Is it me or is sound mixing bloody awful nowadays?

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HoloDust said:

As someone who actually does this for living (I'm re-recording sound mixer), you're not wrong...per se. It is not as bad for theatrical movies, but it is somewhat present in TV shows.

Actors do mumble a lot more than they used to, which combined with the lot of TV directors/producers having delusion they're making theatrical release (which they're not) instead of something that's intended for TV (which has neither dynamic nor frequency response of theater), leads to exactly what you're complaining about. Add to that HDTV standards, that are way, way more tolerant to loudness dynamic range than SD standards of the past were and you have exactly what you're describing.

That said, as someone who both mixes and watches a lot of scripted shows, while I occasionally do tend to run across some that are not well done, I must say that I don't have a problem with intelligibility of dialogue, but I mostly watch shows that are on major streaming services, and they are (mostly) free of such problems.

Interesting to hear from someone who works on this stuff; thanks for the input.

OdinHades said:

It really is a mess. When I'm watching a somewhat new movie, I am constantly adjusting the volume. I don't have such problems when watching something from the 90s.

Yeah it's a constant struggle with most new stuff for me; either the voices are too low, or if turn it up to hear them better then the music and sound effects are way too loud to the point of being uncomfortable.

Conversely, I'm currently watching an episode of Lost from like 2004 and it's crystal clear by comparison.