Movies (and even most video games) make me so angry with that kind of stuff. You want an artificially tailored experience that only works with a zillion-dollar sound system? Fine, you can make it an optional soundtrack that only kicks in with those systems. But the default audio mix needs to be intelligible even on my phone’s speakers.
Video games are annoying because often you can’t hear anything over the explosions music during the opening cutscenes, but at least you CAN fix it in the settings. Movies, yeesh, you have to rely on your TV’s crap postprocessing.
The technology for this has existed for 20+ years and is actually fairly common. It’s often referred to as dynamic range compression. I think the chief complaint here is that it needs to be more accessible. Pre-applying it would mess up too many use cases.
Audio compression is much older than 20 years! Though you’re probably right about it becoming available on consumer A/V devices more recently.
And you’re definitely correct that “pre-applying” compression and generally overdoing it will fuck up the sound for too many people.
The dynamic ranges that are possible (and arguably desirable) to achieve in a movie theater are much greater than what one could (or would even want to) achieve from some crappy TV speakers or cheap ear buds.
From what I understand, mastering for film is going to aim for the greatest dynamic range possible, because it’s always theoretically possible to narrow the range after the fact but not really vice-versa.
I think the direction to go with OP’s suggested regulation would be to require all consumer TV sets and home theater boxes to have a built-in compressor that can be accessed and adjusted by the user. This would probably entail allowing the user to blow their speakers if they set it incorrectly, but in careful hands, it could solve OP’s problem.
That said, my limited experience in this world is exclusive to mixing and mastering music and not film, so grain of salt and all that.
Movies (and even most video games) make me so angry with that kind of stuff. You want an artificially tailored experience that only works with a zillion-dollar sound system? Fine, you can make it an optional soundtrack that only kicks in with those systems. But the default audio mix needs to be intelligible even on my phone’s speakers.
Video games are annoying because often you can’t hear anything over the explosions music during the opening cutscenes, but at least you CAN fix it in the settings. Movies, yeesh, you have to rely on your TV’s crap postprocessing.
At least game cutscenes tend to be less mumbly. Even IF the volume of things is all over the place.
TV and Movies? Fuck me, it’s like actors all forgot how to talk and instead just mumble every line.
The technology for this has existed for 20+ years and is actually fairly common. It’s often referred to as dynamic range compression. I think the chief complaint here is that it needs to be more accessible. Pre-applying it would mess up too many use cases.
Audio compression is much older than 20 years! Though you’re probably right about it becoming available on consumer A/V devices more recently.
And you’re definitely correct that “pre-applying” compression and generally overdoing it will fuck up the sound for too many people.
The dynamic ranges that are possible (and arguably desirable) to achieve in a movie theater are much greater than what one could (or would even want to) achieve from some crappy TV speakers or cheap ear buds.
From what I understand, mastering for film is going to aim for the greatest dynamic range possible, because it’s always theoretically possible to narrow the range after the fact but not really vice-versa.
I think the direction to go with OP’s suggested regulation would be to require all consumer TV sets and home theater boxes to have a built-in compressor that can be accessed and adjusted by the user. This would probably entail allowing the user to blow their speakers if they set it incorrectly, but in careful hands, it could solve OP’s problem.
That said, my limited experience in this world is exclusive to mixing and mastering music and not film, so grain of salt and all that.