Have you noticed that most sound tracks in movie theaters are too loud and hurt your ears?

Yes, I have noticed the audio can often be far too loud in movie theaters. As a teenager I damaged my hearing from listening to music at ridiculously high volume levels, so I’ve never had the ‘full’ theater experience though.

Yes, I have noticed that movies are terribly loud. I can’t stand it. Even my teenage children complained about it at one movie we went to. I haven’t complained about it to the theater yet though. I, too, take something to put in my ears.

Perhaps we all should tell the manager. Otherwise, how will change occur? I have done some informal surveys about the two theaters in my neighborhood. My friends, who are all over 50, and should have some hearing loss, also find it close to unbearable.

Many years ago I tried to watch a movie Beau Geste. It was too loud with my fingers in my ears so I left. I had to wait for my friends in the lobby and it eas loud out there. Is it because people insist on chatting to each other, or answering their phones?

I don’t see anyone on his phone in our little movie theater; nor do people seem to chat once the film starts. I too walked out of an indie documentary last Sunday (Exit Through the Gift Shop). I noticed that one other woman was doing the same.

Well, I agree to somewhat louder than speech but surely someone in charge would hear it and pass it? Why can’t the theatres turn the sound up and down?

This has been going on for decades at the movie theaters I’ve been going to. I think they turn it up loud so that people can hear it over the sounds of a raucous crowd. It’s not as bad if you sit further back. Sometimes my wife brings earplugs. Like at rock concerts.

It does no good to complain at the theater, I think. Just best to stay home and watch the movie in your home theater. If enough people walk, they might decide to change things.

So frigging loud that bring earplugs with me! There are several reasons for it, but one of the biggest is to block the sound bleeding through the walls from other movies in multiplexes.

This has encouraged me to stop being so squeamish about complaining.

I find that the sound systems in just about every public setting are too loud: movies, Starbuck’s, restaurants, elevators, hotel lobbies, doctors’ offices. Bars, my God! It’s clear that the art of conversation is presumed to be dead—and if it isn’t already, they’ll kill it for sure. What’s more, we have kids who’ve been pounding music into their ears with various devices for so long, from killer car stereos to 13-foot speakers at parties, that they probably don’t hear anything that isn’t amped up.

This has been a problem for a long time. I can tell you this: most musicians on stage wear ear plugs when the volume is cranked up, even though the speaker are pointed at you guys. And many musicians sustain hearing damage anyway.

The reason is simple—volume creates excitement. It also gets your attention. When music is soft people talk over it.

Wow. The whole reason I go to the theater or concerts or things like that is so I can get that feeling of the sound going through me. Otherwise, I’d stay home with DVDs and mp3s.

Nope. I can’t remember any movie being too loud. You know what they say about people who find things too loud?

I know. It’s a great feeling. But like drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, and bar food, there’s a price to pay for that pleasure. But what are we saving our hearing for, the grave? I say listen to a volume that suits you. Just know that those ear cilia don’t like it, and don’t be surprised when you need a hearing aid.

Yes. I hate it. I think we should complain to someone or something and get some sort of legal limit on decibels in a movie theatre. I wear ear plugs most of the time. It is not just how high the movie theatre is playing the sound track, but also how it is recorded, with background music and sound effects being much much louder than the sound of the movie in general. I hate it.

@psychocandy What do they say about people who find things too loud?

@jazzticity I know what you mean about people using volume to alter their state of consciousness.

It does seem like there is a generational divide on this, although when I was a few decades younger, most of my friends liked music much much louder than I did. They also liked cigarettes, which made me ill.

@wundayatta I am guessing @psychocandy thinks we are old.

I thought you knew that the movie theatres and the hearing aid people had a scheme going to make people deaf. This way, both make more money than the admission price of a movie.

The same applies to television commericals. I keep my remote handy, just to mute those commericals that are ruining the speakers in my television set and my ears.

I can just see a future generation of humans, all wearing hearing aids or using mute horns to hear.

Just an FYI, it’s not the music tracks. Usually there’s 1 guy who works for the company and travels throughout the region calibrating the sound for the various theaters… usually to his own personal liking. When he’s spending a day in a 20 theater complex, by the 5th or 6th theater he’s pretty much deaf (he’s usually deaf anyway) so things get louder by the time he gets to the bigger (size-wise) of the theaters in the complex. It used to be they had to use a decibel meter because the companies had strict audio guidelines… but now they are just trying to get asses in the seats because everyone just rents/pirates. Theaters don’t take pride anymore in their craft. Yes, the manager and/or projectionist doesn’t usually have control over anything other than the main volume on the amps, and the way 5.1 and 7.1 surround is mixed (usually for realism when it comes to sound for motion picture), if they turn that knob down, you won’t hear the dialogue at all. Unfortunately I don’t see this changing for the better anytime soon. It was a major problem almost 20 years ago when I worked in a theater, and it’s still a problem today. Great discussion here on the matter!

@wundayatta The saying goes, “If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

@MacBean I been too old all my life! :-|

Why too loud and too old? I have less acute hearing now; shouldn’t I be pleased to have the volume UP?

The question is: What’s to be done? I always say something to the theater manager and even manage to do it courteously. But I may be a lone voice whispering in the wilderness.

I have noticed that and since complaints seem to fall of deaf ears (pun intended!), my son and I went in together and bought a big screen TV, a surround sound home theatre stereo system, and a netflix account. There are some films that I would like to see on the big screen of a theatre, but the last few times I was in a theatre, it was dirty, there were people talking excessively, and I simply did not enjoy the experience. At home, we can eat and drink whatever we want, pause, replay, go to the bathroom, have dinner, talk, or just enjoy the movie. I also know there won’t be any cooties on the headrest of the chair I’m sitting in.

Yes! It is so loud it hurts my ears – so I take the cigarette filters (new!) and roll them into my ear as ear plugs. When THX says “The audience is listening…” – I feel like yelling “The audience is DEAF!”

@gailcalled You know, you’ve reminded me of the volume tolerance (or lack thereof) in my house. Sometimes when my parents are watching Judge Judy or Doctor Phil or whatever true crime thing they can find, they have the volume up so loud that I can’t concentrate to read. So I’ll jokingly shout “CAN YOU HEAR THAT!?” and most of the time the answer is “Not real good.” (My parents are not big on grammar.) But when I watch a movie at the same volume, they’ll say “Turn that down! I can barely hear myself think!”

I think you old folks just like giving the young’ns a hard time. ;)

@vs The dirty (meaning trash left behind and sticky floors) is starting to really bother me. I blame the patrons more than the theatres, even though in the end it is up to the business establishment to keep it clean. People are disgusting. They leave their trash behind, not because maybe they forgot it was on th floor, but because they think it their job to clean up the trash. Disgusting. Disgusting dirty, and disgusting behavior.

I used to work at a movie theater, sometimes the knobs controlling the speakers get bumped while we work in the booth upstairs. You can’t really hear any difference with all the machines going around you and the fact that you’re in a closed space away from the main room. Just tell the manager and they’ll adjust it.

Then again, they are set somewhat loud by default because they need to make sure as many people will be able to hear the movie as possible. But like I said, over time the knobs can move. They appreciate being told rather than someone being annoyed for two hours and choosing not to come back.

In my experience the complaints did not fall on deaf ears, as soon as the customer was back in the theater we would radio up to the booth manager who would run over to that theater and adjust the volume. Sometimes, it would take another complaint to get it right because they don’t want to turn it too far down but EVERY time we spoke to a reasonable customer the issue was dealt with. Employees actually got in a fair amount of trouble for not relaying the message.

No. I have pretty sensitive ears, but have yet to have my ears hurt by a theater’s sound system.

I have noticed that many theaters have crappy sound though, often with a lack of bass. Then again, I am spoiled in that I grew up with a local theater that was designed before film was invented so that theater has great acoustics and they didn’t skimp on the sound system so it reproduces all frequencies from rumbling to dog whistles. The average theater seems to pe too heavy in the mid-range (around the same frequency as the human voice) and have quite a bit of crackling and popping though.

As for hearing loss, I listen to LOUD music, work in a machine shop, spent a few years on an aircraft carrier (if you thing jets are loud flying overhead, try standing next to a few of them!) and have done other unkind things to my ears. According to the hearing tests my current employer requires every year, my ears are almost as good as they were twenty years ago. (I say “almost” as I have lost a little sensitivity at frequencies that most people over the age of 15 can’t hear anyways)

“You know what they say about people who find things too loud?”

Yes, they say that these people aren’t so daft as to risk hearing loss as the price to be paid for appearing young and hip.

@psychocandy – dang, looks like you touched a nerve!

@meiosis I beg to differ. If you were correct then I would be nearly deaf as opposed to losing 5 decibels worth of sensitivity at 15kHz and otherwise have the same ears I did when I was a kid.

@jerv: Don’t press your luck. In general, loud noise eventually damages the normal ear.

@gailcalled I’m not quitting my day job, so I guess I have no choice except to press my luck.

Yeah. Cranky old people can be so touchy.

Nice chart here:
http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html
No doubt about it, a lot of loud noises that we’re exposed to on a regular basis damage our hearing. As far as toughing it out to appear young and hip, I don’t think rushing your body ahead toward old age and decrepitude is going to achieve the desired result. “No pain no gain” refers to exercise, not the willful destruction of the inner ear. How dumb can you be?

@jazzticity Don’t get me wrong. I am a supporter of hearing protection in places that require it, like my workplace that is usually at/above the OSHA limits. However, it is rare to see a sound system cranked louder than a Haas HL-2, let alone half a dozen such machines plus a steel foundry.
One thing I’ve noticed is that most people who complain about volume often only do so when listening to stuff they don’t want to hear; they have no problems blasting oldies or country music louder than I play my music, and they often see no problems with a big-block V-8 running straight pipes either.

@jerv I totally agree. Many people will complain about the volume of music just to indicate that they don’t like it. I do think, however, that we could all do a better job of protecting our hearing. I suppose we’ve gotten off topic, and I couldn’t say whether movie theaters play music too loud or not. But they shouldn’t. And we shouldn’t expose ourselves to aural environments that we know are harmful. I go so far as to cover my ears when an emergency vehicle with a siren passes. I’d rather look dumb now then have a hearing aid sticking out of my ear when I’m older.

I think it is louder than a rock concert.

I gave up going to movies entirely as the last one I went to was ridiculous as the audio levels literally drove me out of the theater. I’m beginning to find the same problem with newer movies where an actor will whisper at a level so low, I can barely hear it. An instant later the audio level goes through the roof with something crashing into the building or some other source. I also find myself losing interest with movies that go off the charts with special affects or computer graphics. I found Spider Man to be a movie I could not watch anymore than a few minutes of as it made me realize how ridiculous they’ve taken things to. I can allow for more of it in movies like Avatar although it’s not a movie I’d recommend seeing as I’m one who prefers normal audio, no special affects and I have no love of computer graphics.

Has anyone noticed how audio levels greatly increase in many tv advertisements ? I’m not sure if they deliberately set the audio levels low during the main program so the ads sound higher or whether the audio levels in advertisements have been set at a much higher level but either way it really is beginning to automate the mute button on my remote.