Am I getting old?

[lexin]

aunty_marion and I have been watching action movies. Last night we saw Justice League.

I think I’m going deaf or it’s a sign of getting older: the dialogue was too quiet, we could hardly hear what they were saying, but the fights, special effects and music were all too loud. No amount of fiddling with the settings seems to help.

The other thing we’ve been watching is Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. A full report when we’ve seen “Yeoman of the Guard”, but so far “Cox and Box” is the most stupid show I’ve ever seen in my life. Unless you know different?

Comments

[clanwilliam]

The sound thing is a deliberate decision and it's a Christopher Nolan thing that also wound up affecting Justice League.

[catalenamara]

Yeah, I heard about Christopher Nolan muddying up the sound in his movies - so annoying. It's a big part of why I disliked those movies. To that point that, I doubt I'll bother to watch them even if I can use closed captions to read the dialogue. The deliberate choice to essentially shut out a part of the potential audience is certainly a strike against Nolan and anyone else deliberately making this choice.

[lexin]

You mean he meant it to be that bad? What was he thinking of? It was awful.

[dancing_serpent]

I've had problems like that for years. That's one of the main reasons why I watch stuff with subtitles on, even when I know/speak the language. :-(

[lexin]

I'm thinking of doing the same.

[shezan]

Was about to recommend the same thing. Subtitles change your life (I found it impossible to understand half the dialogue in "Gosford Park", for instance; Altman meant half of it to be inaudible. Watched it with subtitles ten years later and it was like wearing good glasses after peering at a screen for years.)

[lyorn]

I have this sound problem like forever, like, 10 to 20 years back, when I lived in a flat with very thin walls. Back then I started to activate subtitles and set the sound so low that the loudest parts did not annoy the neigbors. Still doing this, despite better walls today.

I *do* have some hearing problems specific to understanding speech, which should have been diagnosed when I was in kindergarten, but they are very mild so they weren't. So maybe I'm a little more affected by a "realistic" loudness of speech vs. explosions, Antonovs starting, or Metallica in concert than the average person...

[lexin]

I did start to wonder if it was my hearing.

[snakeling]

It's not just you :( We're constantly fiddling with the sound while watching movies, it's annoying. And it's been years since I went to the cinema without my concert ear plugs. (Well, because of the pandemic, it's been years since I went to the cinema, but the ten years before that, I always used ear plugs.)

[lexin]

If I go to the cinema (I very rarely do) I will take ear plugs.

[corvidology]

There's a been a lot of chatter in film and TV production about the deliberate muddying of the soundtrack.

I actually have bat-like hearing and it makes me crazy!

[lexin]

It did really bother me on Justice League.