The issues with a sound mix in the theater is one thing, but I'm not sure judging a mix based solely off of someone's impression of a home viewing is reliable. There are so many factors that can affect the sound and make dialog intelligibility poor. Even with good equipment, if it's poorly set up or in a bad acoustical environment then even a great mix can sound like shit. Hell, even the position where you sit in relation to the speakers can drastically affect dialog intelligibility (bass is even worse). Most commercial cinemas, while having their own problems, are usually a lot more well controlled than the average home setup.
I'm also not sure if that quote about the dynamic range being higher for a home mix than the theater is actually true. I do know that nearly every movie has a different mix for the home release that's better geared toward a typical listening environment at home. Given the difference in both environment and equipment, it seems odd to have
more dynamic range in the track.
I hate probably 95% of every modern movie because of this.
I have a really well calibrated 7.1 home theater. I love movies and spent the money to make sure I had a pretty decent home theater setup and sound is equally as important as visuals for any real "theater" experience.
I spent so many hours fine tuning it and calibrating then had my friend who installs home theaters as his small business come in and do final tweaks, which because I had spent so much time was not that many.
I am CONSTANTLY grabbing the remote to turn it down on action sequences, especially since my wife tends to fall asleep way earlier than me thanks to her wine. And I am scrambling to turn the volume down on action sequences as I have to crank it up for dialogue non action sequences.
It also does not help my hearing is kind of shot from playing in heavier music bands since I am 16 and not using ear plugs most of the time.
The other option is I manually adjust the center channel to be higher, which then fucks up the overall mix for other scenes.
So I am basically forced to put on subtitles for every fucking movie I watch, which is just a shit solution.
It could potentially be due to hearing loss. You say your friend did some further tweaking; have you asked him about it? What did he think of the sound? Also, what's the room itself like? Has any acoustic treatment been applied?
BTW, most TVs and AVRs have some way of compressing the dynamic range that allow you to turn up the volume so dialog is easier to hear without being deafened by explosions and other noisy sound effects. The name, adjustability, and efficacy of this setting varies between manufacturers, but it may be helpful in making some soundtracks more tolerable.
this is patently false.
Myself or my friend who is an audio video engineer who was literally designed movie theaters in the houston area, have had to ask the theater to turn the volume down because it physically hurt our ears or our kids ears for the following movies:
John Wick 2
Incredibles 2
Rise of Skywalker
Spider Man Far From Home.
just to name a few and this is at at least 3 different theaters we have had to ask to turn them down. and i like a loud movie, i want to feel the subwoofer shaking shit. But if it hurts ears thats too damn loud.
What theater chain was this? In my experience, AMC has been the absolute
worst in terms of the sound. They've always been way louder than every other theater I've been to and I've been to multiple chains in different parts of the US. And that's just for normal movies--it's worse for their IMAX and Dolby Cinema showings!
I remember reading early impressions about Dunkirk being extremely loud before I saw it. During an interview, I remember Kenneth Brannaugh joked how some of the actual surviving veterans of Dunkirk said the movie was louder than the real thing. To my (pleasant) surprise, I found the movie to be fine in terms of volume and wasn't any different to other blockbusters I had seen in normal theaters. Dialog was easy to understand and my ears weren't ringing after walking out. The thing is, while I saw this in a real IMAX theater showing the 15/70mm version, it wasn't an AMC.
Contrast this when I saw the IMAX rerelease of The Dark Knight the following year. Unlike Dunkirk, this movie was way too loud. Although this was 15/70mm as well, it was at an AMC IMAX. Further, I saw TDK at a 15/70mm IMAX back during the original release in 2008 and I didn't remember it being anywhere near that loud. The IMAX I went to in 2008 wasn't owned by AMC at the time though.
To add more data, I saw The Dark Knight Rises in a non-AMC 15/70mm IMAX at release and it also sounded fine as far as volume was concerned. Yet, when I saw Interstellar at an AMC Digital IMAX, it was excruciatingly loud. In fact, all of the movies I've seen in AMC IMAX theaters have been extremely loud, not just the Nolan movies.
At this point, I'm pretty convinced AMC theaters are a major contributor to people finding modern movies way too loud in commercial theaters.
