Hot take: "The Wire" is overrated because the audio mix is terrible

I finally binged The Wire last month after everyone told me it was the best show ever, but I spent half the time adjusting the volume because action scenes blasted my ears while dialogue was whisper quiet. My roommate walked in during a key scene and asked why I kept hitting the volume button every 30 seconds. Has anyone else struggled with shows that have bad audio mixing ruining the whole experience?

3 comments

3 Comments

parker_thomas27d ago

Wait did you watch it with the 5.1 mix by accident? I had the same issue until I switched my sound settings to stereo and it fixed like 90% of the problem lol. Also turning on the subtitles helped me catch a lot of the street slang I was missing anyway. Honestly once I got past the audio thing the show really clicked for me, so maybe try messing with your system settings before giving up on it.

alexw7516d ago

Subtitles are the real MVP here, no debate.

holly_sanchez7527d ago

Actually I think the 5.1 mix thing is a bit overblown. Most streaming services default to 5.1 now if your system supports it, and the show was mixed for that format from the start. The real issue is that Netflix's audio compression is just terrible across the board. Switching to stereo helps because it strips out all the fancy processing, but you're also losing the sound design the creators intended. Turning on subtitles is the real pro tip here, thats the one thing I totally agree with.