Secret i learned on my raspberry pi running stereo speakers on Kodi is you can set a seperate volume for the dialogue channel so i just bumped it up like 14 decibels and now it matches the action fairly well. You can set it from the audio settings inside the movie and its called something like center channel downmix i cant remember exactly
Center channel downmix boost or something is the name. Iirc the phenomenon with quiet dialogue is due to most streaming content being delivered with surround audio. The shitty cheap video players used by the streaming services will do a cheap flat downmix to stereo which results in the center channel being too low when split into two mono channels for playback on stereo speakers compared to if it would be played on a dedicated center speaker. This is due to maths or something.
Back in the day dvd and even vhs movies had proper stereo mixes where the center channel would be boosted to audible levels.
Tl;dr: just pirate shit and use a proper video player instead of the cheapass players used by netflix, disney, etc.
That’s why subtitles became so popular in the recent times
Yeah it’s bad… It’s gotten to the point that I have unironically said “Wait! Where are my subtitles? I can’t hear without my subtitles!”
You said that watching a video or in a real life conversation?
yes
As a HoH person I secretly love this trend and hope it never dies
Haha, I’m glad somebody can benefit
Christopher Nolan
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH
Me and dad saw Oppenheimer in the cinema, the sound was almost unbearable at times…
I hate Nolan. As long as he hates me for having normal speakers, I’m gonna hate him for being an elitist prick
I hate it.
Windows has a great feature called Loudness Equalization, which you can enable on about every sound device in the properties.
It lowers the volume on loud sounds and increases on soft sounds.
Hell yeah PREACH brotha!
My partner and I use it for watching ANYTHING. Turn it off for music and games, and on for any possible watching thing. It’s MAGIC.
I’ll take it a step further and recommend K-Lite Codec Pack, it lets you set up MPC-HC with that and the option to enable center boost for 5.1 audio on 2.0 setups
I’ll scope it out! I love VLC but I use MPC-HC when I use SVP to smooth animation up to 60FPS. People hate on smoothing but it works soooooo much better with a decent video card than with a 4000USD Samsung TV hahaha. Get yo artifacts outta here
Quick edit: I have a 2.1 setup, I assume that’s fine still?
Yeah, 2.1 doesn’t have center either (it’s the real reason dialogue is quiet and background is loud. 5.1 expects SL-L-C-R-SR and sub (the .1) C plays the “dialogue” track normally.
I already fucking struggle with understanding English since it’s my second language, and with this new shit sound, it’s now fucking worse. I used to be able to do without subtitles most of the time, but now I can’t watch shit without it.
Same. I can’t watch English movies on a TV because I just don’t understand it… But then with headphones on everything is perfect.
Every damn time! As someone who is not a video editor or sound engineer, isn’t it pretty easy to equalize all the sound?
On Windows, right click the sound icon, go into sound options, playback, double click on your default playback device, and go to the Enhancements tab.
LOUDNESS EQUALIZATION
is fucking awesome and more people should be aware of it. It’s baked into Windows 10!
Does that work if using VLC?
Edit - For W10, right click the sound icon and choose Open Sound Settings
Under Choose Your Output Device, click Device Properties
On the right side of the screen, click Additional Device Properties
You’ll find the enhancements tab there
If you are running that VLC on Windows, yes!
It is a setting on the sound device, which VLC uses.
vlc has a compressor which is what “loudness equalization” uses.
Indeed! Like the other poster says, it’s ALL THE SOUNDS.
Turn it off for games and music*, but I turn it on for EVERYTHING else. It makes things bearable to watch! IT’S MAGIC
They are EQ for 5.1 and the voice goes into the center channel. In a proper system the center channel is bigger than the satellites so you get clear dialog, but if you try to output 5.1 into two channels everything is squeezed together
Even with a 5.1.2 setup new movies and series sound equalization sucks
Ok it can’t just be me. It feels like at a certain point sound levels got messed up. When I watch older stuff it’s fine the new stuff I feel like I am skipping backwards to catch what they said.
This has driven me crazy for a long time too. It really feels like this picture and takes something away from any enjoyment.
It isn’t just you. Vox has a good video on it.
What an obnoxious conclusion they have - we need to buy better speakers. I have good speakers. Old things sound great, but new shows sound like crap. This is their problem to fix, not ours.
I completely agree, it’s ridiculous. There are settings on both my TV and streaming devices to try to combat this “problem”.
This should be illegal. I’m so tired of having to turn the TV up to hear the dialogue and then all the sudden the loudest noise you ever heard in your life. Then you turn it down … But here’s the next dialogue where you have to turn it back up again.
It really ruins the experience for me personally
That’s why I love Star Trek. I never have trouble understanding dialogue.
Older TV shows generally have a more even audio mix, because they were mixed for clear dialogue on TV speakers. Nowadays even TV shows have movie theater mixes, despite the fact that no one will ever see these shows in the cinema. I think TV execs just assume way more people have a Dolby Atmos system in their living room than they do in reality. It’s pretty stupid.
why not provide two mix-downs one for regular people and one for idio… I mean those tv execs?
This is why I turn on the audio normalization on my TV. It makes the explosions sound super weird but it’s impossible to watch movies with kids sleeping otherwise. The mixing is so bad.
The mixing isn’t for your home. Which it obviously should be.
Watching TV is also shit. When an ad break comes, I have to mute the sound or turn down the volume, regardless of normalization. That should be illegal in my opinion but it’s the status quo.
I personally like high dynamic range. Most receivers, and I’m guessing most smart TVs, have some form of dynamic range compression if you don’t. Bad quality, “realistic” voice recordings are a different issue. Having a center channel speaker also helps a lot.
Most TVs seem to default to playing the surround audio track, which is a terrible idea when you only have stereo speakers, but I guess the TVs do it in case you decide to hook up a multi speaker system mid movie?? Choosing the down mixed stereo audio instead, makes for a much better experience for most people.
Center channel speaker FTW
I have tinnitus and I have a hard time hearing low volume audio … so yes subtitles are a requirement now.
The funny part to that is if I decide to watch some dumb action flick … I set the sound for the explosions and I really don’t care if I can hear the dialogue because I know it will be stupid
I’m here to preach Loudness Equalization. If you’re watching on Windows, enable it for SURE.
(I’m also a tinnitus boi)
I am on a gnu+linux (it’s an operating system like windows or iOS) and I use the pulseeffects app it has all sorts of soundeffects that you can use on your audio.
I just use the compressor to even out the volume throughout. Especially useful on youtube.
ok rms
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Yeah I have ‘em on by default now
Someone in my family calls this “whispering explosions” which I’m pretty sure comes from something, not sure what
