Comment on Off topic

• BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I don’t want eardrums shattered when watching a movie, nobody wants that, it’s unpleasant and 100% unnecessary for watching at home.

  They don’t mix for a 2.1 home setup, they mix for a (home) theater. You’re using a set-up meant to watch the news and maybe a soccer match to watch a movie and then complain that it’s a crappy experience. Yeah, no shit.

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  • redxef@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Cool, so you’re not allowed a good passable movie experience if you don’t invest a shitton of money for a home theater.

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    • BorgDrone@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      You have a setup that’s not suitable for watching movies and you’re trying to blame it on the movie. How is that reasonable? The content you’re trying to watch simply was never meant to be watched in that way. I’m not sure what you expect here.

      Even if they did a different mix, that still wouldn’t give the intended experience of the movie, it would be at best a watered down version. You simply cannot optimize for two very different things. If they wanted it to be viewed on a TV they would have made a very different movie to begin with. There are plenty of made-for-TV movies that do exactly that.

      You expect that something that was made to be shown on a huge screen, in a dark room with a high end sound system somehow magically would work on your living room TV with stereo sound. I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation.

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      • Jesus_666@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        In other words, movies are not intended to be played back at devices that aren’t connected to theater-grade audio hardware.

        Of course this requires the question of why movies are even released on Blu-Ray, DVD, or streaming services at all instead of just using the existing distribution system for movie theaters. Everyone who doesn’t run an IMAX setup at home is too poor to watch movies.

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      • accideath@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        You got a smidge of a point. Yes, movie surround sound is mastered for (home) cinemas and if that’s the setup you have, it works. You don’t even need a fancy setup. I have a cheap old 5.1 system and when I’m in the mood for a home cinema experience, including the volume, it works great.

        However, there’s no excuse for studios to not provide a more compressed TV mix because not everyone has a home cinema or the capability of turning up the volume without angry neighbours kicking down your door. Especially for Series and direct-to-streaming movies that never had a theatrical release but just drop on Netflix one day. Because there are plenty of those that are also not mixed for quieter soundsystems, TV speakers or people who cannot or don’t want to turn up the volume.

        So yes. I expect the audio to work well on my living room TV. Because I’m paying to watch it on a service that’s available on on my living room TV and Studios know that the vast majority of people do not have a home cinema. It is thus, in my opinion, a reasonable expectation, for any movie that released past the DVD age, to have an audio track that doesn’t require me to own a home theatre. Because you can optimise for two things, by just having two audio tracks. Some movies on Netflix even have a dedicated stereo tracks available. Why can’t that be the norm?

        Or, those streaming services could offer a setting to compress the dynamic range for home viewing. My AppleTV actually has that function built in and it’s very useful when you want to watch something late at night without waking the whole house up. Sadly, most streaming services use their own media player instead of the native one and don’t have a comparable feature…

        That said, I very much don’t want a compressed dynamic range sound mix to become the only one available. I happen to have a setup that can just about handle a higher dynamic range in most of cases, if I can/want to raise the volume accordingly and I usually like it that way.

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      • N0x0n@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I’m not sure why you get so much down voted while you are right. It’s similar how people want to play a 4k movie on a 1080p screen…

        Personally, I have experienced that when you’re downmixing a 5.1 to 2.0 solves all the issues OP is talking about.

        I’m only an amateur but did some video/audio encoding and it’s a bit more complex than what I’m saying here, but it does indead solves the issue.

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    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Quality audio doesn’t have to cost a ton. You can get a quality budget Dolby Atmos soundbar for less than $350.

      www.bestbuy.com/site/…/6541474.p

      www.rtings.com/soundbar/reviews/hisense/ax5125h

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      • Shiggles@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Buddy you can buy a 55” TV for less than that, it is utterly ridiculous to even entertain the idea that “less than $350” is a reasonable price for passable audio.

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      • redxef@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        I’m sure that is a good price for the soundbar, but speaking for myself it’s too big, I don’t have the space for it, as I imagine many others do too.

        But that is really not the point. Not everyone is a giant movie geek, they just want to be able to understand what is being said.

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      • Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Yes, of course, it’s only natural to replace a 2.1 or 2.0 HiFi system with the scam that is Dolby Atmos…

        Dolby Atmos does jack shit for quality audio; I say this as an audiophile. It is extremely controversial in HiFi, and not some gold standard. Additionally, the sound bar system you linked is just a facil approximation to what Atmos is, and far, far inferior to good passive stereo bookshelf speakers of the same price (I think Elac DB52s cost about $250, plus a $70 300W per channel fosi v3 amp will get you a fantastic setup. Later you could even add a $200 sub for the <60Hz range.)

        Here’s a Benn Jordan vid I found on the subject: youtu.be/5Dw3aKbw5Wo

        The farthest I would ever go with surround/quadraphonic sound would be something like the Schiit Syn, which is now discontinued anyway. I have two ears: I only need to speakers. If the speakers are good and the track is well mixed, this will always lead to a better result than Dolby Atmos.

        Movies like Interstellar are mixed with quiet dialogue for the dynamic range, like you say, and that can make speach difficult to understand. This is a questionable trend in movies led by Christopher Nolan but is absolutely not alleviated by Atmos.

        I won’t go into what I think of the trend, but I really want to emphasize that buying an overpriced consumer sound system with Atmos marketing on it will not solve the problem. Please do not invest you money into faux-HiFi! If you are going to spend that much money, spend it wisely, and don’t pay attention to marketing.

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  • TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    For the folks disagreeing with you, I think a helpful analogy might be to think of it like a recipe.

    If you try to make a fancy dish at home without the high quality equipment and ingredients the chef had, it’s not gonna turn out like the chef intended, and it’s not the chef’s fault or a bad recipe.

    It’s art meant to be enjoyed in a particular fashion, and will naturally be less enjoyable when prepared or consumed in another manner.

    There’s a valid argument to be made for remixing it for shitty speakers, since it doesn’t seem hard and would make a lot of people happy, but artists shouldn’t be obligated to bastardize their work if they don’t want to

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