I thought this might be better on a separate thread, the 'big telly' thread has set me off.
Does anyone on here have enough technical knowledge to know why films that you download from Sky or play on a DVD are so hard to hear any dialogue, yet when an action scene or similar comes on, it wakes the dead.
We watched 'Lincoln' last night. Half the time I couldn't hear what on earth they were saying. I kept turning the volume up...and then when an outdoor sequence happened it was much too loud.
The worst film for this was Valkyrie, we turned up the volume so much to hear the talking that when the action scene in the desert started it made us jump (and woke up my then infant son upstairs).
In reality I've had problems all my life with background noise, so if I'm in a noisy pub I have a devil of a job to pick up conversations, all the hubbub merges in with it, that's why I can't stand pubs with music blaring and have never liked nightclubs, even in my teens. I just thought that was 'normal'....but then thought why would anyone would make a film where you can't hear people talk?
So is it me, or something else afoot? I've had regular hearing tests, the last one 12 months ago, so no obvious problems there.
Our home entertainment system is a good quality, Panasonic t.v. and surround sound and not that old...so i'm not convinced it's that.
Over to you lot.
Last edited by: Westpig on Sun 23 Jun 13 at 15:06
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I think one of the TVs we had in the past had a Auto Gain Control system which when switched on stopped the adverts coming on loud and waking you up. It was in the setup menu. Our last two (Sony) "main" TVs have not had it.
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Me too WP. Of all my faculties my hearing has not gone into decline - yet, pardon?
I have had the same experience, mumbled dialogue. Even turning volume up doesn't seem to make the words more decipherable. I've even tried different sound settings to no avail.
Why? Sorry can't answer the question but it seems I'm not on my own.
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I have that problem all the time.
Why make a film with unintelligible dialogue? I actually prefer poor, TV sound to that overboosted bass that we are supposed to be impressed with, that makes it harder to hear.
I can't abide music in pubs. Sometimes I just give up on the conversation.
Age is not your friend though with hearing or sight. It just gets worse.
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It might be to do with way the film is edited from a sound perspective, might be someone who knows anyone in the film industry? I know what you mean with words blurring, for me it's music lyrics. Unless I really concentrate most of the time I can't really pick out the individual words being sung. All I can here is the tune and some words being sung. No problem in general conversation although I work in a very noisy environment I have regular hearing tests and never had any problems.
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Does that explain the 'ellow, 'ellow, 'ellow?
;>)
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Phew, thanks for raising this, thought it was two turning prematurely into old codgers.
Our sound system is good, we have a proper 'receiver' at the heart of it and a very good centre speaker that processes most the speech, still makes not a jot of difference, barely undertandable mumbling in too many films now.
Its reflecting modern speech, almost turning into 'Natsat' Essex street talk innit, was it from the book A Clockwork Orange, or 1984? see me memory's gone to pot too.
When we watch a DVD, especially American with slurred speech we find the subtitles if available and run those every time.
Its not just on film, i was in Toddington services in the loos couple of years ago and a bunch of lads, white but talking 'street', were gobbing off loudly to each other as they do, maybe shouting to make the foreigner understand is still the British way?, anyway i couldn't understand a single word, yet my Jamaican mates i can have a good conversation with...those friends incidentally poke fun at the youngsters who sound more Jamaican than they do but have never been out of a British town.
edit, in reply to SP's good post below, yes my hearing is very good especially for my age, we have annual medicals at work when hearing is tested fully as part of the examination.
Last edited by: gordonbennet on Sun 23 Jun 13 at 16:27
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>> Our sound system is good, we have a proper 'receiver' at the heart of it
>> and a very good centre speaker that processes most the speech, still makes not a
>> jot of difference, barely undertandable mumbling in too many films now.
>>
Hmm, I had that problem with my original surround setup. These days I'm running a Cambridge Audio 540R driving a set of KEF 2005.2 speakers and the dialogue is crystal clear, even at low volumes. This is the first setup I've had where the dialogue cuts through the effects and soundtrack as it should.
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I'm now deaf, but I do know something about this.
Films are often made with a very wide dynamic range. In the cinema, film conversations are usually at a pretty reasonable level, but the loud bits, are very loud. If you had your home cinema sound system set to play at cinema type sound levels, you'd get complaints from next door but one at least!
This also presents broadcasters with a problem in that the upper limit of the system needs to be reserved for the loud bits, and consequently, conversations are a bit quiet.
Surround sound does generally help, but only if the centre speaker is both a good one and matches the others. Worth spending some time on the test tones with the aid of a sound level meter to get the system properly set up (good amplifiers will have the ability to both set individual speaker outputs and supply test tones to each channel in turn).
Age related deafness is far more common than most people realise. Sadly, most of the complaints that broadcasters get are of the type that the complainant has impaired hearing and does not admit it. This rather limits the reply as any advice on managing a hearing loss can't be give, as the complainant would take insult.
Cocktail party deafness is another matter, the inability to filter out noise and focus on the conversation of interest.
Needless to say, sound engineers are in perfect environments, and don't have hearing problems. Broadcast wise, they are supposed to check with a basic sound system as well, to make sure the product works for both serious sound systems and one found on a cheap telly. I very much doubt this attention is given to films, even the DVD release meant for playing at home.
There has been work on broadcast sound levels and a small improvement may yet happen, but where a film is transmitted the above problems will still exist.
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One's hearing is not what it was. I haven't been able to hear bats for twenty years, and latterly have had difficulty hearing the mumblings and offhand mutters of teenagers, and even the murmured but acerbic admonitions I often get from herself. My right ear has a restricted passage from a childhood infection and operation, and gets clogged up easily with wax. Even when I have syringed my ears, my hearing isn't as good as it used to be. My cheeky doctor sister, deafer than I am although younger, just laughs when I complain and urges me to get two hearing aids like her (typically for a hearing aid user, she grumbles that they don't work properly).
Seems to be what people are used to though. Americans, especially black Americans, tended to hear my diffident English murmur as a meaningless mutter, and I have had the same experience in Africa, Nigeria in particular, where people are trained to hear quite loud, distinct phonemes pronounced in a certain way. Anything else sounds like gibberish.
Oh yes: I have those gain level problems with some but not all films on TV or DVD.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Sun 23 Jun 13 at 16:27
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As SP says, basically the film is not designed to be seen, and therefore listened to, in your living room.
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I'm with the coppers and the dugong here...we have a Sony Bravia with a soundbar as main telly. I like to keep control of the remote, but I'm always being told to ' turn it down ' then, when the adverts are over, ' turn it up '.
There are occasions when I can barely understand what's being said on shows like HIGNFY, depending on who's in the chair.
Don't get me started on the graphics on Only Connect. Surely not designed for the viewer to make any sense of, Grey font on pale blueish background. Such an interesting quiz, as well !
Restaurants and pubs...I don't need music , especially the owner/manager's egocentric choice ! We go, often with friends, to talk to each other.
Ted
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> Restaurants and pubs...I don't need music , especially the owner/manager's egocentric choice
You aren't kidding Ted. About ten of us have a meeting in our local once a month, a village society thing. One night we asked the barmaid to turn the music off, as there were no other customers in and we were shouting over it.
"Sorry, I'm listening to it". She was duly read her horoscope!
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We have a surround system, on which the centre speaker is noticeably bigger than any of the others. We turned that up relative to the others and it makes the dialogue on films much easier to follow.
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Yes, for us benefits were heard when the centre speaker was tweaked correctly.. But on our amp, and I guess others, there are a load of "effects", such as "hall", or "sci fi movie" and it can be worth trying those. Never mind if it says "jazz concert", just see if it sounds better for that particular movie.
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" Only Connect" - only found this show recently with the rather scrummy Victoria Coren (Mitchell). Don't often get much before the teams but I enjoy the style of the show.
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The basic sound mix for cinema is dialogue to centre, effects to front and rear left and right.
You do get a bit of speech from other directions but generally, only as characters enter and leave the shot. The dreaded background music is often left and right front with little centre component.
So a good centre speaker and set up of same should pay dividends.
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I would guess it's a surround soundtrack being badly remixed to stereo. My TV has a "normalise volume on mixdown" option in the menus, but looking for a "Speech" preset might do the same thing.
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Depends on the system of stereo.
Dolby Pro-logic, (or a compatible system) which all the surround films were until the mid 90s and quite a few after, is a two channel stereo system with the other three channels coded onto it.
The centre channel is the common component, and the left and right rear channels are derived from the phase difference between the left and right front channels. The upshot of this is it's impossible to remove, although digital sound systems that work on too few bits destroy the rear channel information.
BBC One, Two, Three, Four, Cbeebies, CBBC have sufficient bitrate for pro-logic; BBC Parliament and News 24 doesn't. Can't speak for the others as I was a BBC employee.
Dolby Digital though is a genuine multi-channel system but I'd have thought any professional broadcaster presented with this sound would have the ability to re-code it for broadcast as normal two channel sound. That however may be the rub, the centre channel of most home cinema systems when presented with this two channel input may carry rather more background music and effects than the older pro-logic system would.
Keep taking the tablets...
Last edited by: Slidingpillar on Mon 24 Jun 13 at 09:31
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Dynamic range has been noted and the cut-offs are particularly annoying with full-range classical music of about 90 Db. I find that an adequate level for the larger part of the orchestra leaves a solo instrument inaudible. The other main problem is loudspeaker size, slimline TV designs dictating the use of little squawkboxes. My Panny Viera is generally very good but has a very hard-edged upper register.
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As a couple of replies above mention looking in the menu for sound options can make a huge difference. Our LCD TVs have options such as standard, dynamic, game, wide, music, speech etc.
If you tab through the options while the particular film is on one of them will usually push voice to the front so it's as clear as possible. Oddly a different setting might be needed for the next film.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Tue 25 Jun 13 at 09:27
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Brilliant answer from Slidingpillar there. To add to that, the reason TV adverts are often louder than the programmes they punctuate is because the dynamic range (difference between the quietest and loudest parts) of the advert is smaller, so they can have the whole thing as loud as the loudest parts of the TV programme.
I sometimes do some rudimentary editing of music files on my PC, for example to chop off speech at either end when a song has been grabbed from a radio broadcast. The difference in recording volume between various tracks from different sources is quite marked, and I will often have to amplify an entire track by 30-40% so that it doesn't sound quiet in the car compared to others on the same home-made CD.
I find the solution to over-quiet dialogue/over-loud action scenes on DVD films at home is to watch them at full blast when the neighbours are out ;)
Last edited by: Dave_TiD on Tue 25 Jun 13 at 19:58
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We push the sound through our HiFi which improves intelligibility, but is still not perfect. If I am on my own I use headphones, which solve most of the problems.
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>> Brilliant answer from Slidingpillar there.
Agreed.
>> I sometimes do some rudimentary editing of music files on my PC...
I use a licensed version of "WavePad Sound Editor" for tidying up audio files - fade in fade out, insert silence, etc etc - and use the "normalise" function for getting levels consistent.
Then burn in the finished job in almost any format and bitrate required.
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Your hearing and films - Old Navy
