Sound mixing has gotten absolutely terrible. Vox did a pretty good video on why which explained a lot about it.
From what I can remember a few key points are
The director has a lot more play with sound now, so they’re trying to make it in their ‘vision’, which usually means deafening explosions and background noise and quiet dialogue.
Microphones have gotten a hell of a lot better over time. Both directors and actors have picked up on this. Mics have gone from being huge and failure prone to something that can fit in an actors jacket, perfectly capturing everything they say. This has the unfortunate side effect of actors gaining a mumble… usually to sound more dramatic. This has the other side effect of not being able to understand what they’re saying.
Theatres have constantly upgraded their audio equipment and some now have 128 channels of sound (Dolby Atmos). When you’re watching on your television, you’re likely watching with stereo, which is two channels. Even if you have a fantastic home theatre setup, you’re probably going to have 11 channels at most, which is usually through a 4K Blu-ray disc. It’s the job of the sound mixers to make sure that the sound is coherent over these channels, but going from the master with 128 channels to 2 channels is a difficult job.
Audience expectations have changed and technology has changed with it. Movies have progressively become more and more focused on spectacle rather than story. It’s far easier now to add some explosions or have a huge monster pick up a car and toss it, naturally you’d expect these to make some noise… which they do. A loud noise naturally has an impact on you, it’s just human nature. They want to use that to their advantage and have begun to prefer that over dialogue.
But you can combat the storm!
Closed captioning is an obvious one but there is other methods such as dynamic range compression. This is like sacrilege to audiophiles but they’re the ones who caused this in the first place so they deserve it. Effectively, it amplifies quiet sounds whilst reducing loud sounds. Explosions can still be heard but they’re quieter and dialogue can be heard again. Huzzah!
Sound mixing has gotten absolutely terrible. Vox did a pretty good video on why which explained a lot about it.
From what I can remember a few key points are
But you can combat the storm!
Closed captioning is an obvious one but there is other methods such as dynamic range compression. This is like sacrilege to audiophiles but they’re the ones who caused this in the first place so they deserve it. Effectively, it amplifies quiet sounds whilst reducing loud sounds. Explosions can still be heard but they’re quieter and dialogue can be heard again. Huzzah!
I totally forgot about that video! Thank you for summarizing everything in there for everyone. This is such an awesome comment.