The article quoted a sound designer who was oblivious to your take:

> ... when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ...

Yes, I want it somewhat squashed up! Please do that! I understand the artistry and desire for dynamic range, but when the character is whispering some critical plot detail, you can zoom in for a feeling of intimacy/privacy and have the actor stage whisper so everyone knows what was said. It shouldn't actually be a whisper that people a few feet away can't hear. When you follow it up with an explosion, sure, make it a little louder, but not real-life loud! That would you blow out your speakers and wake the baby.

And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not everyone has plasma or OLED displays (though the latter are becoming more available), nor watches in pitch black. And when downconverted from 10 bits to 8 bits, streamed through compression algorithms, and displayed on average TN displays...no, you can't see what's going on. Tom Scott did an excellent video on this subject a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9j89L8eQQk. Game of Thrones in particular was unwatchable for me because of this.

You can get a compressor/limiter for pretty cheap, but only if you have wires somewhere between the DAC and your speakers.

Most AV receivers feature an option to reduce dynamic range. It may be labelled as nighttime mode, as in trying not to distrub others.

If you're serious about watching movies you probably have some kind of (surround) receiver already, most of which have settings to tone down the dynamic range a bit (on my Denon it's called 'dynamic volume', acts the same as a compressor)

Good point. I do have OLED, and yet the scene in Invasion (on Apple TV) where they're up in the attic of a house and the aliens are downstairs, was completely unintelligible for me. It was all in darkness and there was just not enough contrast to make out anything.

> And yes, darkness on-screen is another problem. Not everyone has plasma or OLED displays

The goal is to sell. They probably get paid by TV manufacturers (like a product placement).

> Game of Thrones in particular

That confirms, they definitely get paid ;)

I would use subtitles all the time if it didn't ruin dramatic and comedic timing. I often find myself wishing movies and video games had "proper nouns only" subtitles.

I got so used to subtitles (learning English + anime). That I can put them in the background when I focus on the movie and quickly check them in case I did not understand something. Kinda like when you blur out the surrounding controls when watching YouTube.

> I often find myself wishing movies and video games had "proper nouns only" subtitles.

This would be an excellent idea! Oftentimes I'll watch something, then in the middle turn on the subtitles and learn that I was misunderstanding the name of someone/something.

Even if I hear it correctly the spelling may be different and can give better context and cultural flavor.

Nice idea. Sounds pretty easy to implement, just filter the subtitles with an NER function.

Simply adding a delay to ensure the sentence doesn't appear after it is spoken would fix this. It's something that unavoidably happens with Saturday Night Live's transcript, for example, and I prefer it for comedy.

I used to live in Denmark but never understood Danish, spoken or written, very well (at all).

In movie theaters, they'd show English language films with Danish subtitles and, often, I'd miss a comic piece of dialog because the subtitles let the audience in on the joke before I could hear it spoken, and then the audience laughter would drown out any chance I had of hearing the joke.

It was a bit frustrating.

I’ve had similar issues, but it’s when they subtitle the aliens talking and then I have no idea what they’re saying.

I’ve often wished DVDs and Blu-ray has an audio track where sound was compressed. The wider ranges of volume are fine for cinemas but absolutely terrible for casual viewing (which is 99% of home viewing). It’s even worse when you have kids who are trying to sleep while you watch your movie.

Dolby Digital audio tracks are supposed to support dynamic range compression in your A/V receiver for exactly this reason. There is a dialog normalization field in the audio data that says how loud dialog is, and then the receiver is supposed to apply compression using predefined curves based on that value. Try looking for a DRC setting.

The problem with that is you need a receiver that supports Dolby Digital and most homes won’t have that. In fact my lounge TV doesn’t even have external speakers nor amp attached. So DD does t really help the casual viewers I was describing.

DVD and Blu-ray players that do internal decoding of the DD soundtrack (most DVDs and Blu-rays will have a DD soundtrack, plus others, last time I checked a few years ago) are supposed to apply DRC. Some might have an option to change the DRC strength. If you're watching over-the-air ATSC broadcasts in the US, those will have DD (AKA AC3) audio, and the TV should be applying DRC based on the same metadata.

Streaming services have taken a massive step backward in this regard. TVs should have better signal processing options for this (and some do). I have a custom "night mode" set up that deals with mixed streaming volume levels in my system, but I'm using highly customized pro audio gear in ways that the average user won't want to pay for or deal with.

Good point. Most of my movie consumption these days is via streaming services.

I am fortunate enough to have a home cinema room with a projector and some pretty beefy audio gear hooked up. But most of the time we watch in the lounge where it’s a more casual affair.

Some speakers (Sonos comes to mind) have a "night mode" that basically does that, compressing the dynamic range. There is also a dialogue mode that emphasizes the human speech frequencies.

I really dislike post production dynamic equalisers because they’re altering the sound in a way that wasn’t intended. Sure it sometimes sounds better, but it doesn’t always. You get a lot better results when the compression is added to the tracks before they’re rendered down to a single master.

Apple TV has a similar feature, described simply as "reduce loud sounds".

> I watch most everything with subtitles. Not just for this reason, but because the vocal track tends to be really low and the MUSIC and GUN FIRE track really high

I just noticed this trying to watch Amazon's new Wheel of Time series. It doesn't matter what the volume on the TV is - the background music and effects are so much louder than the dialog that I can't understand what people are saying.

I had the same issue with Wheel of Time! I’d nearly blow out my ear drums wearing AirPods in a battle, so I’d turn down the volume, then there’d be dialogue and I couldn’t hear it. Very frustrating.

Had this experience with several series on Netflix recently. It seems correlated to shows that also do a lot of really dark scenes where the screen looks nearly black. I really don't get it.

> Even still, at times I wish I had a volume knob on my remote to swing one way or the other as the scene change in the thing I'm watching. The remote is too slow.

> But it's annoying to have these wide ranges. Then you watch a news or talk program or something like that, and the voices are front and center and everything is peachy.

I've often thought a lot of these problems could be solved just by adding a "minimum volume" knob to all the "maximum volume" knobs we currently use, allowing users to forcefully reduce the dynamic range in an easy-to-understand way (while still being loud enough to hear dialogue). I remember "large dynamic range" being advertised as something you want for home theatres/etc, but in general I think it's more a misfeature/antipattern.

Or at least some statistically-relevant volume knobs. E.g. percentile or most recent peak.

EEs, correct me if I'm wrong, but the amplifier circuitry is digitally-controlled now, no? So hypothetically could be rapidly adjusted with low latency?

You could definitely adjust with low latency, but if your compressor attack and release are too quick, it will not sound right.

You want to keep some dynamic range but not too much.

It should be easy to add a compressor dial to audio devices nowadays

Windows 7 had a "loudness equalizer" that was basically just a limiter, and that made my computer my my go-to for watching movies. It still exists in Windows 10 but doesn't seem to work as universally with different devices.

misused feature

I used to use an AV receiver and then ramp up the volume on the center channel. Didn't need to even be 5.1 audio as the processing that plucks the speech out based on frequencies worked good enough.

Having said that, it turns out that I'm reasonably deaf in one ear. It's considered "Mild" hearing loss but wow is the effect substantial. My wife listens on videos on her phone at the same volume level that is literally me being able to JUST hear it. Moderate-Severe hearing loss must be impossible. And one of my ears is totally normal... only one ear has "mild" hearing loss.

Anyway long story short, consider getting a hearing test :)