I really miss the 'loudness compression' that was present on many DVD playback applications.
We have a family routine of watching a movie together each friday night.
I sit next to the stereo, as the 'grumpy dad',
and twist the volume control up and down,
depending on whether there is character dialogue, or things are exploding.
If I turn it up enough for character dialogue to be audible, the 'exploding cars' parts are deafening. And if the exploding cars are tolerable, character dialogue is inaudible.
DVD players used to have a hack typically called 'dynamic range compression' or similar.
If I had a professional movie theater, the wild dynamic range would be cool.
But in your basement without hifi dampening on your walls, it doesn't behave well :-/
I do enjoy that there's a big overlap between people who complain that all the dynamic range has gone out of music (the "loudness wars") and people who complain that there's too much dynamic range in TV and movie audio :)
No dig at you, I'm exactly the same. It makes some sense - outside of a conductor introducing the 1812 overture I can't think of a musical scenario that needs to cover everything from a whisper to an actual explosion - but it's still amusing.
Denon (and other?) Receivers have a feature called Audyssey which has a "night mode" which does exactly this. I have not used it, just the room EQ correction mode.
If I turn it up enough for character dialogue to be audible, the 'exploding cars' parts are deafening. And if the exploding cars are tolerable, character dialogue is inaudible.
DVD players used to have a hack typically called 'dynamic range compression' or similar. If I had a professional movie theater, the wild dynamic range would be cool. But in your basement without hifi dampening on your walls, it doesn't behave well :-/