Why are Blue Ray's sound all over the place?

[El Supremo]

I just watched 'First Man' from Netflix on my newer Sony Blue Ray player and I had to constantly adjust the sound level. I have had this problem for other recent movies. It sucks.

BTW, 'First Man' isn't that good. Too depressing.

[Ferrets are Cool]

1. The ONLY Bluray's

I've ever had a problem with is the live concert disc of Rush, and that is only because their mixer sucks. Sounds like you may have a player problem.

[hunter]

2. Set Audio options to "Stereo" on your television, disc player, or disc menu itself.

The Blu-Ray standard supports eight or nine audio codecs. Some of these may be poorly rendered by your Blu-Ray player or television setup.

If you have "surround sound" speakers, Dolby 5.1, whatever, there may be something amiss there.

We just have a plain old 1080p television with a left speaker and a right speaker.

My wife and I probably don't see or hear well enough to appreciate Blu-Ray. Or maybe DVDs are so much better than the video tape cassettes we used to rent we don't expect anything more.

Thanks for the heads up on "First Man."


On Edit: I just went up to check our television. You might want to check the "DRC" (Dynamic Range Compression) feature in the audio setup menu of your television. Switching it "on" may be helpful in movies like this. The setting might also be called "Loudness" or "Normalization." It's not something you want to leave on for ordinary soundtracks.

[El Supremo]

3. I really appreciate your comments.

But I haven't found the right settings. I have a Samsung 4K TV, a Samsung sound bar connected through Bluetooth and a Sony Blueray player. All have their own settings. I could not find "DRC" on any of them. There is a PCM vs. Bitstream setting on the TV. I like the PCM with surround sound the best. The non-surround sound setting helps a lot but the overall sound is not as good.

I think the problem is that when loud scenes occur (like crashes, explosions or rocket launches) the movie studios like to turn up the volume. This only happens with more recent films. It is the same thing that you hear in theaters. But why doesn't it happen on recent TV broadcast movies?

The latest film I watched was 'Vice'. It wasn't as bad as 'First Man' but the battle scenes were too loud.

And there is another problem too. I often cannot understand what the actors in newer movies are saying. They seem to be mumbling. I don't know if this is due to lack of enunciation or the volume. I have sometimes had to turn on closed caption to read what they say. And again this is not a problem with old movies.

[hunter]

5. I was reading about the Apollo 11 Blu-Ray disc...

... it's only got the theater version of the audio track, which is fine if you are in a theater, or if you like to tinker with your own home theater audio setup. (The sound in theaters is set up and maintained by full time technicians who travel from theater to theater.)

Some of the voices on Apollo 11 are muddled because they are taken from the original archival tapes.

Looking through home theater discussion boards it seems that many Blu-Ray discs produced for rental don't include the theater quality audio tracks because they have to sound acceptable on the older or lower priced televisions and Blu-Ray players most people who rent movies have.

My wife and I are Luddites. We watch DVDs and $8.99 a month "Standard Definition" Netflix. We do have a 1080p television but it rarely sees any HD content and we don't have any external speakers connected to it.

[mapol]

4. When the Blu-Ray version of the original 1961 film version of West Side Story first came out,

there were many problems with it, including the colors being all wrong, not to mention a whole host of other problems. People who'd pre-ordered and/or back-ordered copies of the Blu-Ray version of the original 1961 film version of West Side Story were cancelling and/or rescinding their orders, pre-orders and back-orders, and returning their Blu-Ray copies of West Side Story in droves. There was a lot of public anger until the problems were fixed.

I've seen a couple of Blu-Ray versions of the 1961 film version of West Side Story, which were really good, and the sound really good as well. Since I prefer to see West Side Story and other great golden oldie-but-keeper classic films on a great big, wide screen, in a real movie theatre with the lights down low, as they're really and truly meant to be viewed, I have refused to purchase either a regular or Blu-Ray DVD player, much less a Blu-Ray copy of the film West Side Story.

Btw, El Supremo--Sorry that happened to you.