Why many young adults turn on TV or movie subtitles, according to a new poll

https://apnews.com/article/subtitles-closed-captioning-movies-tv-streaming-multitasking-f1a77fced80c1d167c316bb174b67a34

by sipofwater • 10 months ago

34 28 10 months ago

apnews.com

jim-jim-jim• 10 months ago

It's 100% a problem of dynamic range for me. I dunno how 128 channel cinematic spectaculars are mixed down to stereo, but I wouldn't mind a little compression. Can home releases offer an alternative "pleb mix" or something?

stubish• 10 months ago

That is supposed to be the stereo mix. But it more often than not seems half arsed, mostly the left and right channels and ignoring the center where most of the dialog tends to be.

whywhywhywhy2• 10 months ago

Turn it up to hear the dialogue, then rapidly turn it down when music, explosion, just basic background noise is often the volume that would annoy your neighbors, then turn it up again to hear the dialog.

Dunno if it's because it's all mixed for cinema or 5.1 and then badly turned to stereo but something they're doing is trash for 99% of those watching.

Our_Benefactors2• 10 months ago

It’s not that it’s “badly turned to stereo”, it’s a physical limitation of the speaker diaphragm. Media producers would have to invent an entirely new mode of media playback that could detect your speaker setup, and then load an entirely different audio mix made for stereo, say, lacking some of the background noises, music, etc. when dialogue was more relevant.

The center channel is generally devoted to the spoken track. Adding a center channel is one of the best upgrades you can do for a home theater system.

musicale• 10 months ago

Unfortunately I only have two ears and usually listen on headphones...

It sounds like it would be very useful to include a virtual mixer where you could adjust center (or dialogue) channel volume separately from side channels.

more_corn• 10 months ago

I have a center channel. I have the same problem. It’s irritating.

It’s not like people have invented some newfangled thing in their living rooms. Most people have super vanilla audio setups and tuning the audio in a way that sucks for nearly everyone is simply a mistake.

Making excuses for people who make a bad product doesn’t do anyone any favors. We can calmly and clearly call out the error and request that people who make the error cease.

CharlesW• 10 months ago

Media producers would have to invent an entirely new mode of media playback that could detect your speaker setup, and then load an entirely different audio mix made for stereo, say, lacking some of the background noises, music, etc. when dialogue was more relevant.

Object-based audio (MPEG-H, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X) can do this, and lots more.

watwut3• 10 months ago

Older movies sound better on exactly the same setup. Dubbed shows are easier to understand on exactly same setup. It is a bad mix.

whywhywhywhy2• 10 months ago

Why did speakers work fine for the first few decades of my life then and suddenly the "physical limitation of the speaker diaphragm" matter and "invent an entirely new mode of media playback" needs to be done for the last 7 years?

rahimnathwani• 10 months ago

If I didn't have neighbours, I would keep it at the higher volume. I want the explosion to be much louder than the dialogue.

Most home cinema receivers have a 'dynamic range compression' option which is meant to solve this problem.

benjaminwootton• 10 months ago

This has pretty much ruined TV for me. I watch with a remote control and constantly turn it up and down. It breaks the immersion.

tstrimple• 10 months ago

I'm running a 3.1 speaker setup at home and even with the center channel boosted it's difficult to hear dialog at times.

sombragris2• 10 months ago

English is not my native language, and whenever I can watch TV or movies, I'll always try to watch it with English subtitles. This is because:

- As I said, English is not my first language. Thus I'm not that proficient in listening.

- Actors nowadays speak with worse diction. Sometimes they just mumble something unintelligible, no matter how much you rewind and replay.

- The sound balance makes voices to come off as drowned by the environmental sounds and the soundtrack. This is very different from, e.g., classical movies where sound and diction was very clear almost at all times.

- Some accents are very hard to parse. Canadian folks, for example, make it very difficult to be understood.

So, the subtitles feature are a lifesaver a lot of times.

andrewmcwatters• 10 months ago

It's just native speakers in general across any language. I swear I can barely understand native speakers in my second language because they all mumble or liase into fractions of words that are understood only if you've learned the specific mumbles of that accent.

"Welyuno..." "Wellyouno..." "Well youknow..." "Well, you know..."

But if you didn't know "welyuno" in English, tough luck you'll understand it in as a second language learner.

watwut3• 10 months ago

Once you are used to how natives speak, these stop being mystery. Basically, you learn to understand real speach instead of just "learner" version.

montroser• 10 months ago

The actual breakdown as to why is buried behind a click here: https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/CHART-2-3-1481...

ungreased0675• 10 months ago

It seems that actors today are comfortable speaking softly or mumbling. Unless I turn the volume way up, they’re hard to understand. Compare how they used to talk on TV in the 80’s to today, it’s very different. I don’t think it’s a technology difference, I believe it’s an unintentional style choice.

Telaneo• 10 months ago

This phenomenon probably isn't helped by the average sound experience being worse than it once was. You might be watching that film on your phone's really tinny speaker, or your TV's speakers which might as well not be there since there's no space for anything decent. Meanwhile, if you watched that film in 2001, you were probably watching it on a tube TV that did have space for a speaker that wasn't horrible. That same speaker might even be just as cheap as what would go into a 75-inch TV today, but that TV physically doesn't have the space for that speaker. No wonder a soundbar is functionally a mandatory purchase unless you scale up to actual speakers.

Films definitely have worse sound mixing these days (unless they all target 7.1 Ultra-Whatever), but even with old films it can get really hard to hear what they're saying when you've got so little to work with.

The whole thing though goes to show the importance of decent subtitling. Accessibility should be a good enough reason by itself, but if more than 40% of your audience uses it, then it's a lot more than just that.

watwut3• 10 months ago

When I am watching with laptop speakers, I understand the speech better. It seems to keep speech and cut off explosions and music. Which is basically good.

HelloUsername• 10 months ago

Related: "Why Is Everyone Watching TV with the Subtitles On? (theatlantic.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927105 30-jul-2023 42 comments

legacynl• 10 months ago

I have a television hooked up to my PC that I use for watching series/movies sometimes. I notice that playing the sound through the television's speakers makes the dialogue much more clear, than using my regular speakers.

I think televisions have EQ'ing that makes dialogue (the mids mostly) much louder. The main usecase for TV was specifically films and shows (with dialogue) so they could justify adjusting the sound for that specific usecase. Now we watch films and shows on devices that also need to sound good playing music, podcasts, games, etc, so it makes less sense to EQ the sound to a specific usecase.

deafpolygon• 10 months ago

Most modern audio, especially from streaming services, is mixed with the center channel carrying the bulk of spoken dialogue. That works great in a theater or on a proper 5.1 surround system, but most people don’t have that setup in their living room. Most TVs only have two speakers for stereo sound. When a 5.1 mix is played back in stereo, the TV or streaming box has to fold the center channel into the left and right channels. The result is that dialogue often loses clarity and can sound muffled or buried in the mix.

bashZorina_092• 10 months ago

I have a 7.1 system, unfortunately, this is an issue here as well, that I will argue grew worse since Atmos started becoming mainstream.

Particularly in the mid-to-late 00's, centre speaker dialogue was very bombastic and stood out very well even in high action scenes. Yes the volume was still sometimes mismatched, but not to the point a discreet multi-channel setup needed to constantly adjust volume. Films from the previous two decades had even less issues just thanks to the simplicity.

Atmos feels like a huge wasted potential to me personally. With the added height channels, you can create some amazing effects and absurd imaging that was never possible before, but the reliance on this kind of swerved sounds and vocals to overlap each other in more awkward ways that makes it feel like everything is originating from a reverberation chamber. Particularly with dialogue, Atmos helps create positional ambiance with indoor scenes, so vocals often sound muddier than they should be.

Even worse, streaming services provide a mix that obviously caters to handheld devices, TVs and soundbars, while being Atmos 7.1.4, sounding particularly terrible for both kinds of watchers. Blu-ray's thankfully still often directly target home theatres and sound much better for the latter.

That's just been my experience so far. Going from a simple 5.1 Jamo from 2007 to an upgraded Atmos setup, I've been blown away far less by action films these days. It's even amazing if you hear the rears getting utilised at all.

dododge• 10 months ago

Yeah, I have 11.1 with sound treatments and a receiver that does room correction, and some movies are just annoyingly mixed. Dune (2021) has the voices mumbled and so low that when I turned it up enough to hear them it caused the explosions to be so loud that my cat jumped off my lap and ran out of the room, which I don't think he's ever done before.

Christopher Nolan is probably the most infamous offender; he's said even other filmmakers contact him and complain about his mixes. It's apparently how he wants it to sound, and he's said things like he sometimes treats dialogue as a sound effect and mixes it low on purpose, despite the many many articles and such about how much audiences hate it. I could swear at one point he even countered with something like "you shouldn't need to hear all the dialogue to understand what's going on". Ugh.

pjmlp• 10 months ago

Subtitles is the way to go for foreign movies in Portugal, unless they are intended for children, so they are already turned on by default, regardless of the reasons on the study.

Why many young adults turn on TV or movie subtitles, according to a new poll

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