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Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

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Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#391

Post by numpad0 »

zaroth wrote: post #339
vel0city wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive number of people don't have anything other than the speakers included in their TV. The next massive percentage of people maybe have a sound bar, maybe with an included subwoofer. A tiny, minuscule, microscopic percentage of consumers will have an external receiver. Maybe they'll have 5.1 on that. Maybe they'll have 9.2. An extremely small fraction, practically a rounding error, will have higher than that. M…

What a shame though! A decent 5.1 setup should be cheap and easy to setup. Of course that’s far from the truth, but good sound is so worth it! Being able to truly enjoy music, movies, we live in an incredible era for content, video is regularly available in 4K and people can play that! Why is sound stuck so far behind?

I think our auditory system just isn't great. Compressed formats with bitrate of 320kbps is borderline indistinguishable from raw formats in audio, while it will be borderline unbearable in video.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#392

Post by brabel »

ryandrake wrote: post #136

One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who mumble their dialog. Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those parts. We now just keep the…

> The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her...

Exact same problem at home... it was so bad on Interstellar that after that movie, she never went to a cinema with me again, or watched any movies together at all :(.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#393

Post by InCityDreams »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #243
ryandrake wrote: post #136

One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who mumble their dialog. Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those parts. We now just keep the…

While we are teaching actors to enunciate can we do the same with musicians? When I listen to music in German, I can almost completely understand it despite speaking German at a kindergarten level. When I listen to music in English, despite being fluent, it is almost impossible to discern the lyrics they are mumbling.

Glottal stops.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#394

Post by afterburner »

perrygeo wrote: post #45

The fact that there's a claimed generational gap here speaks more to the values of the generations re: passive vs active entertainment. I could also ask: "Why do all these 60-Somethings have the TV on as background noise while doing other tasks?" To me it seems closed-caption usage is correlated with actually paying attention to television consumption. People who have their TV on at all hours, as background entertain…

I have an additional theory:

In the past, that line needed to come in loud and clear, or people would just miss it, probably forever. Now, we can rewind, or of course turn on subtitles, so there's not as much pressure on the audio finishing to be super clear.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#395

Post by tinus_hn »

sph wrote: post #302
UpstandingUser wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pig ...was terrible, I wanted more screentime with that adorable pig...sorry Nic, you're in the shadow of a real star...

Eh, I've seen worse films from him, and worse acclaimed films this past couple years. In fact, 2 of the 6 movies I've watched the past couple years have been with Nicholas Cage, and I'm not even a fan of his. I don't know if it's just me but cinema has become really shit, unless you're into superhero movies. It's like nothing matters any more to executives and moviegoers of all ages than superheroes. Are we living in…

No, we’re living in a world where piracy and exploded budgets mean every movie needs to be a hit. One flop and the studio is gone. So the studios produce movies that are certain to be not flops, like the endless sequels, and that will draw people to cinemas where there is no piracy, which means impressive spectacles with explosions.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#396

Post by troad »

zengief wrote: post #355

A new hearing loss modality seems to be gaining traction -- "hidden" hearing loss. A core symptom is difficulty parsing speech in noisy environments. Caused by repeated exposure to loud noises. Don't know if folks around here are going clubbing much but I'm under the impression that it's gotten way louder recently. Live music as a whole is pretty popular these days. Apparently most who have it don't have the classic…

I definitely have this. My friends can usually understand one another shouting in a moderately loud bar; I can’t understand them at all.

I don’t know if it’s technically hearing loss though; I feel like I can hear the noises my friends are making, I just can’t segregate them from the background noise enough to parse the former as speech.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#398

Post by itronitron »

copperx wrote: post #356
IgorPartola wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait it isn’t because 5.1 became the norm for recording movies bust most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most? I thought that was the conventional wisedom.

I would like to believe that, except that the dialog is almost always too quiet in a movie theater.

Yeah, I enjoyed watching Dune at home more than in the theater because I could turn on the captioning.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#399

Post by zepearl »

novok wrote: post #375
OJFord wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically the same point though - it's not that special attention is given to specifically 5.1, it's that a) more separate speakers helps in itself; b) it's primarily mixed for such a multi-separate-speaker system.

I have a 5.0 system, and the dynamic range mumble voice + super loud explosion is still very present, even when I artificially boost the center channel. I think voices are actually better on a typical tv speaker 2.0 setup.

I agree.

In my case I had a huge problem with eg. the music in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knives_Out being a lot louder then the rest (source blue ray).

The only fix I found was to rip all tracks, apply normalization + compression filters to the audio tracks in Audacity, finally to repackage everything as MKV.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#400

Post by whywhywhywhy »

IgorPartola wrote: post #249
Klonoar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an article that's been floating around that notes this phenomenon started after Nolan's movies became the style to emulate, and there are various sound engineers who state they would like to do what you want but they have to produce what the paying entity asks for. Someone should feel free to link it here - I'm mobile at the moment so can't dig it up. But anyway, I just wanted to jump in and say... all the ti…

Wait it isn’t because 5.1 became the norm for recording movies bust most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most? I thought that was the conventional wisedom.

It’s honestly ridiculous how bad the stereo (aka what 99% of viewers will experience) mixes are.

The explosions can be heard by my neighbors yet I can barely hear the dialogue at the same volume.

Find myself basically doing half the mix work myself with the volume control. Too many audiophiles in the production chain focusing on something that barely matters at the expense of most viewers.

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