Is it just me?

AlanRatcliffe

I seem to have developed a kind of hypersensitivity to sound. Nothing to do with volume or pitch either - more with the detail of it. On one hand I can sleep through a thunderstorm or in a nightclub. But if the bedside clock is ticking out of synch with the clock in the bathroom or the one in the kitchen (on the other side of the house), it'll keep me awake for ages. Similarly, the "swing" of the car's indicator irks me as it's too "loose".

I'll focus on the reverb in a film's soundtrack if it doesn't match up to the room I'm seeing (and I'll miss what's being said because of it). Speaking to someone, I'll be hearing the tonality of their voice and the sound of the room around it, instead of listening to what they are saying. I won't remember their name 30 seconds after I've met them, but I'll recognise a voice on the other end of a telephone ten years later.

It's kind of a mixed blessing. I have albums where I love the music, but I can't listen to them because of the recording/mixing. I know some nice people that I can't talk to because their voices grate. I hear the detail that escapes most people, but sometimes I wish I could turn it off.

Anyone else experience something similar?

Bob-Dubery

Here's a thing about films: Do the modern films irk you more? I watched some early 80s skop, skiet and donner recently and I was surprised by the sound of it. The fist fight sounding like two blokes hitting each other rather than like something big and hard being smacked with a base ball bat in a studio, then having reverb and whip cracks added. There was shooting, but it sounded like I remember guns sounding from my time in the army. Often when characters weren't talking there was silence ?. There was music, but only for a few scenes where it added to the mood. Etc etc. I could hardly believe it - it sounded so REAL.

I find a lot of sound is very exaggerated these days (sometimes post-production: You can watch CSI on channel 101 and channel 117 and it's a very different experience because 117 has lots of loudness added to all shows, even if they were loud to start off with). And there's a lot of it - OK, maybe not where you live, but suburban Jo'burg is a pretty noisy place these days. Maybe unavoidable because there's so many more people now than there were 30 years ago.

So I think we get less respite from noise and so we get twitchy about it.

el-guapo

Bob, I think we're in the process of hijacking Alan's thread here, but...

I'm surprised to hear you say that about 80s vs today, at least re sound effects. When I watch 70s/80s TV or films I usually have to suspend my disbelief a bit re sound/folio: often either the timing is off, the sound is unrealistically exaggerated, or all the punches/gunshots sound the same (also, apparently, the laws of physics require that when you get shot you must fling yourself off the building you were on, instead of just falling over).

Where I do think you're spot-on is re soundtrack (music): it is quite an amazing (almost unsettling) experience to watch a film from the 70s and listen to it. As you say, silence! All The Presidents Men is one I always remember as a prime example of this: the silences in conversation are almost excruciating for someone from today's audience, but they force you to think about what's happening (and possibly feeling the same bewilderment as the characters) instead of being forcefed your emotional reactions (minor key? major key?)

AlanRatcliffe

Actually the '70s and '80s films are the worst. The punches are ridiculous, gunshots are all the same ricochet sound (or silenced "phut") and they'll often have completely the wrong spaces. Older than that, and the sounds are often realistic (because they are usually real), but not terribly well recorded.

The modern films I find the sounds are often exaggerated (they often tend to add in a lot more low end than real life and things like conversation are a lot more upfront than they should be), but there's often more attention to detail. There are more modern films where I can actually ignore the spaces and sounds because they are so well done. Ditto the soundtracks - the better composers often create scores that reinforce but do not intrude. In fact, the bark of the best is that I have to make myself concentrate to hear what/how they have done something.

The silence thing is common in the Art House style movies. Can be used to good effect, but often gets overused. Same with dialogue - some directors film/edit with gaps in dialogue specifically to get a more realistic awkwardness between characters.

Sound designers now seem to have a huge array of different guns and tend to use them appropriately (not surprising given the boom of the sampling business). After all, an AK sounds nothing like an M16 or M60... Scariest film I have watched in years was Saving Private Ryan - the sounds were so realistic that they brought out my inner coward and I almost couldn't watch. The designer clearly understood that bullets sound completely different when you're on the receiving end of them and the beach landing scene was utterly terrifying for me.

guidothepimmp

Ticking clocks are a NO in my house.. the sound is too loud and too monotonous.. i quite like the indicator sound.. hits all the right aural spots..
Movie wise i fi nd them too bloody loud. Waaaay to much filling and exageration.

Many recordings i find myself paying more attention to the tambourine they use to fill in the chorus.. than the rest of the recording.. it also highlights how empty some recordings could potentially sound.. so yeh.. all these little things completely sidetrack me from what i could be hearing

domhatch

saving private ryan. hmm. that beach scene is, i believe, truly one of the worst scenes anyone who's ever seen combat can ever watch in a film. horrific. which makes it one of the best pieces of cinema i think i've ever experienced. when i eventually got around to watching it.

but back to the point of this thread. i've always had sensitive ears. i can't stand driving in the rain - windscreen wipers drive me nuts. not only the rhythm, but that squeak that suddenly appears when they're ever so slightly worn. the very next day i'm off and having them replaced. my car is not one of my favourite places to be - the indicators, for instance. the tick-tick-tick is at a horrible frequency. is there any way to turn it off? often wondered. mixfm and 702 both lose signal as i enter the basement at work, and i always forget to switch off before i go underground. screeches and static - i've taken to listening to cd's for the most part.

oddly, one thing that gets me really badly is the sound (not the feel, the sound) of a toothbrush. i've tried all kinds of 'em - manual, electric, you name it - and they're all equally irritating. it's not that they squeak, it's just that constant back and forth scrubbing noise. weird. doesn't happen with shoes and brushes, a vaguely similar sound.

keyboards. typing. which is one reason i like mac keyboards - much softer on the ears.

'white' noise. you know that office background noise - aircon, someone's music playing softly or through their earphones, light chatter, unwrapping of lunch and stuff, i hear all that crap as individual sounds rather than so-called 'white' noise...

and i don't much care for tomatoes, either, while we're at it
dh|

[deleted]

i quite like the indicator sound.. hits all the right aural spots..

I only like indicators if they're in sync with the car flickering in front of me. Otherwise I often just make a little tune to them.

I only really get sensitive hearing issues if I have an ear infection, or went to a really loud club... then the buzzing is a bit bad.

Cicadas can be soothing, or inescapable torture...(that and loud bass in a taxi), depends on how much peace and quiet I want.

Josh-Hayes

Have to agree with most of you guys. The worst thing for me is that I start to listen and get distracted by little things happening in the background, whether it's a song, a movie or real life...

@domhatch: I had to laugh when you mentioned the toothbrush sound. ? Even as I think about it now I'm getting chills down my spine. ?

Hammeron

Onset sound psychosis, worried about you brother Ratcliffe.

AlanRatcliffe

Hammeron wrote Onset sound psychosis, worried about you brother Ratcliffe.

Don' worry 'bout me, li'l sis. I'll be fine... ?

Stoffeltoo

My problem is tinnitus. That irritating high pitched tinny mosquito ringing in the ears. Hearing tests at work say I am OK doc says it's age. No meds available to silence it. I often wake up in the middle of the night with the ring in my ears. Irritating thing to say the least.
So bring your 70's movies and modern movies, ticking clocks and indicators. I'll accept those sounds any day in exchange for no tinny

Bob-Dubery

I do think there are things that annoy us because they're out of touch with what we know to be reality. It's the kind of stuff you see when some band is miming to a backing track on TV but they're not very good at it. You KNOW it's not them making that sound.

It doesn't bother everybody because not everybody knows.

An example: Did anybody see Master and Commander when it was on circuit? There's a scene where they've landed on one of the Galapagos islands and in the background the crew are playing cricket. And the bowling is overarm. Now I happen to know that in the time in which that story is set there was no overarm bowling - it was all underarm because overarm bowling was expressly forbidden by the laws of the game at that time. It's a small detail anyway, not really important to the story and for most people they see something they recognise as a game of cricket and that's OK. It bugged and distracted me.

I don't know about reverb times and such, but Alan does. I would not have the problem that he has with sound in a movie, he probably wouldn't even notice the overarm bowling in Master and Commander. Alan just happens to know a lot about something that surrounds us all the time. If I was talking to somebody about cricket and they were talking about overarm bowling during the Napoleonic wars I'd get distracted by that - but I could argue the point. You can hardly interject and say "your voice needs some EQ" or "too much sibilance".

This is not the whole story though.

Speaking for myself I often find sounds and even music intrusive and annoying - though it varies with context (I can sleep through a loud skop, skiet en donner, but if a mouse farts whilst I'm sleeping I wake up and then lie awake wondering about the roughage in the poor rodent's diet). I often find myself wishing that the world would just SHUT UP! What's wrong with a bit of peace and quiet anyway? But enough of my grumblings: This is another point that David Byrne touches on in what is turning out to be a most interesting book. He says that there are specific contexts in which he likes to have music around him and at other times he finds it distracting and even annoying EG bars and restaurants. But he says he's taught himself to filter all the annoying stuff out.

So I think these annoyances and distractions are real. I also think the world is a noisy place these days and so our senses are getting worked pretty hard. What we need is for David Byrne to write a book on how to throw the switch in our heads so that we can concentrate on specific things in a specific context when the concentration is warranted and turn off the concentration, go into ignore mode, at other times.

shaundtsl

Viccy wrote I only like indicators if they're in sync with the car flickering in front of me. Otherwise I often just make a little tune to them.

+1 That is awesome, I too find comfort when the car in front's indicators are in sync with mine.

I also like to drum with my fingers on the dashboard to the time of my indicators...

One thing that irritates me about movies, not sure if its these days are always has been, but we have young kids so when we watch TV in the evening, we try to keep the volumes quite low. Then the action scenes are so loud, we scramble for the remote to turn the volume down. Then the talking starts and we cant hear a thing they are saying...

domhatch

shaundtsl wrote One thing that irritates me about movies, not sure if its these days are always has been, but we have young kids so when we watch TV in the evening, we try to keep the volumes quite low. Then the action scenes are so loud, we scramble for the remote to turn the volume down. Then the talking starts and we cant hear a thing they are saying...

spot on. i try to record all the movies i want to watch, so i can watch them in my own time. and i record them in hd, where available. i find those recorded in hd suffer from this problem to a far greater degree than those that aren't. anyone able to 'splain this? (and my appalling grammar?)
dh|

AlanRatcliffe

Actually I have no problem focusing on a specific thing and tuning out everything else around it. It's just that I sometimes focus on the wrong thing - the detail rather than the essence.

I also have tinnitus (from early in my drumming career), and I've learned to filter that out most of the time. If you have tinnitis, you can reduce it by dint of diet and, in the worst cases they can help by knocking out the one frequency completely or by using a cancelling frequency from a hearing aid type device. You can sometimes just avoid things that make it worse - for some reason, road noise in the car always makes mine flare up for a while.

shaundtsl wrote
Viccy wrote I only like indicators if they're in sync with the car flickering in front of me. Otherwise I often just make a little tune to them.
I also like to drum with my fingers on the dashboard to the time of my indicators...

Exactly - I often practice drum rudiments as if the indicator were a metronome. But if the timing is swung unrealistically, so that it's more than a stagger than a swing it makes the rhythms, awkward.

GuitarDoge

Nail files, blackboards and wooden ice cream sticks make my bones disintegrate, both the feel and sound(and even the thought). Something terrible about those frequencies.

As for the tick of an indicator, my music in my car is usually louder than that ?

Bob-Dubery

domhatch wrote
shaundtsl wrote One thing that irritates me about movies, not sure if its these days are always has been, but we have young kids so when we watch TV in the evening, we try to keep the volumes quite low. Then the action scenes are so loud, we scramble for the remote to turn the volume down. Then the talking starts and we cant hear a thing they are saying...
spot on. i try to record all the movies i want to watch, so i can watch them in my own time. and i record them in hd, where available. i find those recorded in hd suffer from this problem to a far greater degree than those that aren't. anyone able to 'splain this? (and my appalling grammar?)
dh|

Well, the degree of exaggeration varies across TV stations. I thought CSI (Mrs X-rated is fond of it) was driving me mad, but then I watched a CSI episode on M-Net and it wasn't half as bad. It's not CSI, actually, it's channel 117 - they make everything really loud.

There may be a greater availability of modern films in HD than older films. And it may be that when they produce the HD version they take the opportunity to use surround sound and add some compression - assuming they have a good soundtrack to work from in the first place.

I've got some DVDs at home that use BBC footage from the 80s and the early 90s. The quality (audio and visual) is actually quite shoddy compared to what we get on TV these days, and there's reduced scope for modifying things because the BBC have scrapped the master recordings and have kept only the video tape that they used for the broadcast.

AlanRatcliffe

domhatch wrote
shaundtsl wrote One thing that irritates me about movies, not sure if its these days are always has been, but we have young kids so when we watch TV in the evening, we try to keep the volumes quite low. Then the action scenes are so loud, we scramble for the remote to turn the volume down. Then the talking starts and we cant hear a thing they are saying...
spot on. i try to record all the movies i want to watch, so i can watch them in my own time. and i record them in hd, where available. i find those recorded in hd suffer from this problem to a far greater degree than those that aren't. anyone able to 'splain this? (and my appalling grammar?)

Dynamic range. DTS (up to 96 bit) Audio offers filmmakers a very wide dynamic range (theoretically up to 144dB), so they can use it to it's full extent in cinema for realism. As you've noticed, it often doesn't work in home cinema (because of the ambient noise floor and restrictions on peak volumes).

Check your DVD/media player for a "night" setting - it's a compressor. Turn it on and viola! It'll boost the quieter sounds and limit the loud.

domhatch

night setting. spank you muchly, will get right on it.

shaundtsl

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Check your DVD/media player for a "night" setting - it's a compressor. Turn it on and viola! It'll boost the quieter sounds and limit the loud.

Wow, interesting... I will check on that, thanks!