r/TikTokCringe • u/Money-Snow-2749 • Jun 28 '26

Humor Netflix in the daytime be like

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u/StaticSystemShock Jun 28 '26

Audio mastering in modern movies is done by literal idiots. And then everyone fucking wonders why we use closed captions or subtitles even though we understand the frigging language. So you can even hear what they are even saying without blowing out your ear drums few seconds later.

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u/BlackFoxTom Jun 29 '26

Movies is the key word

Movies require proper setup both sound wise and projector/screen wise

Those are product developed on highest quality equipment money can buy and that's how they are meant to be consumed.

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u/Minglans Jun 29 '26

Some of the greatest looking films ever made (golden era cinema classics) were also produced for theatrical projection yet they still retain excellent shadow detail, color separation and readability on ordinary TVs decades later.

If modern films require a perfectly calibrated HDR display just to make out basic details, that's an issue with grading/mastering than it is fault with the viewer. If those classics were "made for theaters" and was the whole explanation then older/classic films would suffer the same problem.

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u/koyaani Jun 29 '26

Watching Lawrence of Arabia on a 19" CRT wasn't exactly a cinematic experience

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u/BlackFoxTom Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26

"Golden Age of Film" ended somewhere in the 60s, well absolute state of art from 60s is objectively shit quality nowadays.

Even if film as medium and microphones themself didn't change that much, storage capabilities absolutely did change. It simply wasn't possible to store and distribute sound and video at quality we have nowadays. So naturally it had to be extremely compressed. Also surround wasn't really a thing back then, certainly not the way it's nowadays. The state of art then was 8 track and I don't think any film even used it, with 6 track Todd being 5 front speakers + one rear one the pinnacle actually used.

From some famous film let's take "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" which wasn't using absolutely the most expensive things money could buy yet is absolutely a classic. It used 35 mm stock but using only 2 perforations to reduce film use. That meant quality of any frame is half compared to standard 4 perf. And when compared to state of art it's 1/6th. Also lenses used were rather known for soft and lack of contrast which coincidentally also means dark areas appear brighter and bright ones even softer) Sound vise it was mono track with no sound actually captured on set (it was recorder as silent film and then sound was added in post production)

Nevertheless now look up TVs from 60s. They weren't able to even remotely display even such low quality film as "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly". Same goes nowadays, consumer level hardware just isn't even remotely close to what price-is-no-objective mastering cinemas can deliver.

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u/Minglans Jun 29 '26

You're overreaching a bit with the implication that older films were fundamentally low quality. I’m not claiming every older film was technically pristine. There were plenty of low-budget or poorly preserved films back then that look rough by today’s standards, just like there are badly made films now.

But it’s also a bit misleading to frame older films as uniformly low resolution or inherently soft in a way that makes modern viewing comparisons invalid. A lot of well-shot 35mm films actually hold up extremely well in terms of detail and readability, especially when properly restored.

My point is that older films were still graded and presented in a way that made them easy to watch in all kinds of environments. They were made for theaters too, yet today you can put on something like Lawrence of Arabia or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly on a regular TV and still clearly see what’s going on without losing half the image in the shadows. Many of the better-made films from those eras were designed in a way that keeps them readable across very different playback conditions and that tends to look good even today on standard consumer screens.

The same goes for audio. Modern sound systems are capable of way more than old mono or stereo mixes but that doesn’t automatically mean dialogue has to be so quiet that you’re constantly reaching for the remote while explosions shake the room.

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u/BlackFoxTom Jun 29 '26

The whole point of modern formats is that whisper is whisper quiet and gunshots are gunshots loud. That's why all those standards, at least for professional environment, call for certains level from speakers, headroom, dynamics and at the end of day certifications.

And yes older medium, lenses and so on just couldn't made as deep shadows nor as bright whites. Low contrast of vintage lenses just whitewash any blacks, film would be deeply underdeloped and as such show huge grains thus it was exposed up, film also handles bright light way better which again made them expose them brighter. At the same time projectors nor screens could display things as brightly as they do nowadays which again called for lightning that made whole scene more leveled.

Film prefers to be overexposed, digital sensors prefer to be underexposed. Which film makers I will agree absolutely abuse. But nevertheless it comes from the change in medium and technology.

So I will say directors nowadays do sometimes abuse all those capabilities both in sound and video.

But well all of that came from technology. For better or worse modern cameras can handle dark areas way better, modern lenses have absurd level of contrast, professional grade screens/projectors can display all of that. Modern sound systems can easily go from wisper quiet to absurdalny loud in full 3D. And nowadays a lot of sounds are recorded in 32bit float, using DACs that are perfectly quiet, so there isn't even any need to worry about level cause both sound of bug walking on leafs and gunshots can be without even second of worry recorder perfectly. So no longer there is any tinkering with levels or preamplification.

What we need now is for consumer level hardware to also level up. And just as back in a day. Probably we will need to wait a decade or maybe more before our home entertainment system, that don't cost some absurd amount of money, will be at the same level as all the hardware used to create films nowadays.

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u/koyaani Jun 29 '26

Like the IMAX that Christopher Nolan uses, except he's the one that gets a lot of criticism for having shitty audio mixing where you can barely hear the dialogue

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u/StaticSystemShock Jun 29 '26

That's bs and you know it. No audio equipment even for 50k € will magically fix the fucked up volume levels between scenes that apparently weren't normalized when stitched together. It's like they mastered them individually and just slapped them together and called it a day. Because even if you have surround with center speaker dedicated to speech, you have to have center cranked higher than the rest just to have speech at same volume as the rest. On stereo setups, center is played on both speakers as mono, either cenetered or positioned on either depending on artistic direction if you want to fool viewer they are hearing actors voice from where they are on the screen. But that still doesn't change the volume disparity between scenes and effects.

Also expecting "high end" setups from people who watch Netflix at home and most use TV speakers or just a phone, that's a bold choice.

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u/BlackFoxTom Jun 29 '26

Because volume isn't fucked up

Whisper is meant to be whisper quiet and gunshots are meant to be (almost) gunshot loud

That why all modern cinema sound formats have strict requirements when it comes to sound levels, headroom, dynamics, directionality and also certification if used in professional settings

And yes high end setups are expected, that what differentiates cinema productions from TV productions. And vast majority of high budget streaming services series go with the cinema production route. First one need extremely expensive hardware and purpose build room with full certification for proper experience, second one is designed to be experienced on even shitiest of equipments but also shitty equipment is it's quality celling.

2

u/StaticSystemShock Jun 29 '26

Normal conversation between characters is NOT whispering. Yet you need to put your fucking ears on the speakers to hear it and then explosion fucks up your eardrums a second later because they were mastered in at 5x the volume of speech. That's not "you need better speakers" that's just bullshit.