There is millions of people who “don’t want to have a proper 5.1 audio setup”. It is the director’s problem, optimise for the masses, not people who can afford to setup a cinema system in their home
It’s called Dolby 2.0 and a lot of Blu-ray movies actually do have a track (though not all). Though it’s been my experience that the native 2.0 usually sounds worse than the 2.0 that I compress down from the 5.1 or 7.1 when I make a backup of my movies. I am unsure as to why this is. I’m guessing it’s cause, as OP stated, the studio sound mixers just don’t give a shit to make a 2 speaker system sound good.
Downmixing is a pretty straightforward affair. You have 6 channels, you need to go to 2, so you just average 4 signals per channel using some weights.
Good media players (Kodi) allow you to change those weights, especially for the center channel, and to reduce dynamic range (with a compressor). Problem solved, the movie will be understandable even on shitty built-in TV speakers if you want to do that for some insane reason.
The problem is that there are “default” weights for 2.0 downmixing that were made in the 90s for professional audio monitoring headphones, and these are the weights used by shitty software from shitty movie distributors or TV sets that don’t care to find out why default downmixing is done the way it is. Netflix could detect that you’re using shitty speakers and automatically reduce dynamic range and boost dialogue for you, they just DGAF. But none of that is the movie’s problem.
Where do you draw the line? If you use a soundbar, someone else is complaining because they use their built-in speakers. But if you optimize for that, someone else is using their laptop speaker on the train.
What really pisses me off with this “argument” is that the audio information is all right there, which you would know if you bothered to read the second half of my comment before getting all pissy.
5.1 audio (and the standards that superseded it in cinemas) all have multiple audio channels with one dedicated to voice. If you have a shit sound system, the sound system should be downmixing in a way that preserves dialogue better. Again, the information is all right there as there is no stereo track in most movies, your player is building it on-the-fly based on the 5.1 track. It’s not the director’s fault that Netflix or Hulu is doing an awful job at accounting for the fact that most of their users are listening on a sound setup that can barely reproduce intelligible speech.
I draw the line at “people watch stuff on TV and cannot hear any dialogue”.
I don’t need to have a doctorate on audio / put in thousands of dollars into a hobby I don’t want to hear dialogue in a movie without rupturing my eardrums by an action scene.
If everything is there, let’s optimize for people like me, and let people like you mess around with the settings for your home cinema.
people watch stuff on TV and cannot hear any dialogue
did you read anything I said or do you just want to complain?
have a doctorate on audio / put in thousands of dollars into a hobby
Good news then, a more-than-decent 5.1 setup can be had for ~500 €. A decent soundbar for a few hundred.
and let people like you mess around with the settings for your home cinema
I can’t if the audio source is fucked up because directors have been forced by studios to release with low dynamic range.
My whole point is that your audio goes Master -> 5.1 channels -> downmixer -> your shitty 2.0 channels speakers and my audio goes Master -> 5.1 channels -> receiver -> my 5.1 setup.
You’re asking the master to change to fit your needs. I’m asking the media players to fix their fucking downmixers because that’s where the problem lies. Leave the studio mastering alone god damn it.
Broooo, did you just say 500 as if that was cheap? Damn. That’s what a whole ass tv costs.
Expecting for sound volumes to be somewhat balanced in a tv or generic player is not too much to ask, I don’t care if a surround 5.1 or 9.1 system would have it sound right, because stuff shouldn’t be fine-tuned for specialised gear, stuff should be fine-tuned for general usage and specialised gear should have in-house tweaks to make it work well.
You got it backwards and you sound pretty elitist. I get what you mean with general usage audio programs not fine tuning properly, but you are asking 90% of the population or programs to tweaks their systems so that they work for things fine tuned for 5% of the population/systems. You do see how that sounds pretentious, right? That’s how it reads at least.
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There is millions of people who “don’t want to have a proper 5.1 audio setup”. It is the director’s problem, optimise for the masses, not people who can afford to setup a cinema system in their home
We have movies with multiple audio streams. So you can choose English, or French, or crew commentary.
Why not have a mix for “standard home TV setup” and a mix for “5.1 ultimate surround sound system” and keep both groups of people happy?
It’s called Dolby 2.0 and a lot of Blu-ray movies actually do have a track (though not all). Though it’s been my experience that the native 2.0 usually sounds worse than the 2.0 that I compress down from the 5.1 or 7.1 when I make a backup of my movies. I am unsure as to why this is. I’m guessing it’s cause, as OP stated, the studio sound mixers just don’t give a shit to make a 2 speaker system sound good.
Downmixing is a pretty straightforward affair. You have 6 channels, you need to go to 2, so you just average 4 signals per channel using some weights.
Good media players (Kodi) allow you to change those weights, especially for the center channel, and to reduce dynamic range (with a compressor). Problem solved, the movie will be understandable even on shitty built-in TV speakers if you want to do that for some insane reason.
The problem is that there are “default” weights for 2.0 downmixing that were made in the 90s for professional audio monitoring headphones, and these are the weights used by shitty software from shitty movie distributors or TV sets that don’t care to find out why default downmixing is done the way it is. Netflix could detect that you’re using shitty speakers and automatically reduce dynamic range and boost dialogue for you, they just DGAF. But none of that is the movie’s problem.
Where do you draw the line? If you use a soundbar, someone else is complaining because they use their built-in speakers. But if you optimize for that, someone else is using their laptop speaker on the train.
What really pisses me off with this “argument” is that the audio information is all right there, which you would know if you bothered to read the second half of my comment before getting all pissy.
5.1 audio (and the standards that superseded it in cinemas) all have multiple audio channels with one dedicated to voice. If you have a shit sound system, the sound system should be downmixing in a way that preserves dialogue better. Again, the information is all right there as there is no stereo track in most movies, your player is building it on-the-fly based on the 5.1 track. It’s not the director’s fault that Netflix or Hulu is doing an awful job at accounting for the fact that most of their users are listening on a sound setup that can barely reproduce intelligible speech.
I draw the line at “people watch stuff on TV and cannot hear any dialogue”.
I don’t need to have a doctorate on audio / put in thousands of dollars into a hobby I don’t want to hear dialogue in a movie without rupturing my eardrums by an action scene.
If everything is there, let’s optimize for people like me, and let people like you mess around with the settings for your home cinema.
did you read anything I said or do you just want to complain?
Good news then, a more-than-decent 5.1 setup can be had for ~500 €. A decent soundbar for a few hundred.
I can’t if the audio source is fucked up because directors have been forced by studios to release with low dynamic range.
My whole point is that your audio goes Master -> 5.1 channels -> downmixer -> your shitty 2.0 channels speakers and my audio goes Master -> 5.1 channels -> receiver -> my 5.1 setup.
You’re asking the master to change to fit your needs. I’m asking the media players to fix their fucking downmixers because that’s where the problem lies. Leave the studio mastering alone god damn it.
Broooo, did you just say 500 as if that was cheap? Damn. That’s what a whole ass tv costs.
Expecting for sound volumes to be somewhat balanced in a tv or generic player is not too much to ask, I don’t care if a surround 5.1 or 9.1 system would have it sound right, because stuff shouldn’t be fine-tuned for specialised gear, stuff should be fine-tuned for general usage and specialised gear should have in-house tweaks to make it work well.
You got it backwards and you sound pretty elitist. I get what you mean with general usage audio programs not fine tuning properly, but you are asking 90% of the population or programs to tweaks their systems so that they work for things fine tuned for 5% of the population/systems. You do see how that sounds pretentious, right? That’s how it reads at least.