Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dialog Inteligibility with VP180

I agree, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily the speakers or the setup or the room. Sometimes it's simply a bad mix, where someone was trying to get every other channel in the mix louder and louder.

Just like the compressed music being sold today, there are people in the movie industry that want LFE effects to be loud....and surround effects to be loud.... and music on the Right and Left to be loud.

Anybody that mixes knows you can't have everything louder than everything else. It's the balance of the channels.

But let's face it: When was the last time you heard someone in a forum not brag about the LFE or the surround information, and instead post "The F/X were all at a lower level, but boy, could I hear the dialog really well!"?

In many movies and TV shows, center channel dialog loses in the mix because it's not sexy.

If turning up the center channel a few dBs improves the dialog intelligibility and helps you enjoy the movie, I say go for it...and don't assume it's your setup that's "wrong".

I don't agree with Greg. I also had the VP150 and now have the VP180. The volume level of the dialog is definitely material dependent and also depends on how loud you watch a movie. A lot of movies have their dialog mixed to low. If you're watching a movie with an overall loud volume, even if it is mixed too low you'll hear the dialog properly just because it's loud. If you're watching a low volume, in some movies,while most of the movie will be at an appropriate level, the quiet scenes are barely audible. This used to drive me crazy when I only had the mains and is the major reason I got the center before the surrounds, so I can adjust the level when that happens. When I watch a movie at low volume, it is not uncommon for me to increase the center channel 3 or 4 dBs.

Just recently watched the newly released Tangled 3D errr on Blu-ray. The dialogue, vocal clarity and intelligibility was the best thing about the DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. They did a great job. Reproducing natural speech is the toughest thing to get right both in mixing and playback (speakers).

Interesting. A thing that I've noticed is that most of the animated pictured will have the dialog mixed very well for some reason. I haven't watched Tangled but I've watched How To Train Your Dragon this weekend, and also some scenes have lots of surround going on and some crazy LFE, the dialog never looses intelligibility.

I'd say that the dialog in animated pictures is so good because it's recorded one person at a time, up close, in a controlled booth. That way the individual speaking levels can be adjusted for each actor, there's no worry about getting the boom in the shot, and there's no outside noise.

Probably has something to do with the fact that the actors doing the voice overs are speaking directly into microphones as opposed to having to 'act on the set' and the sound often has to come from a variety of inputs on boom mics and other scattered devices.

I've seen a lot of movies where all of the dialog was voiced over from the studio. I'm beginning to think that most of them might be this way.

Yes, a lot of the animated films I would consider reference. Kung Fu Panda would be another. HTTYD is an LFE assault on a HT system. Tangled isn't quite like that but the mix is very good especially with dialogue and singing/vocal reproduction. Sounds very natural.

that's what i've heard/read many times, because if they were to use dialog as recorded on the scene, there would often be lots of interference from the set and it would be bad for the dialog; so, very often they voice over the dialog in the studio.

It's called ADR (Additional Dialog Recording), much of the dialog is still recorded live, but if there's anything that's not clear, or a line that needs to be changed they'll pick it up in post ADR.

I hate ADR'd dialog, so often I can tell which lines were picked up. It'd especially obvious when there's a 1 on 1 conversation that usually shows the person's face who is speaking, but for some lines the back of their head is shown instead. That line has likely been "looped".

The other thing that bugs me is noise gating dialog. Yeah, I understand that sometimes there's something making noise on set that wasn't noticed, yet the take was otherwise perfect. But keep the background noise constant, don't make it go silent between each line, that's just draws attention to the noise. (See CSI this season in the interrogation room).