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Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

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Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#241

Post by throw-12-16 »

tensor wrote: post #154
socalgal2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conspriacy theory ... TVs have bad sound so you're compelled to by a soundbar for $$$ I've certainly had the experience of hard to hear dialog but I think (could be wrong) that that's only really happened with listening through the TV speakers. Since I live in an apartment, 99% of the time I'm listening with headphones and haven't noticed that issue in a long time.

Like all conspiracy theories, this seems rooted in a severe lack of education. How exactly do you expect a thin tiny strip to produce any sort of good sound? It's basic physics. It's impossible for a modern tv to produce good sound in any capacity.

It's easier to believe in conspiracy than do a few minutes of research to discover that you need a good quality sound system to have good quality sound.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#242

Post by VBprogrammer »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #223
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out?

It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them.

It's doubtful that any of these netflix series you could catch one random episode and feel comfortable that you understand what's going on. Perhaps worse is the recent trend for mini-series which are almost exactly how you describe - just a film without half of it being left on the cutting room floor.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#243

Post by troupo »

bee_rider wrote: post #188
pezezin wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English is my second language and I always though my lack of understanding was a skill issue. Then I noticed that native speakers also complain. Then I started to watch YouTube channels, live TV and old movies, and I found out I could understand almost everything! (depending on the dialect) When even native speakers can't properly enjoy modern movies and TV shows, you know that something is very wrong...

The sound mixing does seem to have gotten much worse over time. But also, people in old movies often enunciated very clearly as a stylistic choice. The Transatlantic accent—sounds a bit unnatural but you can follow the plot.

Not just old movies. Anything until mid-2000s or 2010s.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#244

Post by jason_oster »

lostlogin wrote: post #96

It’s funny to read about respecting content on that site, which has no respect for their own content. Yes, I usually run add blockers, Pihole etc, I’m away from home and temporarily without my filters.

You might want to setup WireGuard on your Pihole device [1], so that you can VPN to it for DNS resolution remotely. It's crazy good. (And it can also be used as a full VPN, if you want to access anything remotely.)

[1] https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/wireguard/

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#245

Post by sfn42 »

XorNot wrote: post #227
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

Honestly what I don't get is how this even happened though: it's been I think 10 years with no progress on getting the volume of things to equal out, even with all the fancy software we have. Like I would've thought that 5.1 should be relatively easy to normalize, since the center speech channel is a big obvious "the audience _really_ needs to hear this" channel that should be easy to amplify up in any downmix....ins…

I toyed with the idea of making some kind of app for this but while it may work on desktop it seems less viable for smart tvs which is what I primarily use.

Though I have switched to mostly using Plex, so maybe I could look into doing something there.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#246

Post by miyuru »

bombcar wrote: post #114
bawolff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things can be both high resolution and still low quality due to being overcompressed.

I really wish they had to advertise streams at bitrate and not resolution.

Netflix's main audience is general public who still cannot differentiate between mbps and MBps.

for us nerds there is hidden stats for nerds option.

https://blog.sayan.page/netflix-debug-mode/

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#247

Post by vjk800 »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #223
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

I'm fine with this. I always wished regular movies were much longer. I wish lord of the rings movies included all the songs and poems and characters from the book and lasted like 7 hours each.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#248

Post by pentaphobe »

snakeboy wrote: post #216
joquarky wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that the people mixing the audio already know what is being said: Top-down processing (or more specifically, top-down auditory perception) This refers to perception being driven by prior knowledge, expectations, and context rather than purely by sensory input. When you already know the dialog, your brain projects that knowledge onto the sound and experiences it as “clear.”

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

There's been a lot of speculation/rationalisation around this already, but one I've not seen mentioned is the possibility of it being at least a little down to a kind of "don't look back" collective arrogance (in addition to real technical challenges)

(This may also apply to the "everything's too dark" issue which gets attributed to HDR vs. SDR)

Up until fairly recently both of these professions were pretty small, tight-knit, and learnt (at least partially) from previous generations in a kind of apprentice capacity

Now we have vocational schools - which likely do a great job surfacing a bunch of stuff which was obscure, but miss some of the historical learning and "tricks of the trade"

You come out with a bunch of skills but less experience, and then are thrust into the machine and have to churn out work (often with no senior mentorship)

So you get the meme version of the craft: hone the skills of maximising loudness, impact, ear candy.. flashy stuff without substance

...and a massive overuse of the Wilhelm Scream :) [^1]

[^1]: once an in joke for sound people, and kind of a game to obscure its presence. Now it's common knowledge and used everywhere, a wink to the audience rather than a secret wink to other engineers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_scream

EDIT: egads, typing on a phone makes it far too easy to accidentally write a wall of text - sorry!

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#249

Post by dotancohen »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #223
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

We used to call that a soap opera. Maybe today we should call it a couch opera.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#250

Post by mcv »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #242
KeplerBoy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out? It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them. It…

It's a different medium, and it's intentional. And not even new either. The Singing Detective, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus did the same thing decades ago. Apparently they were successful enough that everybody does it now.
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