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.
Theory: Because distribution companies for movies made having DTS/Dolby Atmos/Whatever mandatory in the theater, sound engineers primarily focus on that because that takes 99% of the time. Because theaters with just optical stereo (yes I'm aware most theaters use digital distribution and projectors now, that just hammers home the point) aren't really a thing any more they don't really bother optimizing it because "nobody will hear that anyway". Then when the film goes to home distribution the distribution company takes the automatic downmix that is the existing stereo track for the optical stereo on a print and use that because they don't want to second guess the sound engineers or the director.
Long theory short: it's the same reason the Beatles mono album versions sound a ton better than the stereo versions, because that was the optimized version because that's what people listened too at the time. Sound engineers aren't being paid to optimize the stereo or even 5.1 versions of the audio, only the theater version in whatever multi-channel standard is popular at the moment, so they don't bother they let the standard downmix stand.
Yeah but this is 2022 are there even movie theaters anymore? The box office sales are deep in the red and many theaters are going bankrupt. Most of What I watch are tv shows
> Yeah but this is 2022 are there even movie theaters anymore?
My uninformed and probably stupid thoughts:
Hollywood was doing some amazing movies in the 90ish (think Seven, The Matrix, Requiem for a Dream etc). It was a mix of new and established players that were allowed to innovate and be creative. Then Hollywood became more risk averse, I assume because sales were unpredictable and production companies wanted guarantees similar to other industries' large investments. So they started recycling ideas, produce sequels and trading IP rights for dudes in specifically colored spandex suits, which came with a guaranteed fanbase that would watch anything with the brand. This eventually became the MCU-type of crap where everything is a 4th wall joke packed with references to current events, leading to a shelf life less than a year and plots became an afterthought. The sales mindset went as far as putting stuff in the movie for the sake of producing a compelling trailer. At the same time TV was taking the Hollywood's lunch money, but for some reason they doubled down on the approach and blamed streaming for their failures.
The issue isn't the format though, or that everyone has Netflix on their microwave display now. There are still great movies today, and if you get a chance to watch one in a good theatre it's a mesmerizing experience. Me and my partner watched The Joker, 1917 and Dune in Alamo Drafthouse (a theater that has zero-tolerance to texting/talking and serves food & drinks). It's an experience that trumps even great TV shows, when done right. It's just sad that it's so rare.
People have been saying cinema is dying since Netflix took off. It's not true and still isn't true. Movies continue to set box office records.
Covid caused a lot of smaller cinemas and chains high in debt to shut. But a lot of them are still going.
Cinemas are pivoting more to the luxury experience rather than just being the place you watch new movies. So they will get bigger screens, better projectors, better audio, etc. It's already started near me.
I mean that works for the theater companies but itv doesn’t really generate more revenue for studios. Their audience is shifting to the home experience
What a travesty it must be to realize your personal behavior has no bearing on the rest of what the public is doing. Movies are doing pretty well still. Lots of people are still going out, but there are still some trailing pandemic effects. Still, it's really not that far off from pre pandemic, especially when there is a big marvel / franchise film
I like both the big screen and the small screen. Sometimes, a 21" 1080p display or an iPhone at home just doesn't compete with a proper cinema experience.
And before someone says "go build yourself a home cinema": this is the UK. There's no such thing as "free space" in most homes.
What is your setup like? I feel like your comment better describes a problem with subwoofers. I've had plenty of enjoyment from bass throughout my life, but I still don't see the need for a sub anywhere near watching TV or movies. Never mind the related issue of highly-resonant perfunctory ones bundled with cheap consumer gear.
Just the other day I was helping a relative who had gotten a soundbar because her TV's speakers broke. She was complaining the sound carried too far to other rooms. I found the equalizer settings and turned down "woofer" which seemed to help, but then I read the manual that it only applied to an external subwoofer so I was left wondering if it was the placebo effect. Turns out there was a wireless subwoofer placed some distance away. I showed her the equalizer settings if she wanted to turn it down even more, and told her she could also just unplug the subwoofer if she wanted. To her, the inclusion of that box was actually an anti-feature.
And for other frequencies, I'd say middle-cost "prosumer" gear generally exacerbates dynamic range problems, being decent at low levels but distorted at higher levels. My Thinkpad speakers sound like crap all the time, and my receiver+speaker setup handles higher volumes without sounding louder due to distortion.
I mean they do, I purposefully select stereo on Netflix, but I get the feeling the sound engineers don't change it and just hammer the 5.1 down in a way that sounds bad.
Maybe when downmixing it to stereo. If you play it on a real 5.1 system (not a soundbar or other "Dolby Atmos" gimmick with less speakers) your dialogues will come out of the dedicated center speaker which will make it easier to follow. (most home cinema receivers even have a 'boost dialogue' function if you want to know what's happening in the latest Nolan film...)
Can you recommend a good explanation of the different types, how they are recorded encoded etc.? From a naive sonar perspective it seems like two mics one on each side of a head sized camera would do fine for encoding all the angle information. But then you would have to register and apply that knowledge to each boom mic input, and synthesize it for every sound effect that wasn't there at recording. Tl;dr Why isnt two channels enough to generate the correct output for N speakers spread around me?
Left/right sound localization is partially a function of "shadow" created by the head. However more important to localization is the pinna, the outer ear.
Sound enters the earhole directly AND reflects off the folds in the pinna.
This causes complex comb filtering. (cancellation) Our brain learns how to correlate sound direction with these complex filterings. It's quite amazing.
Some audio workstations (Logic) have "binaural" processing to try and emulate this effect. It can never be perfect because everyone's ears are shaped a little different.
Right, that is how we do it. But isn't all the phase information present in two channels of audio to know how to map all the signals to an arbitrary number of angles? You'd need to know the spacing of the mics, but that could be a standard.
About the pinna, a fun way to demonstrate this is to have someone close their eyes, then you snap or jangle keys at various locations and have them point. Then tape their ears to their head and repeat. They will be way off in the vertical. We can do left right-ish (with coning error) without the outer ear. But up down is impossible.
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.