cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/mrlovenstein/p/1660117/volume
cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/nonpolitical_comics/p/1657114/mr-lovenstein-volume
[Mr Lovenstein] Volume
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You can usually skip all of it by telling people to get an actual sound system and not using built in TV speakers
Fuck that, use vlc and turn on volume normalization in the audio settings, or turn the volume down to barely audible and use subtitles if you’re doing some weird “paid service” to play your video files.
We didn’t mix it poorly! You just haven’t spent enough money yet!
This person audios
This person used to mix audio for broadcast.
Not really, it’s still a problem. Better/more speakers don’t magically fix mumble dialogue mixed way below the action volume.
Most of the time, voice is on a specific channel, and you can just turn up that channel, or turn down the others. It’s like turning down the base in an equaliser, you can hear the other stuff better. So it does actually fix it…
That’s why on Blu Ray cases, you see for example, “Dolby Digital 5.1”; it means there’s 5.1 different audio tracks you can play with. That’s the way it was mixed and intended to be listened to. Just ignore the .1 for now, it’s not super important. You can buy a single 5.1 sound bar for pretty cheap that does the job. You don’t really need 5 whole separate speakers.
Most TVs have speakers in the back, so you’re actually listening to an echo of the sound, which muffles it a lot. If you only have a 1 speaker system, your TV also smooshes them all together as best as it can, which is sometimes badly.
I simplified a lot but hopefully this strikes a balance of not too complicated of an answer, while also not upsetting the smart people who know the details.
You’re talking to a guy who built a full 7.2.4 channel Dolby Atmos system in his basement. Full room within a room acoustic isolation. Basically as good as you can go. Full in room treatment for reflection control. About as flat in room response as you can go.
I say again. Better speakers and system only helps a little. The center channel that audio is mixed to can be raised individually some yes but even then music or other sound effects are panned across and you’ll get your ears blown out.
You can’t magically fix mumble dialogue in system.
I had a full atmos theater setup at my last place, Revel Concerta 2 speakers all around. Absolutely still had this problem with some movies. It helped, but not as much as you would think, even with higher grade compression.
Some media just do have poor mixes in this regard. Looking at you, “Lucky” on Apple TV.
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Yeah, but that unfortunately is asking someone to spend some decent money. It’s a problem that could definitely be fixed in softw- Oh no. Don’t get me started… Nice try.
The AppleTV 4k box has actually implemented some very effective menu options to deal with this on shitty speakers. Commence downvoting me for using an Apple product.
I talk about my Apple TV on the Fediverse occasionally and never get serious downvotes about it. It’s a fine device.
I probably just spend too much time in the privacy community. They hate Apple.
Downvoted for preemptive whining about downvotes.
I shall never recover from this
Downvoted for whining about preemptive whining about downvotes
Downvoting for downvote complaining.
That being said I don’t hate AppleTV. Its infinitely better than samsung smart TV bs that makes me want to bash my head against a walnut tree.
That’s like selling cars with little tricycle wheels. It can be solved by buying actual wheels, but why isn’t it right from the start?
My new TV and its speakers sound a lottttt better than my old TV and soundbar.
I had two basic options. Thin and light TV with a new soundbar. Or ‘chunky’ TV with decent speakers, and the option of soundbar going forwards.
I went the chunky route and, at the moment, I hear no need for a soundbar. It’s passed the Christopher Nolan test with ease.
Both Interstellar and Tenet were watched with no issues at all.
But, generally, yeah TV speakers are tinny rubbish.
Then you just get a movie theater situation where you have to wear earplugs. This is a consequence of terrible audio mixing where the assumption is that audiences like loud as fuck sounds that they can ~fEEL~ and the only real fix to it is to un-terrible the mix by compressing it.
You can easily make explosions so loud people can feel it, without ruining the rest of the audio and without hurting people’s hearing. You can boom as loud as you want at ~15hz.
I got to try haptic headphones recently. Gimmicky but made me smile when the bass kicked in and I could feel it through the haptic feedback. It seemed louder without making the rest muddy and without making me yell WHAT? after a couple songs.
Not audiophile quality, it was immersive at least. I want to try them with a movie.
My B&W’s hooked to discrete amps beg to differ.