Naw, you can hear them loud and clear. Loud is a characteristic of IMAX these days.

At least when David Lynch had the dialogue being drowned out in Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me he was nice enough to give us subtitles.

Somehow I'm thinking the 4 words/1 line covered up by sound effects in this weren't substantial considering a majority of what TARS said was sort of comic relief.

Saw it early last week in IMAX and it was very loud, and I strained to hear some dialogue, though I don't think I missed any. I went again a couple days ago, and warned the friend I was going with about how loud it was going to be. We both agreed afterward that the sound was just right. So I'm guessing that the theater I saw it at had turned the sound down a decent amount in the interim, probably in response to complaints.

Interesting. I was thinking of going again at a different theater but now I wonder if I should try the IMAX again to see if they adjusted the sound levels.

I saw it at IMax on Navy Pier here on Chicago. It was damn loud. I'm sure it was supposed to be that way, and I knew going into it that the music would probably overpower dialog and I was right. It annoys the crap out of me because it's only been getting worse with each film Nolan creates. At several points the music really reminded me of 2001 and took me right out of the moment, especially when I thought "2001 is so much better". Yes, I know, two different films that share a genre, but if you're going to pay "homage", get ready for people to say the other film was/is better.

That bothered me at the beginning, when they first get in space and it's like redux classical music but really loud. It reminded me of 2001 but in a bad way.

Went away pretty quick after that though.

This is one of my favorite films of the year, but I fucking hated the sound mix. Saw it in IMAX, back row, middle seat.

I don't mind being overwhelmed by music or effects, but you shouldn't have to strain to hear dialogue EVERY TIME there's music to accompany it. This is not comparable to Altman's overlapping dialogue at all. When Altman had two or more conversations happening at once, the audience knows that it's not necessary to understand every word. He's creating the atmosphere of a social gathering. There were also, usually, multiple characters onscreen.

But when the camera is looking at ONE character, and they're the only person speaking, there's an expectation that we will be able to hear what's being said. Especially when it's a dying character who's giving crucial information to another character.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014...istopher-nolan
If you want to obscure information from the audience, while revealing it to a character, there are other ways to do that beside drowning out dialogue with music.

And how do the composer and sound designers feel about audiences ignoring and/or being annoyed by their work because we're straining to hear the dialogue?

Main characters giving plot points? Booming effects? Awesome score? They'll only be better if we play them all at once!

I just watched the blu-ray. I have a pretty good/loud 5.1 sound set up. Seems to be mixed the same as in the theaters. I can handle really loud in the theaters, but not on the same level in my home, but you need it loud to hear the dialog.

I had to keep adjusting the volume, as I had to crank it up to hear the dialog, but the volume setting to properly hear the dialog was far too loud for when the effects and music kick in. I eventually had to turn on the subtitles to understand what was being said. And it's not my hearing, as everything else was just far too loud in the mix. Some other discs are like this, but this was the most egregious of these.

If your receiver has Dolby Volume, try using that. I did with this movie (actually, I've been using it for every movie lately) and had zero problems with the dialogue except for one line that Michael Caine mumbled and whispered.

Turning up just the center channel also tends to help.

Never understood why Nolan would do this with the mix since he loves to have the characters tell what they are doing, about to do and have just done. How is the audience supposed to know now?

My center channel is already up, and my receiver does have Dolby volume, which I think it's on by default.

Again, most discs are fine, Interstellar and a few others are only a small percent of discs I've had this issue with.

Check to be sure. Dolby Volume doesn't normally turn on by default. Now if you have Audyssey MultEQ XT32 and have run the calibration program, it usually activates by default a software called Dynamic EQ. This is similar to Dolby Volume but far more aggressive and really cranks up the surrounds. If a movie already has strong surround activity (like Interstellar) it does more harm than good. Dolby Volume is far more restrained and effective in that regard.

I've only had Interstellar be an issue to me. I haven't seen the BD yet to see wtf TARS was saying when it was getting loud as fuck.

I have an older Yamaha receiver that's super powerful, but it has a TON of different settings. I've settled on the one that seems best for what I like, so I'm not even sure how to turn on the Dolby Volume if I could. Like I said, the low volume dialog is only an issue with less than 10% of all my blu-rays. I've played around with all my settings, and nothing seems to address that issue with those particular discs, so it has to be in the mix, right?

Pretty much.

What films btw?

Just some of the bigger action movies, forget specifically. Never had a problem with any video games or TV show blu-rays, even the ones with loud action and music.

Yes, it's definitely the mix. I too have had the same issue with only a few movies and found that Dynamic EQ, though great for the majority of my movies, made the few problem movies even worse. And that's even when I paired Dynamic EQ with Dynamic Volume (another Audyssey software). So I did some testing with an SPL meter and kept switching the different enhancements on and off and then did the same when I recalled that my receiver also has Dolby Volume (with its own separate Modeler and Leveler settings) and found that Dolby Volume was more restrained and overall more pleasing to the ear (although I wish I could fine tune it a bit more as I think the perfect setting lies somewhere between where Dolby and Audyssey fiddle with the audio). The main problem being this aggressive surround and equalization boosting applied by Audyssey Dynamic EQ.

What model is your Yamaha?

It's an RX-V557

Yeah, it seems that Dolby Volume is not a feature in your receiver. Sorry.