We all know the modern complaint: movie sound sucks now unless you have a high-end sound system. Frantically turning down the volume after turning it up to hear the dialogue only to need to turn it up again can be frustrating. Now, this doesn’t solve the underlying problem, but why not have a “Volume A” and “Volume B” you can easily set and toggle between with the simple press of a button?
Here is my preferred solution that will never happen:
Divide all media audio into separate tracks for dialogue, music, sfx, etc., and let the users control the volume of each separately. To avoid having an easily ripped pure music track, perhaps premix the other tracks in at 10% or so (in a logarithmic scale) and make that the minimum volume of any track other than music.
Many shows broadcast in surround sound. This includes a center channel where most voices are. Unfortunately if you don’t have a system to support this, audio is “down mixed” to stereo, and the center channel gets merged into left and right. When this merge happens, you lose definition between the streams.
It would be nice if you could boost the center channel, like you would in a home theater, but before the down mix occurs.
My Peloton can do this, how come my TV can’t? This technology exists and would not be that difficult to implement for digital media.
You underestimate big tech. Judging by the headache inducing track record of AV technology, this would end up as yet another garbled mess of eleventeen different competing codecs with bad implementations, inconsistent specifications, misleading marketing, horrible licensing, and predatory DRM.