one could simply mute the TV showing subtitles and then I guess they'd become captions!
Lost aversion to subtitles because of anime watching in youth. Mostly its because the kids are loud as hell. If i turn up the tv they just scream and play louder. Subtitles prevent the escalation of volume in the house.
Dunno if it's my ADHD or what, but I've been using subtitles ever since streaming became a thing. And even more so after I had a kid. I basically cannot hear without subtitles.
I use them because we watch all of our stuff on a small laptop. Maybe my hearing is terrible, but I feel like in order to make out speech in many movies I have to turn the volume up entirely too high. So instead I keep it low and use sub-titles.
Probably like a lot of people, I thought I was a weirdo for always having subtitles on. I do it even when I'm listening on headphones which give me complete freedom to have the sound as loud as I want. It just makes things easier.
Personally I like subtitles because I can watch with friends/family and not miss any content, even when they are loudly wondering who a particular actor is, or what they missed when they went to get snacks.
It helps someone who is HoH like me to enjoy content that would have had been previously very difficult to access, not just entertainment but educational and otherwise
As a result the sounds were never really sent in one direction or another, the bass wasn't completely sent to the subwoofer, etc.
For the case of the oblivious majority (sadly I suspect there are more people who play surround on two channels than have a surround system) that means they can hear the dialog without a center channel, hear some bass without a subwoofer, etc. It means though that the people who bought a surround system and bought a disk with a 5.1 surround track didn't really get what they were paying for.
By the time Blu-Ray came out they got more aggressive on mastering surround which means you get a much better experience with a surround system but if you play that track on a two-channel system you'll barely hear the dialog at best.