Louder doesn’t help, quieter certainly doesn’t: when the voices of actors and actresses are lost in music and effects, good advice is expensive.
In the case of English-language productions, the problem has been noted for some time in the original version. Now difficulties with intelligibility are also becoming more and more common in German films and series. The chain of causes:
A very practical problem of recording crystal-clear sound arises out loud “Golem.de ” this is due to the fact that today the microphones can be ideally positioned less and less today, namely held on a pole above the speaker. This is usually hardly possible in effect and action-packed productions. Even otherwise, you often do without it, out of concern the pole could cast shadows. And extra takes, “just” to improve the sound again, are rare for cost reasons.
In post-processing, bad sound cannot be bent straight again. The variety of audio tracks in digital recordings also does not necessarily make things better: with analog material, the sound was not nearly as complex, but overall clearer. Today, dialogues with music, but also with the background noise, have to “fight” to be perceived.
In addition, it may be for various reasons that a sound track mix that sounds perfect in the sound engineer’s studio is not reproduced correctly in the cinema. Then the cinemas will regulate “Golem.de ” as a result, the sound is often lowered altogether, because the effects are otherwise much too loud.
When streaming at home, on the one hand, there is the problem that the audio track is compressed for transmission. This can lead to a loss of quality. On the other hand, the question is whether you even have an AV receiver and the many different speakers, so that each sound channel can come into its own at the right place.
If you just watch and listen via the TV and the built-in speakers, you often have to live with the fact that effects and music are dominant and make dialogues more difficult to understand. A soundbar here can be a good middle ground between a full-blown expensive home theater system and the insufficient speakers in the TV can help to improve sound and intelligibility.
