Hercules286
Well-Known Member
I'll start by explaining where I'm coming from.
For just about until 3 years ago, all the TV shows I watched were dubbed in Bulgarian. The original soundtrack (with voices) is lowered ~15 dB and then you get the dubs on top of that with fairly soft limiting and a boost in the high midrange to increase intelligibility, since it's a poor country and lots of people have muddy-sounding TVs.
Then, I arrived where I am now, without TV, having to download the shows. While all Anime was mastered rather well, American TV series are AWFUL! You get the ambient sounds SCREAMING at you, very hard compression and no dynamic range whatsoever. I mean none. The other day we were watching Monk, and even my girlfriend noticed how horrible the sound was. I've watched 80s shows and they're nowhere near as bad, and, ambient sounds were kept to a sensible volume.
And what is it with American cinematography and the fetish for super-loud ambient sounds? They're supposed to be AMBIENT, meaning, barely audible and not drawing attention to themselves, and since most of them are fake (not recorded from/during actors' performance) anyway, what am I supposed to gain from hearing them 20 dB higher than normal?
And it's not only American shows, Doctor Who suffers from the exact same things, only since it's British English spoken by a Welsh, you miss half the words.
What the hell went wrong?
For just about until 3 years ago, all the TV shows I watched were dubbed in Bulgarian. The original soundtrack (with voices) is lowered ~15 dB and then you get the dubs on top of that with fairly soft limiting and a boost in the high midrange to increase intelligibility, since it's a poor country and lots of people have muddy-sounding TVs.
Then, I arrived where I am now, without TV, having to download the shows. While all Anime was mastered rather well, American TV series are AWFUL! You get the ambient sounds SCREAMING at you, very hard compression and no dynamic range whatsoever. I mean none. The other day we were watching Monk, and even my girlfriend noticed how horrible the sound was. I've watched 80s shows and they're nowhere near as bad, and, ambient sounds were kept to a sensible volume.
And what is it with American cinematography and the fetish for super-loud ambient sounds? They're supposed to be AMBIENT, meaning, barely audible and not drawing attention to themselves, and since most of them are fake (not recorded from/during actors' performance) anyway, what am I supposed to gain from hearing them 20 dB higher than normal?
And it's not only American shows, Doctor Who suffers from the exact same things, only since it's British English spoken by a Welsh, you miss half the words.
What the hell went wrong?