Another pet peeve

[Garrobo]

Sometimes I will be watching a program on TV and will start noticing the funny sounds and music that is used for a background. It gets irritating because it is too loud or doesn't match up with the theme of the program and takes away from the story line. Makes a person wonder if the producers of these irritants put it there because they didn't think the program would stand on it's own and that they had to embellish it to make it more interesting. This stuff started a few years ago and seems to have created a copy-cat effect with one program produced trying to stay with the pack and trying to out-do the last. Or am I just a paranoid old man, easily irritated, or just hearing things?

[cummings66]

To be honest I think you're hearing things the rest of us hear, but you hear it differently due to perhaps a slight hearing loss. IE the high pitches in males typically goes away followed slowly by decreasing frequencies, so maybe what you hear we hear too but with added content. Without it, maybe it's annoying?

[Garrobo]

cummins66-----You didn't get the message. I'm talking about all the unnecesary sounds that are added to the sound track seemingly to emphasize what's going on in the film. Like 'whooshes' and 'crash' noises and 'unnecessary and unnecessarily' loud music while the action is going on. I'd rather not have to listen to all this crap and just hear what the commentator has to say about the story. Like, recently, I was watching an underwater-themed program which had sharks going by, sounding like a tug boat with twin Perkins diesels and an octopus sounding like a jet engine. I have yet to experience this in the natural world.

[EuphoriaII]

Everyone knows sharks don't sound like tugboats. More like Cigarette boat.

[georoc01]

I wonder who mixes some of these soundtracks sometimes. What killed me was when I first installed surround sound and the laugh tracks would come blasting out of the rear speakers.

[DollFin]

I agree!!! I love watching nature shows but sometimes they go way overboard adding sound effects! It's really distracting and, in my opinion, "dumbs down" what I am watching.

[aggie99]

This could be a problem with your TV setup, some TV's now have a virtual surround sound and with this setting on it can make the background sounds overpower the audio by the way it processes it. The other iproblem might be If you are using a receiver and multiple speaker setup. If you have a center speaker than it should handle the voice tracks. If not make sure the surround settings are set so that it diverts the voice track to the left and right speaker. It could be the TV show but this might help as well.

[scubasamurai]

i guess the union of soundtechs require that they be used so, they add extra noises or make the soft noises more "noticable" on tv since most of us like the lower volumes and might miss those sounds.

[Osprey]

I really hate that the soundtracks in shows are sometimes louder than the cast speaking their lines!!

[Shellback]

Originally Posted by Garrobo

Sometimes I will be watching a program on TV and will start noticing the funny sounds and music that is used for a background. It gets irritating because it is too loud or doesn't match up with the theme of the program and takes away from the story line. Makes a person wonder if the producers of these irritants put it there because they didn't think the program would stand on it's own and that they had to embellish it to make it more interesting. This stuff started a few years ago and seems to have created a copy-cat effect with one program produced trying to stay with the pack and trying to out-do the last. Or am I just a paranoid old man, easily irritated, or just hearing things?

Garrobo, I tend to agree with you in certain respects to the soundtrack on a lot of shows, some can be downright irritating. A while back I was reading a book and the wife had some show on about people going out to buy houses, House Hunting or something along those lines. The music that accompanied the show was extremely annoying and I had to ask her to turn it down or off altogether.