Nowadays I watch almost everything with subtitles but why is that? I can understand conversations when I talk to people when there are no subtitles.
Microphones
All sound used to be recorded at one track, that means that actors had to speak in a curtain angle so the mic could pick up their lines otherwise you couldn’t hear a thing.
But Microphones got better and they don’t impede performance as much anymore. They became smaller, better and even wireless. And we use more of them to be use the performances are getting captured. That would imply that everything is audible?
Editing
In earlier movie productions when lines were not able to hear on the recording actors had to come back and rerecord their lines (ADR). That is still be done today but it also costs a lot of money. So, editors nowadays need to try to make the sound that is recorded sound better. the microphone pickup almost every sound.
But even after the sound editing it is still hard sometimes to understand what the actors are saying. You can’t just turn up the dialogue otherwise it will be in contrast with the Dynamic Range: The range between your quietest sound and you loudest sound. As the dialogue is as loud as an explosion that follows that dialogue, the explosion is not going to feel as big. Also turning up the dialogue can cause distortion.
What also causes the problem of not hearing the dialogue on your phone, laptop or Tv is that the movies we are watching are edited for big surround sound like Dolby Atmos. And all those 128 tracks have to come down to one or two tracks to match our device we are watching it from. (downmixing)
When you combine not great speakers, mumble performances, dynamic range with bombastic sound over dialogue and a flattened mix. It is not a surprise that we have trouble understanding what is going on.
Solutions:
1. Buy better speakers
2. Worry a bit less about picking up every single word that gets said
3. Keep the subtitles on
Vox. (2023a, Januar 20). Why we all need subtitles now [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
