Tuesday, 24 January 2023

Why we all need subtitles now

quote [ It's not you — the dialogue in TV and movies has gotten harder to hear. ]

I'm very glad anime got me used to subtitles because I need them on everything now. But it's nice to know it's not because I've gone completely deaf. Just a little.
[SFW] [tv & movies] [+7 Informative]
[by steele@2:45pmGMT]

Comments

yogi said @ 5:50am GMT on 25th Jan [Score:3 Insightful]
As someone with a rather severe hearing impairment since birth, I think subtitles are God's gift to mankind, hands down. Or, ears down, as the case may be.

I have enough hearing to be able to use a stereo FM receiver to hear the luscious--to me--sounds of the TV. I use an Etymotic deep-in-the-ear headset which gets the sound much closer to my eardrum than Apple Air Pods. I love feeling the bass resonate throughout my head.

And, subtitles. I've been using them so long I call them subtitties. I'm 70. They are GREAT. I noticed about 20 or more years ago that the captions caught the soft spoken words, and so I always knew what was going on, sometimes more than other people.

Movies? I don't waste my time, because the headsets they have are primitive and in mono, and it's kinda tough reading the captions from a device and not on the screen.

The video was an excellent explique of sound mixing and how computers now handle sound. Good find! All of the concepts were familiar to me as, at age 67, after getting a Master's in PubAd and a law degree, I decided to go back to school and learn how to record music onto a computer. All the concepts of cramming lots of sound onto one track, or the hatred I have of how loud music is recorded, and that very interesting concept of making sure that cymbal crashes were kept away from lead guitars and voices, were a pleasant reminder.

Thank you!
zarathustra said @ 1:49am GMT on 30th Jan
I would be interested in hearing your insights into caption problems as well. For example, censored captions when the audio isn't. Or the fact that they don't always substantively agree with the audio dialog. I recently watched a foreign film with subtitles and the captions provided by the studio differed enough from the Netflix captions, both of which differed from the dubbing, none of which matched my rudimentary understanding of the underlying language. How do you get the best experience?
mechavolt said[1] @ 8:05pm GMT on 24th Jan
tl;dw summary:

It's complicated, but mostly our own shitty TV/phone speakers haven't kept up with advances in recording/mixing technologies, which are aimed at movie theater setups.
maximumtodd said @ 9:16pm GMT on 24th Jan
I understand for movies, but I've got a 5.1 surround sound system and still can't understand the dialog in a lot of television programs.
damnit said[1] @ 3:31am GMT on 25th Jan
This is primarily why Tenet sounded so horrible for most audiences. Not all theaters are equipped with the latest surround sound.

For TV, it's the opposite. Movies/shows are created with the latest sound equipment and they have to dumb down 5.1/7.1/11.1 surround sound into low-end stereo on TV.

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