Most of the time, it’s not the voice-acting quality that’s bad…
It’s just a bit of an awkward uncanny valley hearing it…
All this hard work, and then music and effects blast away your speakers and dialogue is barely audible on same settings.
That’s because your streaming device isn’t set by default to request the stereo stream. It’s picking up the surround stream and then doing a shitty job of folding it down to stereo. I bet old movies shot in stereo and mono probably have easier-to-hear dialogue on your particular home setup. Right?
I have no idea why manufacturers won’t change this default setting, but go in to the audio settings of your Apple TV or whatever and change your sound preference from “auto” to “stereo.”
Part of our deliverables is to make several different versions of every mix, including generally at very least one 5.1 surround mix and one stereo. I assure you that the stereo version that we make at the dub stage sounds a thousand times better than whatever garbage your TV is inventing by flattening the 5.1 (or possibly even Atmos) stream into stereo.
Yes, older media sounds perfectly fine. I have a BD player and use the “smart features” of my TV. Both devices are set to stereo.
I always dream of separate volume sliders for voice and effects/music. Those are already separate on BD because of different language options.
If older movies are sounding fine, then something still isn’t set to request the stereo stream/audio file (not just play back in stereo: actually pull the stereo file). I’d investigate further… Whenever I change this for family members, it works 100% of the time.
