Volume Down, Subtitles On: 51% of Us Read Along With Our Favorite Shows (pcmag.com) 75
You're either a subtitles person or you're not. But increasingly, people are. From a report: Preply followed up on its subtitle-use survey of Americans from 2022 and found a 5% rise, to 58%, in how many people use captioning more than they used to. Now, just over half (51%) of those surveyed say they use subtitles most of the time. If you're thinking this habit could be the purview of older folks who are having a hard time hearing -- well, 96% of Gen Z survey respondents said they impose words over what they're watching.
Netflix watchers are using captioning the most; 52% of survey respondents say they turn the feature on while they're watching. Subtitles help 81% of people better comprehend what they're watching. A significant part of the time (70%), people use subtitles to understand foreign accents, particularly if a speaker is Scottish, which poses a problem for Outlander fans. Preply found that Americans have a hard time understanding their own language when someone has a Scottish accent (47%), an Irish accent (20%), a British accent (13%), a South African accent (12%), an Australian accent (5%), and even a Southern US accent (3%). So those who watching Derry Girls, Downton Abbey, and Ozark are adjusting their settings to follow along.
Netflix watchers are using captioning the most; 52% of survey respondents say they turn the feature on while they're watching. Subtitles help 81% of people better comprehend what they're watching. A significant part of the time (70%), people use subtitles to understand foreign accents, particularly if a speaker is Scottish, which poses a problem for Outlander fans. Preply found that Americans have a hard time understanding their own language when someone has a Scottish accent (47%), an Irish accent (20%), a British accent (13%), a South African accent (12%), an Australian accent (5%), and even a Southern US accent (3%). So those who watching Derry Girls, Downton Abbey, and Ozark are adjusting their settings to follow along.
Sound mixing (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound mixing is so bad that sometimes subtitles are the only way to hear the dialogue without cranking the volume up to the point where the music wakes up people in the next town. I'd much rather watch without subtitles but with proper sound mixing.
sound amps should add an center boost control (Score:2)
sound amps should add an center boost control
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I'm seeing this problem a lot too, but DTS Neural:X doesn't seem to always improve the situation. Often it actually sounds better to force it to regular old "Dolby Surround" mode but I'm not exactly clear on why.
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Most (all?) of the good ones do.
But if you have a good amp, generally, you have a decent sound system that goes with it, and you are probably less affected by "terrible" mixing. That's because the sound mixing is not that bad (sound engineers are not all complete idiots), but it is done on high quality reference monitors, for THX/Dolby/... certified theaters, and the butchering your average builtin TV speakers do will destroy the little there is to understand.
I think special attention should be given to bui
Re: sound amps should add an center boost control (Score:2)
I have DTS 5.1 and I still can't hear the damn dialogue.
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Sometimes there is not much you can do and the mixing is really bad.
But if you have 5.1, usually you can boost the center channel. You can also play with the EQ and boost the vocal range. Sometimes, there is a preset for that. Also, make sure your cutoff frequency is not set too low (not really applicable to all-in-one kits).
Also make sure you have a good and well placed center channel speaker. In some 5.1 setups, the center channel is a bit neglected, it was the case for mine, and upgrading that speaker re
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But what percentage of the world's population don't?
Me and my partner spend more time watching "foreign" films than native ones. And American is foreign to us.
I, personally, find it impossible to understand most American film dialogue to the extent that I rarely try. OTOH if you are going to watch using subtitles, Spanish, Portuguese or even Korean content can be easier to understand and more interesting.
Why not live in the real world? When did YOU last watch any Igbo films?
Perhaps th
Re:sound amps should add an center boost control (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that new TVs have fetishized "zero-bezel" (on all 4 sides) makes matters worse, because they muddy the sound even more by putting the speakers on the back, so the only thing you hear is what gets reflected off the wall... phase distortion and all.
A big part of the blame lies with mixing engineers, who carefully tweak the mixing for playback at theater volume levels, then do a thoroughly half-assed job of remixing it for playback in a typical living room environment (still at 5.1, but with more compression so there's less of a difference between loud and soft sounds, and background music is lower-volume).
A huge chunk of the blame is the fault of streaming services recompressing the hell out of the already-compressed 5.1. Literally the first thing that goes down the toilet when you massively overcompress multichannel audio is the channel separation. It's why SiriusXM is now kind of like high-fidelity mono... you still sort of have the frequency response (at least, between roughly 80hz and 12khz), but all sense of Q-sound spatiality and feeling like you can reach out and "touch the audio" (like you got from ~1990 CDs like Madonna's "True Blue" CD on the track about Sean Penn that ended with shattering glass) is just wiped away and destroyed.
SlingTV is HORRIBLE about delivering 2.0 stereo as "fake" 5.1 (ie, they flag it as 5.1 via HDMI, so if your amp is in autodetect, it thinks it's 5.1). I finally canceled my subscription because it pissed me off that every time I watched SlingTV, I had to pull out my amp's remote and fumble with it for 30 seconds to force it to decode as 2.0 (and remember to switch it back afterwards).
I was INCREDIBLY pissed after I bought a new 4K Sony Bravia with built-in GoogleTV, then slowly realized over the next couple of weeks that the piece of shit "smart TV" circuit inside couldn't actually decode 4k OR 5.1 properly (it didn't fail "100%" at decoding 5.1, but maybe 1 in 5 shows actually decoded properly to 5.1 via ARC... and most maddeningly, it wasn't even consistent per show... some episodes of some shows decoded as 5.1, others couldn't, with no rhyme or reason). I finally spent $20 on a 4k FireTV stick, which totally fixed the problem... but it totally highlighted why "smart TVs" are so stupid. Sony gimped the TV's "smart" capabilities into uselessness for the sake of saving, what... maybe TWO FUCKING DOLLARS on a TV meant to retail for $1,300?!? Bastards.
Re: sound amps should add an center boost control (Score:2)
Yep bang on. If you have any kind of half decent home theatre setup speech will probably be ok but so many people use built in speakers or crappy sound bars. Iâ(TM)m sure thatâ(TM)s the main reason for high CC use.
Re: sound amps should add an center boost control (Score:2)
It's not going to help. The center channel is the most overrated feature and it can make things worse.
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If I crank up the AV system and the the Klipschorns rocking, no need for CC.
Thankfully, I don't share walls with neighbors and hope to never have to again....no thanks to deserve urban living for me!!
Re: Sound mixing (Score:2)
That's the real problem here. There is too much other sound and not enough voice to clearly make out the words. Or the voice is distorted somehow.
That never used to be the case. If you watch old TV all the words can be clearly understood.
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I have to turn it down because it's too loud. I have to turn on subtitles because it's too quiet.
Re:Sound mixing (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm almost at the point of building an audio compressor to add to my TV system because the dialog is almost *always* 10db or more lower than the music and foley tracks. This is a "fashion" amongst movie/program makers these days and apparently more than a few people walked out of Openheimer (the movie) because they just couldn't hear the dialog over the rest of the soundtrack.
You'd think that with today's tech we'd be able to add a feature that simply lifts the dialog by 10dB for those who want more balance. In fact, when I'm editing video with Davinci Resolve it offers me the ability to "voice isolate" so as to reduce the level of noise/music that might also have been on the soundtrack. Please, for the love of God, someone add this to my next streaming box!!!!
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Viewers could ask for those subtitles devices. Some theatres have on screen subtitles now like in AMC Theatres.
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I'm almost at the point of building an audio compressor to add to my TV system
If your system is certified by either Dolby or THX then it already has an audio compressor. Just turn the damn thing on.
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I've been experimenting with ffmpeg for reducing the dynamic range. Grab a copy of the show off BitTorrent and run a script on it. Doesn't take long as it only has to re-encode the audio.
I've found it works decently well on most shows.
Another reason why the pirate version is better than the official release.
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I also blame the actors. In the past most film and TV actors learned their trade on the stage where projecting your voice clearly to the audience was essential. Now they just mumble incoherently.
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That and actors fucking mumble today. Compare a modern actor to someone like Vincent Price or Christopher Lee.
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Came here for this, past times this topic floated up (over and over...) people point out the heavy-handed mixing (let's make viewer think OH BOY LOUD ACTION) and the increased script/director tendency for mumbling.
Not sure if there we had an article with stats on mumbling. Maybe. Remarks about more scenes/shows drifting towards moody, gloomy, brooding, or just good old edgy grimdark. Numbers for that I think we had a piece on, showing recent decades leaning more negatively in tone. Could just be "dystopia s
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I can't stand subtitles and always turn them off. They are often out of sync. You know sound compressor and equalizers exist, don't you? My output is highly compressed and equalized so I don't wake up the neighbours.
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Yeah I turned on a feature in my sound bar that tamps the sound down on music and leaves the human voices behind. It's a lil strange since theme songs etc get pampled, but the dialogue is clearer. I use captions/subtitles as well.
Oh and I am an apartment dweller and have been for decades. For me this isn't about how the sound is mixed, it's about not disturbing my neighbors.
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What we need is for dialog to be on one channel, and everything else on another. With that, we could change the mix level on the fly to solve this.
For a real adventure, try the first few episodes The Chosen. Not only are the effects out of whack in volume, but the dialog volume varies wildly from scene to scene.
Tenet drove me to it (Score:4, Insightful)
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They're mixing for their own equipment and their belief in how it 'should' be mixed, and not for their audience.
That's stupid, ignorant, and unprofessional.
Re: Tenet drove me to it (Score:2)
How could they ever get to be that unprofessional though? There should be someone to keep them in check. There has to be more to this.
Re: Tenet drove me to it (Score:4, Insightful)
How could they ever get to be that unprofessional though? There should be someone to keep them in check. There has to be more to this.
My guess is that they're optimizing the audio mixing for the top end theaters and home theater systems. When you've got 13.1 acoustically tuned speakers in a controlled environment with sound dampening, it's just fine. I don't go to the movies too often, but when I go to the theater, I never really have an issue with explosions being too loud or dialog being too soft.
The problem is that some 95% of people or more are listening in a far different capacity. The streaming/Blu-Ray releases aren't exactly optimized for Airpods. My grandparents' massive projection TV from the 1980s [imgur.com] had some of the best built-in sound from built-in speakers one could expect from a TV, but obviously the size of the TV allowed for way larger speakers than the svelte 2" thick, wall-mounted TVs of today can physically acommodate. My soundbar [lg.com] is a solid improvement from the integrated speakers, but I can't control the volume with the TV remote if I use the TOSlink input, so I use a 1/8" aux cable instead.
Even these four examples have vastly different sound profiles; who do you optimize for? Airpods would probably do well with a 'flat' EQ curve and a -3db loudness target, the 80's TV would probably do justice to the original theatrical audio, the built-in 2" speakers on my TV would benefit from a bass cut and a -6db loudness target, and my soundbar could use a bit more midrange from the theatrical audio with a stereo mixdown. Now, in my perfect world, there would be audio tracks for each of these; Blu-Ray discs can certainly fit them all, but multiply it by the number of languages and the menu gets to be a mile long.
So, I do think that many film audio engineers do have a tendency to optimize their art for 'perfect' environments, but even those who might *want* to make the audio sound better for Airpods know that such an EQ curve is going to sound horrid in IMAX.
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I'm just listening on the TV's internal speakers. Unfortunately, both my big screens, the 75" and the 86" LG's, seem to have a boomy resonance, and are sometimes hard to decode what is said. I just do the best I can, as I hate reading subtitles.
I'm in between houses. I'm renting. I haven't deployed the 30 year old Pioneer 125 watts (real watts, with a seriously heavy receiver to attest to it) and the equally old Cerwin Vega speakers that weigh 95 lbs apiece to either system yet. But when the new ho
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My guess is that they're optimizing the audio mixing for the top end theaters and home theater systems.
In general yes, but for the OP's case no. Tenet was in unintelligible in the cinema as well. The problem is actually very much two fold.
The problem is that some 95% of people or more are listening in a far different capacity.
No the problem is 95% of people don't RTFM. Dolby and THX both require sound systems to feature audio compressors precisely to address this very issue. The problem is people don't turn them on and then complain about it.
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"they're optimizing the audio mixing for the top end theaters"
The audio has to be remastered for different media anyway, they might as well remaster it correctly for the intended use of that media.
"and home theater systems"
You're failing to account for the fact that people who are in fact using a home theater system and not their crappy TV speakers still experience this problem.
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I'm sure the speakers built-in to TVs with incredibly weak bass isn't helping either.
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Yeah, that's specifically a Christopher Nolan thing. He doesn't believe in, and refuses to use, ADR [people.com] and he's also a fan of the larger and nosier cameras; with IMAX being a particular culprit. That's one of the reasons I'm waiting to see Oppenheimer at home instead of going out to the theater. That, and it's a 3-hour bladder-buster and I've read so many histories of the Manhattan Project and the nuclear industry in general that I doubt there's much new information in it.
And... of course... Nolan has enoug
I require subtitles (Score:2)
After way too many years playing in heavy rock bands, mixing and recording loud bands, my hearing sucks
Even if my hearing was perfect, actors whisper and mumble, often with foreign accents and the sound mixer turns the sound effects and music up way too loud
My wife has perfect hearing. Often she can't understand the dialog
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My wife's hearing is very sensitive. She never has trouble hearing the TV.
But most of the time, if I turn it up enough for me to hear, it's loud enough to bother her.
They're mixing every single TV show and movie.... (Score:1)
Dialogue and character are what make a good story but explosions and John Williams make for a large budget. A large budget is more important to the industry than a good piece of content. So we get loud garbage instead of well wr
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I like loud explosions and gunfire for the action content. But I see no point in whispers actually having a lower volume than dialog. The total overall range is far too broad. It's okay if the explosions are a few db higher and yelling is a couple db higher and if you want whispers and pin drops mix them maybe 2 db lower.
But the explosions now are MUCH louder and the whispers MUCH softer. Even with a center channel boost and no concern about neighbors half the content out there requires active adjustment of
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> John Williams
Which John Williams scores particularly? I know it's the director's final call in the mixing room. But in most of the movies I can recall that Williams has scored, he seems to be very cognizant of which scenes call for grandiose and bombastic music for the action versus more subtle and melodious background music for dialog-focused scenes. James Horner, on the other hand, seems to start with all the levels at 8, and cranks them up to and well past 11 much of the time.
Thought I was alone in this (Score:1)
Really like this story, as about a year ago or so, I turned on subtitles for one particularly rough to understand show, and just left them on after... I have to say after a while of watching with them on I don't even notice there are subtitles... I just have a much clearer understanding of what people are saying.
Also subtitles can have fun little bits in them related to descriptions of sounds, and names of characters to help you remember who is who.
Maybe give it a shot if you've just been listening to stuff
Re: Thought I was alone in this (Score:2)
I had to turn on CC to watch Peaky Blinders. Terrific sound design, great dynamic range, but the very authentic Irish accents were hard to make out sometimes, especially when they used old slang. But, of course, with that great dynamic range, there is the problem of sometimes turning the volume up to hear a whisper, and then along comes an explosion. Well, to me an explosion is supposed to be loud, so I donâ(TM)t have any problem with that. With Peaky Blinders, I was able to set the volume for normal d
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Also subtitles can have fun little bits in them related to descriptions of sounds, and names of characters to help you remember who is who.
There seems to be a trend in modern movies to not actually name characters in the movie half the time. Maybe you're supposed to read articles about the movie or get the info from other third-party sources. It can be helpful when the subtitles identify the name of characters that are otherwise unnamed in the story.
Re: Thought I was alone in this (Score:2)
Yes that too... (Score:1)
Foreign language conversion. Can watch wider variety of content. The subtitles often available and preferred over a machine voice.
Yes this is a great point, for any foreign language film I greatly prefer to hear the original actors, even if I have to read subtitles to understand what they are saying... just way more emotion in the voice.
I have a TV Shield (Score:2)
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I would imagine you'd get better sound if you piped it out to some speakers hanging on the wall, not under the box.
LOL (Score:1)
Blame the TV mfg'rs (Score:1)
Yes, bad mixing, and also... (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree with the other commentators here, but in addition to bad mixing, actors mumble, don't enunciate and don't project. It seems that's the fashion in movies nowadays. Watch most old movies and listen to how clear the diction is.
Stage actors could never get away with this, but it seems that film actors can.
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Streaming services have hired so many actors, for so many bad shows, that the overall quality has gone down for streaming and TV and movies.
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Older films used a boom mic; you had to project to the mic. Stage actors also projected their voice to the audio sensors (human ears) that were outside the 'room' they were in.
"stage actors could never get away with this." I just saw "Spamalot" at the Stratford Festival and two of the stage actors had microphones visibly glued to their faces, not in their collar nor in their wigs. If they "projected" we'd hear their voice twice, or what the mic picked up would be clipped.
Hearing (Score:1)
They tested us at work for hearing loss. Most people had hearing loss. I'm not surprised many people have trouble with dialog. I don't have a problem understanding what people are saying. Everything sounds clear. I think many people are blaming the audio quality when its the person's hearing. I remember before I first got glasses, I thought the teacher wasn't adjusting the projector correctly (it was still blurry). It happened all of the sudden too, one year I could read everything just fine, then blurry. L
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I don't think that accounts for more than a small percentage of the overall trend we're observing here. The audio mix quality degradation hasn't actually hit all the channels; some channels still consistently deliver a high quality mix with quite clear dialogue at the same volumes as before. Something is going on at the production end that is new and probably involved firing a bunch of old people to replace them with inexperienced children. (I suspect actual cult activity, but only because cultists told me
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Its possible that the the sound is mixed with extremely high quality equipment, but I have a reasonably up to date system with separate speakers, and that apparently isn't good enough.
Watching House without subtitles: painful (Score:2)
As someone with slight hearing loss at about 1kHz (no idea why) watching House without subtitles - and they aren't available for the first 4 series on my DVD set - was annoying; much of the dialogue is brilliant, but needs to HEARD. The later series with subtitles: MUCH better!
on by default (Score:3)
Seems like when I watch foreign language shows the subtitles are on by default. Then when I speak the language I notice the subtitles are not always as expressive as the dialog.
Incidentally... (Score:1)
... I know this will sound crazy but I-shit-you-not this is all happening because of a Satanist plot to force people's digital displays on their home stereos to show higher numeric values. This particular sub-plot of their overarching plot doesn't seem to have any real end goal other than some superstition about the perceived literal numeric value having some magical unknown benefit other than wasting a tiny bit more electricity and making everyone turn on their subtitles.
It's about me (Score:1)
Subtitles for accents are a crutch. (Score:2)
I can understand not having to re-tune your ear for each show you watch, but if you're binge watching, you might want to consider turning off the subtitles. Having the words there becomes a bit like taking Dramamine on a boat trip. Sure you "understand" right away, but you never lose your dependence on the crutch. If you actually want to wrap your ear around an accent, and you understand some of it (obviously this will never work if it's unintelligible to you) it goes a lot faster if you don't have the crut
crap audio (Score:2)
Netflix often has crap audio which requires subtitles
LUFS (Score:1)
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Please select:
[ ] I don't understand what LUFS is
[ ] I don't understand what TFS is about and why LUFS has nothing to do with it.
[ ] I am just trying to get someone to moderate me -1 Off-topic
Even car stereos don't understand Scottish accent (Score:2)
https://youtu.be/l8uuFXxy3Is [youtu.be]
Why are we still mixing audio ?! (Score:3)
Sound Reviews? (Score:3)
Perhaps some movie rating group would come up with a guided sound review system that would ask about things like whispering dialog, explosion bass, if the user was using 5.1 or stereo.
What about Americans? (Score:2)
I have subtitles on because most Americans enunciate so sloppily that its almost impossible to understand them.
It's not just me, given how often the automated text to speech has a hard time.
British Can Be Hard (Score:2)
There was a British detective show I watched once (don't remember the name nor the channel). Events were occurring in a small remote village. I could understand NO ONE except the main detective character and his girlfriend. All the locals were completely unintelligible. And I'm no ignorant provincial either: I've been all over, usually have a good ear for a language even if I don't know what the words mean. But THIS lot? Ugh :-(
I need subtitles to clarify dialog, but keep sound (Score:2)
I don't turn the sound down or off, but I certainly need subtitles to clarify the dialog.
More often than not, I turn up volume where audio isn't clear, but I do appreciate clear sound effects and, especially, spacialization on my 9.2 surround sound system -- something I appreciate more as my vision fades w/cataracts... *sigh*.