| curl-6 said: I should add, the films that prompted the thread was rewatching Oppenheimer and Dune Part II, and I think it didn't help that both Villeneuve and Nolan tend to favour directing actors to speak very softly. |
Those are theatrical releases, with big dynamic range.
Process used to go like this - you mix for theater, then you tighten it a bit for DVD/BluRay version (aimed for home theaters) and then additionally for TV. Given that both Netlifx and Amazon (I can vouch for those, not sure about HBO and some others) have made their standards to be pretty much what DVD/BR home theater standards are, content delivered like that is fine in home theater environment - but if you watch them without any additional processing in environment that is not suited for that, you are probably in for a less than ideal experience when it comes to dialogue intelligibility and overall dynamics.
As someone who actually mixes under those standards, I'm not very fond of them - they are great from creative standpoint, cause you can have soft scenes being soft, and punchy scenes being loud, with full frequency range that SD era did not had, but that means what I said initially - directors/producers got into their heads that everything is made as if it's for theater (real or home) and most forgot about actual average living room TV experience, which is more restricted and often accompanied by additional background noise from house/outdoors. So as a viewer, I know what that means on the other side, if you mix that way - remote in your hand.
All in all, my advice, since this will not change, whatever you're watching from this type of content, if you're not doing it in home theater environment (with everything that entails), make sure to engage auto level and dialogue intelligibility - sure, you won't be listening to "original vision", but you will reduce your annoyance level when it comes to sound for such content.
