Indeed, this may have been the beginning of a new trend...

[Rain]

I'd mentioned Metallica's Load remaster being surprisingly quieter than the old masters. Well, I just put on the 50th anniversary remaster of KISS Alive!

It is significantly quieter, peaking at around -6 in my UAD meter and with a lot more dynamic range than the old masters I have. 

I think we may finally be pulling out of that +25 year nightmare, you guys...
 

[OutrageProductions]

Insider info from the RIAA and Grammy directorate have pushed for this because most of the streaming services are stomping down levels to where it alters the music in an unappreciated way.

Cheers to the return of dynamic range!

[Rain]

Up next - sensitive balance between dialogues and sound effects in movies.

I always thought it was kind of ironic that the increase in the available dynamic range and with all the modern tools available to manage that range things went in the opposite direction of what would have made sense (imho). They compressed the heck out of the one thing that could have benefited from dynamics and took the opposite approach with TVs and movies. 

I remember giving up on movies after a few minutes because of that. I'm not saying that I want my movies brick walled, but, close. lol

Of course, I am a grumpy old man, but, still...

Edited yesterday at 12:52 AM by Rain

[OutrageProductions]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

Up next - sensitive balance between dialogues and sound effects in movies.

I'm with you there... some movie balances are great, others are absolutely horrendous. I think it comes from hiring music guys to mix the 5.1 without dialog experience, or else the dub stage is not Dolby calibrated (I had to re-cal a sound stage in Vancouver several years back cuz it was so out of whack).

[Amberwolf]

18 minutes ago, OutrageProductions said:

I'm with you there... some movie balances are great, others are absolutely horrendous. I think it comes from hiring music guys to mix the 5.1 without dialog experience, or else the dub stage is not Dolby calibrated (I had to re-cal a sound stage in Vancouver several years back cuz it was so out of whack).

There are some streaming services that appear to have somehow messed up the soundtrack of various documentaries such that all the backing sounds and music are blasting over the voiceovers, making them unwatchable.  In some it is almost as if they used some sort of reverse-ducking, where the voice gets ducked instead of the rest, *and* at the same time also increases the volume of the rest of the stuff.   One of the Jim Al Khalili physics documentaries (don't remember which) was the worst, couldn't even hear that anyone was even talking thru the majority of it, I think on Amazon PV.    

Some of them even seem to be the wrong soundtrack--like they took two channels out of a surround mix and fed them to left and right of a stereo signal instead--but didn't use the main L and R channels, and instead used some other pair that has mostly music and effects in it, and very little center / vocal / etc.  

I have such problems hearing (well, really it's *understanding*) voices in various circumstances that I use a multiband compressor and limiter to greatly reduce eveyrhting but the main voice bands, and to really smash everything down (and bring up the low levels of quiet passages) for any "show" I watch.   

But even that doesn't fix the shows they've messed up this way.  And even if I bypass it and just listen normaly, it's still very messed up.   

[SteveStrummerUK]

Re: Documentaries/factual programming

I'm still at a loss to understand why a nature or science documentary needs a musical soundtrack at all.

Do the producers of these shows believe the viewing public will not be engaged by the content unless it contains a musical background? 

Those in The UK will most likely be familiar with The Sky At Night - a monthly documentary-style TV show featuring topical aspects of astronomy and space research. Under the helm of the late, great Sir Patrick Moore, it set the (world?) record for the longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history. Patrick was quite the eccentric - and much loved for it - and one aspect of the show he was insistent upon was that there was never to be any incidental music in the show. This was observed  right up until his death.

You'd think in this day and age, and with the technology available, it would be possible to watch a TV show with the option to mute the accompanying musical score.

[Amberwolf]

I dunno why, but many (not all) such documentaries and shows do use incidental music.  Some of them only use it in between narration sections, or to highlight dramatic moments in some of the nature ones, like a "chase scene", but there's almost nothing I've ever watched that has no music at all, other than a theme at beginning and end, perhaps--they all have some music somewhere within the show, and often assorted sound effects, added-in foley, etc.

Some of the worst offenders are physics and astronomy docs, but some series like Nova and Horizon are guilty of some fairly overpowering noises and music within the show, though at least both of those don't usually put them in the middle of the narration.

There was some BBC show (geology / volcanos, I think) I tried to watch not long ago where at least one of the interviewees or narrators must have recorded themselves in their bathroom shower stall based on the rattly echoes completely drowning them out.   

Some other show where a lot of the interviewees spoke French, and there were voiceover translations, they left the original speakers at almost full volume, so I couldn't understand anything being said regardless of language--it was just a babbling jumble, with too-loud music over the whole thing too (no ducking).

 

Quite a few Mayday videos are awfully mixed, and unwatchable.   I an't believe that the audio engineer, mixer, all those involved with production and publishing that watched it during or after mixing, still let these go out this way.   They sound as if there's multiple different videos playing simultaneously because of the wildly different audio levels. The narrator is hiding under a bucket with the microphone wrapped in a blanket. Background audio sounds like random volumes. "Interview" sections are done with blasting megaphones set to 11.