Why is dialogue hard to hear in big action movie sound mixes?
#1
I’ve been noticing a weird trend lately where the sound mix in big action movies makes the dialogue almost impossible to hear, but the score and explosions are crystal clear. I just saw a blockbuster in a good theater and still missed key lines because they were buried in the sound design. Is this a deliberate creative choice in the final mix, or is it more about how modern audio is mastered for home systems first?
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#2
In my experience it's partly a creative choice. The mix crew wants you to feel the scale, so they push the score up and pull the voices down a notch.
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#3
It also feels like the mastering target matters. Many blockbusters are laid out for loud home listening and sometimes the dialogue just gets eaten by the kick drums in loud scenes.
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#4
I tried watching with captions on a recent release and it helped a bit, but not every line is captured by subtitles either.
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#5
Sometimes the theater acoustics or the theater acoustics or the room calibration seemed messier than the mix, which made things worse.
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#6
I've caught myself rewatching a scene on streaming with the volume dialed differently and still missing a line, so I'm not sure there's a single reason.
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