Mumbling actors: your disrecommendations

[Humberto]

Jeff Bridges is good at it.

 

[teuchter]

 

[Jammy smears]

I need subtitles for everything I watch and I'm sort of certain I'm not a complete cloth ears, I find the background music and background sounds, like traffic or whatever completely drown out what the actors are mumbling so increasing volume only serves to deafen you but you still miss a load of dialogue. If I watch old stuff from the 70s and 80s and early 90s the sound quality of tv is much more clear than it seems to be now.

 

[Silas Loom]

This was very good. Obviously it should have been an article rather than a video, but these are the times we live in.

From the mix of factors presented, I am keen to pin the blame on dynamic range. Why should we miss dialogue in the service of loud explosions? Who needs explosions in films, anyway? Can’t people and buildings be destroyed with poisoned blowpipes and dry rot, respectively?

The dialogue problem is as bad with made-for-TV content as with films, and downshifting after optimisation for cinemas can’t be responsible there. Flatter screens may be a problem for some, but we bought a soundbar and that has made no difference. So, it’s all dynamic range’s fault. And whispering actors. Which is where we came in.

 

[AnnO'Neemus]

That's a really good explanation, thanks for sharing.

I've thought of an another factor, which he didn't mention, I don't think, and it's a visual factor, well, two really.

The video explanation referred to how back in the old days, there would be a big microphone and the actors would speak towards them, whereas nowadays there are probably a couple of booms and the actors with dialogue in the scene are probably mic'd up. And there was mention of more naturalistic voices nowadays too.

I think in older movies and television, perhaps actors were more likely to have a background in theatre and would be more likely to (a) project a bit more and clearly enunciate as if they were in a theatre production, and also (b) face the audience. I think there's an element of lip-reading that goes on, even with people who aren't deaf/Deaf or don't have any level of hearing impairment. I think we all lip-read a bit, to some extent. And so if the character has their back towards us, it makes it harder for us to 'hear' what they're saying.

And as well as different staging, with actors facing away from the camera more in modern day film and television (rather than a theatre-type stage setting with characters facing the audience (camera)), there's also the fact that many more scenes nowadays are dark, with minimal lighting, so you can't see the characters as well, and that also gives rise to difficulties doing the kind of unconscious lip-reading that adds a bit of extra non-verbal communication, helps us fill in the blanks between what we hear and what we see the lips saying.

Don’t Adjust the Brightness: Here’s Why TV and Movies Are So Dark Now

Digital imaging technician Nicholas Kay and 'Euphoria' cinematographer Marcell Rév explain why films and TV shows might seem visually dark.

variety.com

 

[teuchter]

we bought a soundbar and that has made no difference.

Soundbars can't provide great audio - they aren't big enough. It's just physics. You could try getting a pair of proper speakers.

 

[teuchter]

difficulties doing the kind of unconscious lip-reading that adds a bit of extra non-verbal communication, helps us fill in the blanks between what we hear and what we see the lips saying.

One thing that I can't tolerate is when the audio is out of sync with the picture. This seems to happen more and more, the more complicated people's setups get. If it's a little bit out, I find it really distracting. It often seems to be that I'm the only person who notices it, and then insists on restarting the device and fiddling around until it's sorted. But I wonder if it is another thing that makes it harder to follow dialogue on screen.

 

[danny la rouge]

One thing that I can't tolerate is when the audio is out of sync with the picture. This seems to happen more and more, the more complicated people's setups get. If it's a little bit out, I find it really distracting. It often seems to be that I'm the only person who notices it, and then insists on restarting the device and fiddling around until it's sorted. But I wonder if it is another thing that makes it harder to follow dialogue on screen.

I found a TV sound bar created a latency effect for me and I had to get rid of it. It was intolerable. But others didn’t seem to notice.

 

[danny la rouge]

I can’t see the video because I get this:

Is there a transcript?

 

[Richard46]

My theory is that the deterioration in sound quality is tied to the switchover from analogue to digital television, and that, in some way, compressing the analogue sound waves into digital files affects how our brain processes the output.

I feel like our brains recognise that there's something missing and so because what we're hearing has been compressed and lost quality, that's why our brains struggle to reconfigure those sounds into 100 per cent comprehensible speech, and so it sounds like mumbling, because our brains are only getting 75 or 90 per cent or whatever of the original information.

That's my theory anyway. I mostly watch stuff with the English language subtitles on nowadays, even if the original language is English. Before I succumbed, or even sometimes now if subtitles weren't/aren't available, I'd miss bits of dialogue and would have to rewind bits.

If that were the case then the news and TV documentaries; Radio etc would have the same problem and they usually don't. It is Films and TV drama where the dialogue has become incomprehensible most of the time. Even interviews conducted on the street with portable kit for news channels are fine. It is not a technical issue it is the result of decisions made by film directors. Perhaps they think it sounds arty?

 

[teuchter]

I found a TV sound bar created a latency effect for me and I had to get rid of it. It was intolerable. But others didn’t seem to notice.

Some people seem oblivious to everything. They sit there and watch things that are clearly at the wrong aspect ratio, or with horribly oversaturated colours, or at a stupidly low resolution, and don't appear to care in the slightest.