Can someone tell me why I'm an idiot: streaming services have access to the entire video you're about to watch. They know the max and the min volume of that video. Why is there no setting to shrink that range? Is it going to degrade the audio really bad and they don't want to be blamed?
This goes double for home theater software like Jellyfin, Kodi, and Plex. They have 10,000 customizations and settings, so why can't I define my own custom audio range in them?
Yeah, my test checklist after mixing/mastering using my studio headphones is:
Itâs only final until it sounds good on all the above.
Nah, Christopher Nolan says itâs our fault that we donât have IMAX theater setups at home.
Mr. Lovenstein version
DuckDuckfuckingshutupyoutubeGo player
I want an automute for ads.whatever they are selling they can shove up their loud ass.
There also the fact that speakers on modern tvs suck because they want only a little black frame around the screen. CRTV speakers pointed at the viewer and modern tvs point downward or behind the screen, so everything is a bit muffled. It's like they forgot that audio is a big aspect of watching shows and movies or they are wanting to make a ton of money off a separate speaker system.
"TRY-"
mute
Very good point. Didn't even think about that. At home we use a soundbar because of that.
Lol yeah. Surprised no one made that yet.
Even if you can hear them, you'll still need captions because actors today mumble so much.
Technically speaking it's very easy to implement, it's just a compressor, oldest thing in audio after maybe the EQ.
VLC has a compressor under effects, if you're using Linux you can add effects to pulse or pipewire really easy too.
I listen to The Archers while driving sometimes. And it's annoying because some characters in it speak quietly and the others loudly so I cannot hear the quiet one over the engine
You don't hate dynamic range, you hate bad mixes, two different things, without dynamics audio sounds like shit. An explosion is supposed to be louder than talking speech.
It's just not supposed to try to mimic the absurdity of an actual explosion, to the point of discomfort.
Also, like said before in the parent comment, most consumer systems don't even even have the dynamics to reproduce it without distortion (or damage the woofers).
Imma be honest, I don't see why the explosion should be louder than speech. I can see the boom; I can tell that it's an explosion. It doesn't need to be reinforced to be through volume.
French dubs aren't dumb.
It's funny how for the mainstream things only get better and better for video, but audio gets the shaft. And I am guilty of this too. I am admittedly kind of a videophile but not an audiophile. Like I have decent headphones and I play FLAC music from my Jellyfin server, but if I am watching something on a TV that's only using TV speakers it doesn't bother me.
But the good audio setups are available, of course. So I also get that it would be a shame to master the audio to target crappy little TV and phone speakers. Maybe a range of good dynamic range compression settings needs to be standard on everything.
Yeah I can't hear the dialogue, but when those two characters kissed I could hear everything happening in their mouthes and that's what's really important.
Two characters kiss in deep space 9 and it sounds like a kiss irl. Two characters kiss in superman (2025) (or almost any modern media) and I'm listening to a 30+ second close-up of the actors trying to wetly suck the other's lips into their mouth. Why??
This is good for the source audio itself for complicated reasons, but why tf isn't stable sound more standardized?? It's just a compressor!! Just send the values for the compressor in the metadata!!
Because cinema is supposed to be immersive, it's supposed to take the audience into the action, it's supposed to make you feel like you're there. Dynamics play an important part of this.
It's not enough to acknowledge that there has been an explosion or a monster has screeched, it's important that the viewer feels in danger, like the monster can actually harm the viewer. To get that adrenaline pumping.
Ofc when your levels are ridiculously exaggerated and you stretch over to the volume control all the time, then the immersion is broken because instead of watching the film you're too busy riding the fader.
