Yep. Dialogue should be loud enough that you can comfortably follow the plot without making your ears bleed. Gunfire and music makes that a bit tricky though. Those should be toned down, but I can see why they’re so loud all the time. Most likely many directors want to make the movie feel more impactful and intense, so they just do it by cranking up the volume those other things.
davidgro@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Here is my preferred solution that will never happen:
Divide all media audio into separate tracks for dialogue, music, sfx, etc., and let the users control the volume of each separately. To avoid having an easily ripped pure music track, perhaps premix the other tracks in at 10% or so (in a logarithmic scale) and make that the minimum volume of any track other than music.
turboSnail@piefed.europe.pub 2 weeks ago
MIDItheKID@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
My Peloton can do this, how come my TV can’t? This technology exists and would not be that difficult to implement for digital media.
herrvogel@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You underestimate big tech. Judging by the headache inducing track record of AV technology, this would end up as yet another garbled mess of eleventeen different competing codecs with bad implementations, inconsistent specifications, misleading marketing, horrible licensing, and predatory DRM.
kinship@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
My problem with that is how far can you go? Will artist integrity shatter? Will people mod Thomas the train on movies? Will we get those god awfull billion page settings?
davidgro@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I guess I’m not understanding your concerns. People with artistic skill can already do anything they want to any audio they want. (Note: that was Way before all this AI junk existed) And I don’t really see how this affects that much.
As for settings, I’m thinking three/four sliders. Much less than a graphic equalizer. It’s just volume control.
papalonian@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How loud specific things are in comparison to other sounds is one of the things that a director dictates to set the mood for their movie. We all agree that it’s gone a bit far with most things nowadays, but having something be piercingly loud or eerily quiet can be used really well, and if everyone from Tommy Teenager to Granny Gertrude can alter these settings with a TV remote and zero knowledge on maybe what they’re even doing (“I thought I was changing the volume and now the people don’t talk anymore!”) it would greatly diminish the director’s ability to control that.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If a director’s vision involves either potentially disturbing neighbours or not being able to understand dialogue, fuck their vision. I’d much rather my devices be controlled by what I want, not anyone else’s desires.
And the existence of idiots doesn’t mean everything needs to be limited so that the idiots won’t screw themselves. We exist in an age where if you don’t understand something, you can easily look up information about it. Enshittification might ruin that over time but it hasn’t done so yet. And it can be designed in a way that can make it easier to figure out. Don’t stick it deep in the settings, make it easy to find in “volume settings” or “audio settings” with preset options that cover common sound system setups. If such a system were common, then plenty of people will learn it and know what’s up when grandma’s TV only plays the music track very loudly (which actually might be kinda nice if you just have the TV playing for background noise).
davidgro@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Clearly the directors are either making bad choices or choices that only make sense in an actual theater. (In my opinion it’s that first thing)
However this is implemented, it wouldn’t be the default volume control on the remote - that would stay as-is. I’m thinking an on-screen menu with clear labels or something.
helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I wouldn’t give full control, maybe 3 faders that allow for a 10% reduction in dialogue, music and SFX. Will if affect artist integrity, absolutely, but so does listening on our consumer speakers and watching the content on our consumer grade displays that aren’t perfectly color balanced in a pitch black room.
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Many shows broadcast in surround sound. This includes a center channel where most voices are. Unfortunately if you don’t have a system to support this, audio is “down mixed” to stereo, and the center channel gets merged into left and right. When this merge happens, you lose definition between the streams.
It would be nice if you could boost the center channel, like you would in a home theater, but before the down mix occurs.