Can't hear dialogue on your TV? Blame Atmos (and some other stuff)

[gvl_guy]

This is an excellent little video from Vox about why it's so difficult to hear the dialogue on movies and such while you watch TV. It's not only Atmos' fault, but it's part of it.

I thought I was losing my hearing or something, but as you watch this video, you'll see that MANY folks are like me and use closed captioning.

Fascinating

 

[J. PUPSTER]

This is an excellent little video from Vox about why it's so difficult to hear the dialogue on movies and such while you watch TV. It's not only Atmos' fault, but it's part of it.

I thought I was losing my hearing or something, but as you watch this video, you'll see that MANY folks are like me and use closed captioning.

Fascinating

You'd think by now they could figure this out!

Yes, I have lots of trouble with dialog. I'm just about to watch a PBS show from England called Miss Scarlett and the Duke. I will be turning on my AVR's DPL II setting for this as it tends to highlight the dialog into the Center, making those low vocals with British accents understandable.

Last time I was at a movie theater, the explosions and louder stuff was wayyy too loud. So the dynamic range variance they spoke of, would be helped by lowering those loudest moments IMO.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

I have always been confused by statements like this. Maybe it's because I only watch certain content, but I have never had any trouble with movie dialogue at home. Ever. And I have the worst setup out of everyone on this forum.

In my experience, on my setup and others, as long as you have some sort of center speaker, you don't get dialogue problems.

As for the dynamic range issues...I don't seem to be running into any problems either. 1/50 movies have SFX that's too loud, maybe. I feel like I'm an outlier given how much people complain about it though.

 

[par4ken]

If I use the QSD-1 in surround mode the vocals are a bit harder to hear, some cancellation of in phase signals occurs to create that mode. The S&IC doesn't have that problem so is actually better at decoding Dolby soundtracks. I often prefer to decode soundtracks especially if they contain music as it produces a more immersive surround sound than the discrete mix does.

I don't use a centre speaker, unnecessary for music IMHO but have often thought that it would be good to use to bring up the dialogue with those hard to hear movies. Very often I just use the TV speakers, especially at night so as not to disturb anyone!

While "they" like to reduce dynamic range for music, the opposite seems to be true for movies! Go figure! As I recall the TV itself has audio settings to make the dialogue easier to hear as well.

 

[Ephi82]

Interesting info in the original post and video. That said, if you are getting older, Please, please go get a hearing test and demo a quality hearing aid. I am 64, long time hobby and sometimes pro musician who has to put sub titles on when watching tv/movies these days and Who finds conversations in noisy places very difficult.

now, I am wearing some Widex Moment 330 aids listening to my big system and music sounds like I remember it back when I was 18! Hello to
clearly hearing the sound of a cymbal, and oh, that’s what a reverb tail sounds like!

Movies? no more subtitles needed! Restaurants, I’m good to go!

no, these aren’t inexpensive, but for me, its worth every penny because music is most loved.

 

[timothyemerson]

Interesting video on the technical side but methinks having to switch on subtitles these days MOST of the time is due to mumbling actors trying to method it way too much. Tom Hardly-understand-him and Nolan are the worst offenders. If Tom spoke clearly and Nolan didn't do whatever he does to hide what's being said to make things more mysterious, it wouldn't detract from their performances/movies at all. No one would say, "Gee, I wish Tom had mumbled more/that I couldn't hear what they just said".

It's the audio equivalent of weird new colour grades (e.g., Heat on 4K), over-the-top HDR application and everything just being way too dark at the moment. It's a deliberate stylistic choice and hopefully it goes away like shaky cam from the late 90's early 2000's went away.