eliwan

The 20 Thousand Hertz podcast dives deep into Why is movie dialogue so hard to understand?, providing six possible reasons why more and more people are turning on subtitles/captions for movies, TV, and the streaming services we use to watch them. Reason six comes with a solution!

Dallas Taylor, 20k.org’s founder, points out video games have solved this problem: most permit users to individually adjust the loudness settings for

• music
• sound effects
• dialogue

Movie sound, on the other hand, is designed to be impressive in a great big theater. But of course most of us watch the screen sector’s output at home.

https://www.20k.org/episodes/subtitleson has both the 30-minute audio and a transcript

I’m a big fan of this podcast, which is often disability-adjacent. In its nine years, it's covered how artists shape sound to convey meaning, how manufacturers tune their devices to be friendly, and how Beethoven created great music when he couldn’t hear at all.

Not surprisingly, many fans work with sound. Taylor solicited listener-produced contributions; I enjoyed the sixteen he chose. The overall winner celebrates the sonic scrapbook a Canadian sound designer keeps of his blind son’s upbringing, and introduces generational delight to the stop announcements on the Montreal transit system.

Accessibility Issue: I couldn’t open the SquareSpace transcript window using my tab key (crucial for those of us who don’t use mice) so I hope this highlight link to the control opens the transcript—let know about trouble/solutions in the comments.