I watched a video made by a sound engineer on YouTube that explained why this is becoming increasingly necessary.
The volume levels for most modern movies and television shows are all jacked up during some scenes, and practically muted in others. It makes it impossible to keep the volume set at one level, and still be able to hear conversations amidst all the background noise / music etc.
So naturally, people now set the volume to one setting more attuned to the higher volume sounds, and use subtitles to make up for the fact that the dialogue is being drowned out. It has nothing to do with “culture”. People just don’t want to blow their eardrums or their speakers trying to hear what people are saying underneath all that extra racket.
try compression or limiting. For example, if you have an apple TV, try the “reduce loud sounds” setting. Or if you have a decent audio receiver it should have some compression settings available like Audessy Dynamic Volume.
I live in a townhouse so I use these to reduce noise to my neighbors anyway, but it does help with this issue as well. I rarely struggle to hear dialogue even in notoriously bad movies.
I watched a video made by a sound engineer on YouTube that explained why this is becoming increasingly necessary.
The volume levels for most modern movies and television shows are all jacked up during some scenes, and practically muted in others. It makes it impossible to keep the volume set at one level, and still be able to hear conversations amidst all the background noise / music etc.
So naturally, people now set the volume to one setting more attuned to the higher volume sounds, and use subtitles to make up for the fact that the dialogue is being drowned out. It has nothing to do with “culture”. People just don’t want to blow their eardrums or their speakers trying to hear what people are saying underneath all that extra racket.
try compression or limiting. For example, if you have an apple TV, try the “reduce loud sounds” setting. Or if you have a decent audio receiver it should have some compression settings available like Audessy Dynamic Volume.
I live in a townhouse so I use these to reduce noise to my neighbors anyway, but it does help with this issue as well. I rarely struggle to hear dialogue even in notoriously bad movies.
I don’t understand how you read the subs while looking away. Or are they listening to something else while watching the screen?