Loud movie mixes get turned down, dragging dialogue below intelligibility

Evidence

This is not news to the motion picture industry. Allen (2006) mentions examples of dialog intelligibility problems traceable to both the director of the film and the operators of the theaters. If film soundtracks are too loud, they get turned down, and dialogue levels drop along with those of the special effects. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1915

Categorization

• XREF: Illustrates a feedback loop in the signal chain: playback attenuation as a causal mechanism reducing intelligibility, relevant to the reader’s interest in real-world psychoacoustic application.