In response to this article and as borne out by my poll results, the overwhelming conclusion is that mixers need to mix better. The art is getting worse and worse over time. I remember as late as the 90s watching most TV and thinking I couldnāt do a better mix than the vast majority of shows on TV. These days, I rarely see a TV mix I donāt think I could do better than with the material as presented. Maybe some of that is experience but a lot of it is that the standards of TV sound mixers are way down from the high bar of entry in the 80s and 90s. One of the most lauded TV mixer crews of the last 20 years also mixed one of the worst sounding shows on network TV, proving again that most mixing comes down to how good the original material is that youāre given.
Here are some choice quotes from the article DrChesspain linked that make me either want to laugh or cry depending on the context. These solutions from a creative standpoint are about the worst possible ones that could be made and a lot of these types of solutions are destroying the sound experience in the consumer environment. Most directors are clueless about sound, so you can imagine how that goes for most consumers who actually have the knobs to play with and really eff up sound.
The garbled prattle in TV shows and movies is now a widely discussed problem that tech and media companies are just beginning to unravel with solutions such as speech-boosting software algorithms, which I tested. (More on this later.)
Translation: Mixers are bad, we are better at determining what mixers were wanting or trying to do without consulting any of them.
The issue is complex because of myriad factors at play.
No. Stereos have existed for a long time and those are set up as the consumer desires. Nearly every mixer who cares does tests across numerous environments to see how the content will translate. I care about how my sound comes across in the largest (movie theaters) to smallest environments (smarty phones). A good mix will ātranslateā across all environments, even if it doesnāt sound great on all of them (it should still sound clear with the music and effects having some amount of impact). When you get to a certain skill level, you will basically know how your mixes will translate across many media without needing to test anymore. That said, testing still happens every day out of curiosity.
In big movie productions, professional sound mixers calibrate audio levels for traditional theaters with robust speaker systems capable of delivering a wide range of sound, from spoken words to loud gunshots.
Professional sound mixers are employed on all but the smallest and cheapest productions (and YouTube/TikTok). Having no sound mixer is a clue that the production does not care about sound or cannot afford it. I could go on YouTube right now and click 3 random videos and Iād be surprised if even one of them had a professional sound mix. You basically wonāt find any TV shows without a sound mixer, even though they tried hard in the late 90s to make that happen at places like E!
Room qualities vary from place to place, but all rooms have a minimum form of calibration done via the ears. If clients donāt like the way the room sounds or the mix doesnāt translate outside of the room, that place ceases getting work. My studio, built in my house, is better than any room Iāve ever worked in for the post-production industry and I worked at mid-major post-production houses. You gotta get into serious budget territory (studios/high budget TV shows) to get into rooms that sound better than mine and people could always make those rooms work across many forms of media.
The caveat is that no one ever listens to a mix I do in my room and they play it back wherever and however they feel like and give me notes based on what theyāre listening on that they donāt tell me. Thatās another reason why translation of the mix is so important. I like this style of working, even though I have no idea how most of my clients listen to my work.
But when you stream that content through an app on a TV, smartphone or tablet, the audio has been ādown mixed,ā or compressed, to carry the sounds through tiny, relatively weak speakers, said Marina Killion, an audio engineer at the media production company Optimus.
These are just random words strung out to form a sentence. A theatrical movie mix is not what plays through your phone. Those levels arenāt ālegalā in any other distribution format. The big action movies are always remixed for home video and often poorly. Theatrical mixers (at least these days) donāt seem to try to make their stuff work from top to bottom, their goal is to get the best experience at the top. The problem is the vast majority of people who will see that movie will not be consuming it in that environment. Mixers need to mix better.
There are also issues specific to streaming. Unlike broadcast TV programs, which must adhere to regulations that forbid them from exceeding specific loudness levels, there are no such rules for streaming apps, Ms. Killion said.
This is completely untrue. When it comes to TikTok, yes I agree. That stuff just absolutely blasts your ears, seemingly made to be as loud as humanly possible. Each streaming app has its own level requirements (surprisingly Netflix specs are very low in comparison to broadcast). All those level requirements are different, just like they might be for an individual network or cable channel.
If programming levels are wildly different inside an app, thatās the appās fault for not āregulatingā whatās inside it (level correction software is very cheap and is how itās done nearly everywhere that cares). YouTube also used to have major problems with loudness and was confusing to producers and mixers everywhere. What do I do? Do we do a loud version or mix to broadcast levels? I did some Vevo stuff a long time ago that my producer wanted me to have at internet loud levels. I mixed it at broadcast levels and then turned it up to be internet loud. Vevo turned the content back down to broadcast levels lol. We agreed to deliver at broadcast levels from then on. Most professional content on YouTube that would have any chance of being broadcast is done at broadcast levels so that no additional adjustments need to be made in the most common delivery medium. Consumers just deal with it being lower. If a studio wants it to be loud, they turn it up when they do the final compression, whatever.
That means sound may be wildly inconsistent from app to app and program to program ā so if you watch a show on Amazon Prime Video and then switch to a movie on Netflix, you probably have to repeatedly adjust your volume settings to hear what people are saying.
Nope, it should be a one time switch and thatās it for the apps described. Otherwise, the mixers need to mix better.
āOnline is kind of the wild, wild west,ā Ms. Killion said.
This is a very true statementā¦in 2005 or 2010. Itās almost completely untrue outside of TikTok and some corners of YouTube today. YouTube does something to the sound to lower hot stuff but I canāt figure out what it is yet. You can still go very loud on there, but you canāt make it ear splitting anymore.
In April, Amazon began rolling out an accessibility feature, called dialogue boost, for a small number of shows and movies in its Prime Video streaming app. To use it, you open the language options and choose āEnglish Dialogue Boost: High.ā I tested the tool in āTom Clancyās Jack Ryan,ā the spy thriller with a cast of especially unintelligible, deep-voiced men.
A single tear fell down the face of a mixer who found out their mix was played through this. Amazon needs to treat itself like a network and give specs to their mixers to adhere to. I already know this is a problem because I do some work for Amazon and their specs areā¦wellā¦not clear, great, or modern. So, theyāre largely just gonna go with what you give them. Even Netflix, while giving their very odd spec says something to the effect of āwe donāt interfere with creativity, so whatever you send us weāll play, but this is what we want you to send it to us atā¦plz k thx byeā.
My last piece of advice is counterintuitive: Donāt do anything with the sound settings on your TV. Mr. Lewis said that modern TVs have software that automatically calibrate the sound levels for you ā and if you mess around with the settings for one show, the audio may be out of whack for the next one.
Have you ever gone in a showroom and seen how a James Bond movie looks like it was done on a cheap set? The 120 Hz refresh rate? Thatās what theyāre gonna do to sound if they follow this articleās advice. Movies often spend well over $100 million to make it look like a movie, and then the consumer makes it look like a live episode of The Twilight Zone because some tech person thinks thatās what people want.
Here is my advice. If youāre going to listen through your TV speaker, turn off all sound enhancements. If it has an EQ, play with that a bit, but donāt have anything else on. Otherwise, get a decent soundbar, and find the setting that gives the richest most natural sound. Donāt do things like dialog boost/enhancement whatever. Those are all just EQs and compressors that radically change the intended sound.
Iāll close out with a screenshot of the poll I did so far and give my conclusion below it:
Conclusion: Mixers need to mix better
For the ones who selected up and down, you donāt like the way mixers mix.
For the ones who want it louder in theaters, you most likely have hearing damage.
For the ones who want it lower in theaters, you probably have very good hearing or only like seeing very loud action movies.
For the ones who want it louder outside of theaters, Iām gonna guess most of you consume on either MacBook Pro type computers or smartphones. All of those have very weak amplifiers, which is most likely why you want it louder. The loudest stuff on those will sound about right but broadcast levels will sound somewhat weak. Using a decent pair of headphones will solve a lot of this problem for you.
For the ones who want it lower outside of theaters, you probably consume a lot of TikTok and more consumer level type videos or listen in headphones.
Those are all just guesses and if anyone who responded wants to say what type of setup they use outside of movie theaters, Iād love to know.
Iāve seen three movies in the theater that I can remember since the pandemic:
Top Gun
The Flash
Oppenheimer
I thought Top Gun sounded weak in the theater I saw it and I was disappointed in the sound of the planes. I thought The Flash sounded just about right volume wise and impact wise. I thought Oppenheimer in an IMAX was ear splitting in large portions of it. I would have wanted to turn Top Gun up (and probably up and down throughout), keep The Flash as it was, and turn down Oppenheimer, which probably would have led to wanting it turned up and down throughout.
Feel free to also give examples of movies in theaters youāve seen that fit your vote.
One last thing is I like some of this new form of sound delivery. I generally like that you donāt get to tweak the sound on YouTube or phones and really on any streaming site other than minor settings. That means it plays back as we delivered it (no compressors or EQs altering the sound), even if it sucks on that device. Get a good pair of headphones (my favorite is the reasonably priced Shure SRH440a) and watching stuff on YouTube or just straight out of a streaming site can be a very good experience. Thanks for participating in the poll. The results are pretty similar to the original poll in The Hollywood Reporter, which also came to the conclusion that mixers need to mix better.
Birth/Rebirth
8/10
I liked this one. If youāve seen the trailer you know itās about two women who try to bring a child thatās died back to life. Whatās good about it is itās barely horror, itās basically a sci fi premise leading to a Twilight Zone episode. Hereās how the Ebert site summed it up
One of the main strengths of ābirth/rebirthā is Mossā resistance to the expected. One might expect Celie to be outraged at what Rose has done. One might expect the film to unfold as a battle of wills: Rose fighting to keep her experiment going and Celie attempting to thwart it and rescue Lila for a proper burial. One might expect Lila to āre-animateā as a monster, turning on her saviors with murderous violence. But ā¦ none of that happens.
The horror here is body horror, specifically womenās bodies when it comes to pregnancies and the trauma of what women go through.
One scene I liked that made a point was the nurse is helping a pregnant mother after a visit to an OB and the woman asks the nurse for tips on what to expect. The nurse basically says know where a bathroom is at all times. Know where the closest restaurant bathroom is, closest construction port - a -potty is, know where the closest dumpster is because at least it can give you some privacy because youāre going to pee or shit yourself at least once. The husband comes in at the tail end of this is gives a disapproving āHoneyā¦ā as in āhoney why are you talking about this?ā, both the nurse and the lady roll their eyes as in ā look at this pussyā and after a minute he leaves and the lady tells the nurse āhe means wellā.
One of whom is played by Carla from Scrubs omg
Appreciate the review this looks juicy
I cannot believe you have not seen The Babadook. An instant classic and I credit it along with It Follows and The Witch for this great horror resurgence weāve seen over the past decade.
Finally caught Talk to Me last night. Liked it a lot. I was in the mood for a more intense horror experience. My only real knock is the end of the movie.
Mia is pushing Riley down the hill towards the highway. Sheās very focused on what she needs to do and her āmotherā is comforting and guiding her. We see Jade at the top of the hill realizing what is about to happen. Yet, somehow, itās Riley who winds up dead in traffic. We donāt see Jade push her and we donāt see Riley having some awakening where she realizes sheās been duped and is about to do this terrible thing.
Read online about it a bit and thereās no answer other than it is ambiguous. I donāt mind an ambiguous ending where you need to decipher what just happenedā¦ or maybe there is no definitive answer. Thatās fine. However, in this case, it feels like poor editing - we need to see what went down. We need to know how Mia ended up in the highway. Iāve settled on Jade made it down, pushed Riley away from the wheelchair and accidentally into the highway. Canāt really see it being anything else.
I loved It Follows. I really need to watch Babadook. Maybe today 
I will report back!!! I need a refresher after these episodes of Outer Limits lol. So many cool stories, so many terrible episodes. The reboot first episode was based on a 1979 novel by George RR Martin of Game of Thrones fame.
Studio letās free versions stay up on YouTube.
Ending of Talk to Me is not poor editing. For me, it was a masterful storytelling decision. Iām surprised you would say it was poor editing instead of that it didnāt work for you when the rest of the movie was so intentional.
No worries if the ambiguity doesnāt work for you. For me, the unanswered question of what happened is part of why that moment is so powerful. Thereās a lot bigger stuff than who decided to do āthisā that wasnāt explained. For me, they explained everything they needed to explain, such as the clearly and organically defined rules of the hand. The rest is great imo if left to discuss and interpret about the characters.
Theyāre already making a sequel. I trust these weirdo director friends to use their instincts for bizarre Ronald McDonald short films to deliver a sequel that takes as much advantage of that ambiguity as the first film did.
Iāll declare Scream the most amazing horror franchise of all time if they bring back Matthew Lillard.
The question alone begs to be answered lol
Goddamn was this movie good. Appreciate you mentioning it Wiper.
Lolllll I didnāt know Vampire in Brooklyn was directed by Wes Craven 
Was the Bad News Bears remake as bad as he says?
This article is essentially an ad for sound bars
Glad you liked it. Now give Jennifer Kentās next film, The Nightingale, a viewing. Itās a brutal, tough watch but an excellent film.
Set in Australia 1825 in Van Diemenās Land, the film follows a young convict seeking revenge for terrible acts of violence committed against her and her family.
Regarding the ambiguity of the Talk to Me ending. Youāre right, likely not an editing error but a choice. Not a great choice for me. And I love a movie with ambiguity, thatās not the problem for me. Just in this case I didnāt feel it was warranted. Didnāt detract from my enjoyment. Still thought it was very well done.
Check out The Nightingale. Itās worth your time. Canāt wait to see what Kent churns out next.
Yes. I watched The Nightingale and Wipers maybe under selling how brutal it is but itās damn good.
Looking it up. Will report back.
fyp
Iām not sure if Iāll be able to watch this without being too affected but since itās freeā¦
https://tubitv.com/movies/100001071?link-action=play&tracking=google-feed&utm_source=google-feed
Itās a rough watch, Risky. If youāre worried about being affected you might want to skip it.
MCG - maybe I undersold the brutality. Itās been a few years since Iāve watched it. It definitely stuck with me. I know Risky likes horror films and I think itās something she might like but yes, itās a tough one.
Itās all subjective but the āeventā towards the beginning of the movie really shocked and upset me, and Iām not easily shocked and upset in movies. Iād say job well done by the director.
This is where I have to just hold my nose and give it a shot.
Tomorrow morning coffee gonna be intense 
Incredible. I see this more as a revenge thriller than a horror movie, which tbh is more my style, eg Promising Young Woman, MFA, Pure, The Other Lamb.
Here is an old article I wrote for Fanfare last October about a bunch of these movies.
For Nightingale, I had to skim or skip the first 30 minutes and the other scenes of sexual assault. They are effective at evoking the lived experience of repeated assaults by one or more people so that the audience empathizes with her righteous need for revenge. But I donāt need any help bringing up those feelings lol.
Iām writing a piece on The English that ties pretty neatly into the same themes as The Nightingale.
Not sure if Iāll find a way to mention this movie beyond the name, but there are lots of parallels.
The English
Set in the mythic mid-American landscape in the year of 1890, The English follows Cornelia Locke, an Englishwoman who arrives into the new and wild landscape of the West to wreak revenge on the man she sees as responsible for the death of her son. Upon meeting Eli Whipp, an ex-cavalry scout and member of the Pawnee Nation by birth, they join together and discover a shared history which must be defeated at all costs, if either of them are to survive.
The Nightingale
Clare, a young Irish convict, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness and is bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence the man committed against her family. On the way, she enlists the services of Aboriginal tracker Billy, who is marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Loved the scene when Billy accuses her of being a white British colonizer and Clare swells up to the size of a planet insisting she is Irish and fekkinā hates the British.
Thanks for suggesting a movie that coincidentally ties into what I was already thinking about for a surprisingly similar mini series 
Apparently all of the best movies come from Australia!