British TV sound level

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#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I've been annoyed lately with British TV shows. I have to turn the sound way up to understand the people. So, I'm wondering if other people have observed low quality audio in British TV shows, or an I getting so old that I can't adapt to accents like I used to?
 

studiot

Joined Nov 9, 2007
4,998
Any particular shows?

I find that modern films (movies) have very poor sound miking mixing so that often the speech is lost under the sound effects/music.
That seems also to happen in big budget movies, which is unforgivable.
This seems to happen less at the cinema, but is still evident.
The effect is definitely worse on DVDs.

Another annoyance is that the trailers and adverts are mixed at a higher level than the film sound track which means that I usually turn the sound down until a DVD gets to the play feature button.
That is insulting to viewers IMHO.

In general I find TV sourced material better than Holloywood sourced material in this respect.
The TV studios seem to take more old fashioned pride in getting the sound miking and mixing correct.
Perhaps that is because their success/failure is more immediate.

Another difference is in lighting.
Film producers seem to save a great deal of money by employing inadequate lighting, as compared to TV studios.
This does not always happen, but is far too frequent to be coincidence.
 

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,218
I've been annoyed lately with British TV shows. I have to turn the sound way up to understand the people. So, I'm wondering if other people have observed low quality audio in British TV shows, or an I getting so old that I can't adapt to accents like I used to?
I've notices too that they have a lower volume than usual... maybe it's a Brit or European standard?
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
I've been annoyed lately with British TV shows. I have to turn the sound way up to understand the people. So, I'm wondering if other people have observed low quality audio in British TV shows, or an I getting so old that I can't adapt to accents like I used to?
My wife watches Downton Abbey and complains that she has to turn the volume up past the "deaf Grandma" level of "50" on our tv. So, yes, that Brit show has a low volume level.
 
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