Am I going deaf or does everyone on telly mumble theses days?

[CaraBosse1]

Just watched first episode of Pretty Little Lies - God, the mumbling!

First series of House of Cards, I kept putting subtitles on because I couldn't understand Kevin Spacey.

Watching McMafia the other night, I kept saying to DH "eh, what did he say?" to which DH replied "Dunno"

Am I going mutton and jeff or does anyone else struggle to follow dramas because of the bloody mumbling?

And bairnk got in there before me!

There are some shows, like Taboo or SSGB that absolutely everyone complains about and are genuinely poorly mixed. But if you find all modern shows, eg House of Cards, incomprehensible then unless you’ve actually got a recent clean hearing test under your belt then it’s highly likely that you’ve got some degree of impairment - it’s very common.

YES as pp has just said i have says CBBies on in the morning at level 5 ish on our telly as there are people still asleep in the house. DD and i can hear the speech clear as day.

Daytime (cooking shows ect) i'll crank it up to 7 or 8 so i can hear it over DD playing and household noise ect.

Evening comes and DH and i can't hear the bloody speech in films and dramas on level 8 with no household noise going on. We put the subtitles on as we refuse to have it blaring out at 9/10 late in the evening.

Agree wholeheartedly. I need subtitles for most drama, not because I can't hear the sound, but because it is unclear what is being said. Documentaries, news programmes, quizshows, even older dramas etc, clear as day. Drama: often difficult with UK series (YY to Taboo!) and near impossible with almost all US productions. I so wanted to watch "The Young Pope" and persevered for a couple of episodes on NowTV (whose great disadvantage is lack of subtitling - are they listening? Because I may cancel my subscription for this reason alone!), before sadly admitting defeat. Yet older US dramas are perfectly intelligible cf. House MD, MASH etc. Maddening!

Not just you.

American tv series are the worst, especially if they’re an older tough guy from New Joisey or something. What the fuck are you on about, OPEN YOUR MOUTH AND SPEAK UP.

Yes! The quality of speaking has really declined. Especially on the BBC. Since they've decided to distance themselves from themselves from the liberal metropolitan elite image (although not the politics!) I find half of their presenters impossible to understand. It's fine for natives but how can they expect forgeiners (of which there are very many of us) to understand these ridiculous (and I can't help but think sometimes faked or exaggerated) regional dialects? I don't think I'm asking to much of theBBC for them to train their employees to speak proper English.

Agree that it's not a flat screen thing, as there's no problem with hearing old films, newsreaders, documentaries etc, it seems to be a drama thing - almost like a trend to mumble and slur words. Don't get it, and isn't somebody being paid to ensure that dialogue is recorded properly and is audible to the listener?

I was watching some old videos recently (documentary type stuff) and really noticed how different people spoke around 30 years ago. These were ordinary people, not presenters, and although I have a fairly RP accent, middle class background etc, they sounded so posh! But very clearly spoken.

So I reckon people do mumble more now, if youre looking at it over a long enough time period...

However I just find the problem is the music too loud compared to the dialogue. And only with more recent shows.

People mumbled on my tv for 53 years then I had my hearing tested. It transpired that I have a fairly uncommin genetic hearing loss that affects the mid frequencies (I can hear high frequencies others can't and going to the cinema is agonisingly painful). This type of hearing loss (commonly known as Cookie Bite loss) affects you hearing conversations, especially where several people are talking or there's background noise.

I got hearing aids 3 years ago and my telly is back in perfect working order.

Some of the quiz shows these days - 15 to 1 is the worst- have dreadful background music. Why? I want to listen to the questions and hear the answers. Some dramas are so difficult to follow because of mumbling and because of dark gloomy sets.

They seem to go in for 'realistic' dialogue nowadays, which usually equals mumbling. IIRC there were loads of complaints about some BBC drama not long ago.

I am aware that my hearing is not quite what it was, but at the same time, if watching some DVD series made a few decades ago, e.g. quite recently watched the old (brilliant!) Mapp and Lucia for the first time - I have no trouble hearing the dialogue, because the actors were still expected to speak clearly.

Glad its not just me! Ive been using subtitles for years as I couldn't bear the TV being loud enough for me to hear what was being said! Everyone else takes the mickey out of me but I will try and fiddle with TV settings as well

I've recently got hearing aids, but people on the telly still mumble, and because the lighting is so dreadful these days, I cant even lipread successfully .

Also, that action for hearing loss on line test still tells me (without hearing aids) that my hearing is fine, despite the NHS deciding that yes, maybe actually we might let you have HAs, we can't fob you off any more . A more reliable test IME is "how often do your teens tell you you're going deaf when you ask them to repeat stuff" .

Sound engineer at "ground" level, but ultimately buck stops with executive producers (I would have thought I'm not involved in making tv)

Defo not a flat screen thing, only just got mine and it was a crt (big back) tv I had before that - just as bad. As pp have said it's the type and era of the programme.

The teens are mumbling too! I can understand hear every bloody word when she's on the phone to mates but when I'm asking her how her day was I get "mumble mumble whatever"

Some of you PPs are BVU in making me want to leave work immediately to go home and see if my tv has a reduce background noise setting.

I am currently watching a Hairy Bikers programme that we recorded the other day. The sound quality is as clear as a bell. There is no background music, just natural background noises of livestock, birds singing etc.

I've just watched Wanted Down Under and Escape to the Country and could understand every word - including the dialects of the Sunderland couple who want to move to Oz. It's definitely the actors on dramas who are mumbling - no wonder Scandi Noir is so popular - we can just read the dialogue rather than (as Miaow says) play Hokey Cokey with the volume!

Definitely. I often put subtitles on.

Yanbu!!! Or Mutton!
It's partly an actor issue and partly a sound mixing one.
With films made for cinema release they mix the incidental soundtrack and the score REALLY HIGH. In part is think it's because people can't shut the fuck up in the cinema anymore so the films have to be really loud to drown out the entitled twats. TV drama does whatever the movies do (inferiority complex). .

Really actors have one job “say the fucking line”. It really pisses me off that they mumble for mumbling sake

Amen to that. The fashion is for what David Mamet called "huff acting". Rather than just saying the line, all manner of oh so subtle "expression" has to be put into it. But there can't be any actual expressiveness, because that would be hammy, like theatre acting, so there's all this " um.." and " huh" and random pauses.

It gives me the rage and I shout at the telly a lot...

There's none of this nonsense on Death in paradise Simon callow was on last nights - he's almost as loud and expressive as Brian blessed

The BBC 'Jamaica Inn' drama a couple of years ago was the absolute worst and got totally panned by viewers, the dialogue was unintelligible, the set lighting was so dark you couldn't see anything, the 'accents' the actors used were laughable in the extreme. BBC promised to 'fix' these problems with future dramas, have they? have they hell as like.

I seem to remember the excuses and justification for the above was the state of the art sound and vision equipment they were using and when played back on their own equipment in a studio equipped as a studio with lots of equipment everything was fine, however, they conveniently forgot that the programme is not watched on state of the art sound and vision equipment in a studio.

I also agree that actors nowadays cannot enunciate properly to save their lives add in their woeful attempts at accents and it is a recipe for disaster. There have been some cases where even in a cinema viewers are criticising the lack of audible pronunciation by actors.

I find the discrepancy between programmes etc annoying, I will often say to OH, who is in denial about his hearing, why is that so loud when in fact the volume has changed with the programme. Oddly, I have no difficulty in hearing the adverts, unfortunately, they seem to require people who can speak clearly.