Editorial by Bob Rapoport, 10/26

A few weeks ago, I asked a few simple questions in a survey.

I started the survey because of something happening in my own living room.

I was constantly reaching for the remote — turning the volume up to understand a quiet conversation, then quickly turning it back down when the music or effects became too loud.  I wondered whether this was just me 

You can see from the 49 responses in the chart that 90% adjust the volume occasionally, frequently, or constantly while streaming TV shows and movies.

70% said dialogue that is too soft contributes to those adjustments, and 70% said quiet or softly spoken dialogue can be difficult to follow.

So what’s going on?

Why Is There So Much Soft Dialogue?

Part of the answer is that television sound has changed dramatically.

Modern movies and premium streaming programs are produced with a very wide dynamic range — the difference between the quietest and loudest sounds in the soundtrack. Over Wi-Fi, it’s 24 bit, 48KHz Hi Res Audio.

A hushed conversation can be intentionally very soft, while music, explosions, gunfire or other effects can be dramatically louder.

That can work beautifully in a movie theater.

But most of us aren’t watching in a professionally calibrated theater.

We’re sitting eight or ten feet from a television in a normal room with other people and a volume level that has to be comfortable for everybody.

The quiet end of that enormous dynamic range can simply be too quiet to understand comfortably.

When Did We Start Keeping the Remote So Close?

For many of us, this habit started years ago with commercial breaks.

You could be perfectly comfortable with the volume of the program you were watching, then suddenly a commercial would come on and seem dramatically louder.

We learned to keep the remote nearby because we expected to need it.

That may have been the beginning of what I now think of as “remote riding”.

Today the reason is often different.

Instead of commercials being too loud, we’re increasingly adjusting the volume within the program itself — up for quiet dialogue, down for music, sound effects and action.

Are You a Remote Rider?
If you’re constantly turning the volume up for dialogue and back down for everything else, you probably are.

Because we usually set the volume for optimal dialogue clarity.

We turn it up until we can clearly understand the actors.

Then the soundtrack reaches a loud musical passage or action sequence — and suddenly the level we chose for the dialogue is much too loud.

Down goes the volume.

The dialogue returns, and up it goes again.

Our survey tells us it isn’t an unusual habit.

It’s a predictable response to the way modern programming is being produced and the way we’re actually hearing it at home.

Isn’t More Dynamic Range Supposed to Be Better?

For high-fidelity sound, dynamic range is normally something we celebrate.

We don’t want music or movie soundtracks unnecessarily compressed.

The ability to move from a very quiet passage to a powerful crescendo is part of what makes recorded sound realistic and exciting.

The problem isn’t that dynamic range is bad.

The problem is that the quietest information still has to remain audible.

If important dialogue falls below our comfortable listening threshold, we either miss the words or raise the entire soundtrack until everything else becomes too loud.

That’s the conflict our survey exposes.

Is This Simply a Hearing Problem?

Not necessarily.

Hearing ability certainly plays a role, particularly because speech intelligibility depends heavily on frequencies that can become more difficult to hear as we get older.

Accents, hushed voices, mumbling, background music and sound effects can make the problem even harder.

But people with perfectly serviceable hearing can experience the same thing.

The issue isn’t merely how loud the television is.

It’s the relationship between dialogue and everything surrounding it.

Making the entire room louder doesn’t automatically make that relationship better.

 

Why Doesn’t a Better Sound System Always Fix It?

A good center channel, careful speaker placement and proper system setup can certainly improve dialogue.

In a dedicated home theater, that may be an excellent solution.

But many people aren’t watching television in dedicated theaters anymore.

They’re watching Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube and other streaming services for hours at a time in ordinary shared living spaces.

In fact, 63% of our respondents said movies, streaming television and YouTube now account for 60% or more of the time they spend using their audio systems.

That’s a significant change in how people use home audio.

Why Do Captions Help — and Why Aren’t They the Whole Answer?

A sizeable number of people in our survey told us they use closed captions or subtitles because dialogue can be difficult to understand.

They work. You can read the words you missed.

But there is a tradeoff.

Once captions are on, your eyes are repeatedly drawn to the bottom of the screen. Instead of simply watching an actor’s face, expression and body language, part of your attention is focused on reading.

That can reduce the sense of immersion — especially in a beautifully photographed drama or movie where so much of the storytelling is visual.

For some viewers, captions are exactly the right solution.

But others would rather hear the dialogue clearly enough that they don’t need them.

That became another part of the question behind our survey:

Can we make dialogue easier to understand while enabling people to stay immersed in the visuals, the performance and the story?

What Happens When Two People Want Different Volume Levels?

This may be the part of the story that traditional television sound has never really solved.

Two people can sit next to each other watching exactly the same program and need completely different listening levels.

Turn the television up for one person and it may become uncomfortable for the other.

Turn it down and somebody begins missing dialogue.

There is no single room-volume setting that can always satisfy two different pairs of ears.

That’s why one of the most interesting survey results was that 89% said clearer dialogue combined with independent personal volume would be useful.

Do We Have to Give Up the Rest of the Soundtrack to Hear the Dialogue?

We shouldn’t have to.

Dialogue clarity isn’t the same thing as stripping a soundtrack down to voices.

A well-recorded television program contains music, ambience, footsteps, doors opening, rainfall and countless spatial cues that help create the world around the actors.

The goal should be to hear more of that information, not less of it — but at a personal listening level where soft sounds remain audible and louder sounds remain comfortable.

When those subtle sounds become easy to hear, television can actually become more immersive, not less.

So What Did Our Survey Really Discover?

Perhaps the most revealing result was that 64% of respondents had never really thought of frequent volume adjustment as a problem that might have a solution.

Neither had I for a long time.

Reaching for the remote had simply become part of watching television.

But once I stopped doing it, I realized how disruptive it had been.

Every time you reach for the volume control, you’re thinking about the sound system instead of the story.

That’s what changed my perspective.

Is It Time for a Different Way to Listen to Television?

I think our survey raises an important question.

The way we watch television has changed enormously.

Movies and premium television have become major forms of home entertainment.

Streaming services offer sophisticated cinematic soundtracks with enormous dynamic range.

And for many of us, video now represents more of our audio-system use than music does.

Yet we’re still largely listening to television the same way we always have:

One sound system. One room-volume setting. For everybody.

Personal television audio takes a different approach.

It allows each listener to choose a comfortable level independently while retaining the dialogue, music, effects and spatial information in the original program.

That’s the reason I became interested in the Earis Premium — not because I was looking for another pair of headphones, but because it solved a problem I hadn’t fully recognized until I experienced the alternative.

Maybe the Remote Was Trying to Tell Us Something

Our survey began with nine questions about how people watch television.

It has turned into a much more interesting conversation about how we listen to it.

When nearly nine out of ten people are adjusting the volume, seven out of ten are struggling with quiet dialogue, and nearly nine out of ten see value in clearer dialogue at their own independent listening level, perhaps constant remote riding isn’t simply something viewers have to accept.

Maybe it’s telling us that the television listening experience itself is ready to evolve.