this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2025
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Up until the release of the iPod. That was the start of the era where record producers would compete to see who could be the loudest song on your MP3 player. Pushing compression to the extreme, squashing all dynamics down to a giant wall of sound that smacks you so hard in the face you get a headache from listening too long. (Look up "Loudness War")
Things have improved since but it's still not the same as back in the day, when we had to keep tunes dynamic in order to prevent the needle from flying off the record!
I meant in film. Being able to hear what the fuck people are saying.
Definitely after THX was created and established standards for sound quality. Prior to that, most theaters had a single, tinny, mono speaker delivering all the audio. THX made multichannel audio + subwoofer the norm.
So sometime between then and the release of the DVD, which introduced multi-channel audio for the masses. Before then, most people had VHS players, which only supported up to 4 channel matrixed audio though a stereo RCA output. But stereo and surround on VHS was a later development, with early VHS tapes being stereo only. (There was also LaserDisc of course, which could support true 5.1 Dolby Digital audio, but as we all know it never caught on outside of the enthusiast and educational markets.)
That said, stereo on VHS was a later thing, so if we're going to pinpoint the peak of audio mixing, I'm going to say it was the late 90s, when movies were mixed for stereo on VHS. Of course I'm only talking about the quality of the mix, and not other aspects of sound quality, which VHS is obviously inferior to digital in that aspect. Unless we're talking about VHS Hi-Fi, which is a whole other debate I won't get into here for brevity's sake (cause this comment is already way too long as-is).
Regardless, you can still have a good movie-watching experience in the home, but you're going to have to invest some money, simply because movies are mixed for surround sound, and not the average stereo TV speakers. While I'd recommend a minimum 5.1.4 Dolby Atmos setup for the best possible mix, you can get away with as little as a 3.0 setup. You'll miss out on finer details in the mix, but the important part is having a dedicated center channel speaker so that you can independently adjust its volume and actually understand what people are saying.
Any decent home theater receiver or sound bar will also have a "dialog booster" adjustment, and/or an audio compression function to boost quiet scenes and make loud scenes quieter. It's usually called "night mode", "volume leveler", or something like that. (Sometimes there's multiple settings).
Edit: Spelling, punctuation; added bit about LaserDisc.
I live in a tiny apartment and usually watch on headphones. I don't find sound to be a huge part to movies, I just hate needing subtitles in my first language to understand what people are saying. I will not spend extra money for hardware to view something (ripped from) a fucking 720p-capped Netflix stream because the people who make them don't want to make a good product.
Well if you're wearing headphones then the solution is simple. Install Equalizer APO and then a dialog booster VST plug in (there are many, don't make me do the googling). Alternatively you could just boost the frequencies you struggle to hear the most to solve the issue.
So I should fo the mixing for every film?
I cannot believe these people want me to pay for media.
TBF the original question was when audio mixing peaked—which I answered—both film and music.
There's a significant amount of detail lost in using gates and expanders in film. Drives me up the fucking wall that we still use hardware and software that's not very good. I'd much rather hear some noise than transients and tail air. I stg.
Probably peaked on the tail of everything being overdubbed, but really high budget and high quality. (So probably late 90s and early 2000s?)
Don't worry though, it'll get better. The tools and techniques people use are always slowly getting better, and it's a very passionate group.
Ironically I have dynamic compression permanently cranked up to the maximum in VLC to avoid ‘whispers and explosions’.