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[Darkmakaimura]

Seems like the last 20 or 25 years a lot of movies and TV shows have people who talk at really low volumes to the point where I have to crank the volume up on my TV.

So many times I have to raise the volume just to hear characters speak.

I feel like it's one of those annoying trends in movies and shows nowadays and even the new Star Treks do it.

People speak at these low volumes are whispers when it's unnecessary. Like, normal people don't talk that way.

Yeah my hearing is not the best. Also I have an older TV but for fuck sake, this is a trend that needs to go away.

 

[HRK69]

I started noticing it during the series Prison Break like 20 years ago

Michael Scofield whispers all the time in it, and somehow it became the norm after that

You can tune it out for a while, then suddenly every scene becomes: "...we have to move tonight."
barely audible mumbling intensifies

 

[March Climber]

tl;dr it's because movies are being audio mixed for the newer and the more expensive sound technologies like dynamic range and dolby atmos.

So when people don't have those at home everything is either too loud, or too low, or both.

What needs to happen is a second layer/step where they do a second audio mix for home sound, but no one wants to pay for that level of work so they just figure you'll use subtitles and deal with it.

 

[Meicyn]

tl;dr it's because movies are being audio mixed for the newer and the more expensive sound technologies like dynamic range and dolby atmos.

So when people don't have those at home everything is either too loud, or too low, or both.

What needs to happen is a second layer/step where they do a second audio mix for home sound, but no one wants to pay for that level of work so they just figure you'll use subtitles and deal with it.

I started typing up a post but then you posted this which is more comprehensive than what I was typing up.

To OP, you'll have to play with sound settings on your TV. If there's a "night mode" or "dynamic volume" mode, or anything equivalent... turn those on. Most content is mixed for studio reference now and assumes you have some way of compressing the range through a soundbar or smart TV. Otherwise you're SOL.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

I started noticing it during the series Prison Break like 20 years ago

Michael Scofield whispers all the time in it, and somehow it became the norm after that

You can tune it out for a while, then suddenly every scene becomes: "...we have to move tonight."
barely audible mumbling intensifies

Yeah it all sounds like mumbling to me now. It's super annoying. I don't think I have the sound settings on my television which probably is about 20 years old so I'm SOL because somehow this is acceptable now.

I mean this isn't even when people are just trying to whisper. It's when they normal talk too and you can barely hear it and it just sounds like mumbling.

 

[Meicyn]

Yeah it all sounds like mumbling to me now. It's super annoying. I don't think I have the sound settings on my television which probably is about 20 years old so I'm SOL because somehow this is acceptable now.

I mean this isn't even when people are just trying to whisper. It's when they normal talk too and you can barely hear it and it just sounds like mumbling.

Out of curiosity, what make/model TV do you have? There's probably a solution of some kind. At one point, I had some Logitech PC speakers I got from a thrift store connected to the headphone jack on the back of an old TV and they had a simple equalizer in the front which could be adjusted. I turned up the midrange to make vocals more prominent.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Out of curiosity, what make/model TV do you have? There's probably a solution of some kind. At one point, I had some Logitech PC speakers I got from a thrift store connected to the headphone jack on the back of an old TV and they had a simple equalizer in the front which could be adjusted. I turned up the midrange to make vocals more prominent.

I'll have to check it. It's an old TV but it's a Samsung.

It also doesn't help that I have two fans and an AC running but even without those it's hard to hear.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

LN32A330J1DXZQ is the model of my television, btw.

 

[Meicyn]

LN32A330J1DXZQ is the model of my television, btw.

Found the manual for your TV, which is here. Good news, your TV has sound setting options as shown on page 24.

https://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/200803/20080315141140203_BN68-01514B-00L02-0220.pdf

Try the different modes to see what works best, probably best to start with "Speech" mode and go from there. Hope this helps you out man.

 

[Darkmakaimura]

Found the manual for your TV, which is here. Good news, your TV has sound setting options as shown on page 24.

https://downloadcenter.samsung.com/content/UM/200803/20080315141140203_BN68-01514B-00L02-0220.pdf

Try the different modes to see what works best, probably best to start with "Speech" mode and go from there. Hope this helps you out man.

I'll try that out. Thanks. Hopefully it has some sound balancing especially regards to speech.

 

[Meicyn]

I'll try that out. Thanks. Hopefully it has some sound balancing especially regards to speech.

No problem, there are two other things to check out while playing with settings to improve speech clarity. If you able to mess with the equalizer in the settings menu, raise the levels for 1kHz and 3kHz as human speech hovers around 2kHz on average. Also, there is a dynamic volume option called "auto volume" which raises the volume of quiet stuff, and lowers the volume of loud stuff to try and fit an averaged-out sound level.

 

[epicurius-seven]

The age of brickwalled music and too-high-dynamic range speech. Yay.
Probably fixable some kind of amplitude shaping on the HiFi but annoying all the same.