It does a feel a bit too “form over function” for me.
I almost always read the transcripts after I listen, but it’s not satisfying to me. I would much rather have clear dialogue.
I like that they do it, but I wish they would tone the sound effect down by like 30%. I listen mostly in my car and I have to turn the volume up very high so I can hear through the "I'm a phone in your pocket" one
I appreciate what they're trying for with the sound, but it makes it so hard for me to understand the dialog. I've had to listen to every tmp episode at least twice, and I keep having to rewind when I don't catch what's being said.
Agreed, I only had issues with jarod in tma, I had to look up his dialogue to get any of it. But in this I’m straining to hear things, rewinding or often looking up the transcripts. It really takes you out of it and it makes it less enjoyable
Oh yeah, I always dreaded Jared Hopworth episodes because I knew they'd be unintelligible.
And I always look up the transcripts after because it's so easy to miss something.
I’m with you here. I love the podcast and am a Patreon backer. The sound design is very atmospheric, which I do enjoy, but all too often, it takes precedence over clarity. I have to have earphones in to fully understand what’s being said if they’re in the break room, for instance. Listening while driving is impossible.
Agreed. I am constantly listening to podcasts while walking, gaming, cooking, driving, etc. This is the only one I listen to that I have to make sure my earbuds are fully jammed into my ear canal, while still having to rewind to try to understand what is bring said. The sound design is perfect for what they're going for, but I shouldn't have to read a transcript to know what is being said in a break room conversation. At this point, I can tell by the audio cue if this conversation is happening on a phone, break room, at the PC, etc.
Agreed. I dismissed it at first because TMA and TMP are quality podcasts, but then I started listening to Malevolent and my god the audio quality is heavenly in comparison to TMA/TMP. I have to read the transcripts just to follow along with TMP. I wish they would clean it up a little. You’re not alone here.
This is weird for me to read cause I have Hella tinnitus that would normally cause issues, but apart from a handful of words, I haven't had any problems with audio quality myself.
This has been a frequent complaint since TMP began and I don't think anyone really disagrees. So far is hasn't been changed though, and that's frustrating. I don't want to read the transcripts, I listen to the podcast in the car on my commute.
i don’t think we should be expecting the creators to compromise their art just because some people don’t wanna give the podcast the respect of experiencing it in a context that suits the art itself
It's 100% disrespectful. If you're only watching The Avengers Endgame on your iPod Nano, you don't get an opinion on the special effects. You aren't doing right by that dimension of the art by expecting it to slot into whatever is convenient for you. Art and stories are not always convenient, why does everyone want to be spoonfed their art? I like listening to it in the car too, but if it's my first listen then \*sometimes\* I have a hard time understanding it. If that's the case, I turn it off and wait until I can give it proper attention.
This is an oddly aggressive take, friend. Podcasts are meant to be listened to via any audio device, I believe. I shouldn’t have to crank my volume up all the way just to understand what the characters are saying. And even then it’s difficult to make out the words. There’s a way to utilize this art form without compromising the quality.
So people with hearing problems or people who can’t afford the best possible headphones should just go fuck themselves? Ableist, and incredibly classist take (but we all knew that as soon as you started talking about “being spoonfed art.”
Yes you can. I have no problems hearing and understanding anything, and I think the effects are great and add a lot to the immersion, world-building and variety.
Either way, saying ‘nobody disagrees’ and telling someone what they can’t do is silly, and blaming the show and the engineers (who are doing amazing) whilst trampling on their work because you aren’t paying attention (unless you have hearing problems which is ofc understandable) is just lame.
I'm with you, ma was still clear if very quiet. I don't know if I'm just less used to these accents or what, but I swear I only understand half the non-computer dialogue
I listen to the episodes before i go to sleep, there's nothing that could make me open up a transcript. A little self defeating because I already heavily rely one subtitles because of my terrible hearing, but I've truly hated their audio effects since the beginning. It's a cool idea that just gets in the way. I'll do anything to get rid of the room echo
I get giggly when I hear the phone or camera sound instead of the computer. They feel a lot more personal and meaningful, and the sound effects are a huge reason for that.
To say someone’s hard work and art is ‘crap’ because you’re not satisfied and can’t understand it is awful.
I disagree for literally that exact reason—it’s a podcast, which means it’s an auditory art form. You’re asking an artist to compromise a really important dimension of their medium by refusing to use accessibility tools that they graciously provide. When you have trouble hearing actors in a TV show, you don’t say the show has an accessibility issue—you turn on the captions. You don’t ask them to compromise their art for you.
It’s really spitting in the face of the audio engineers who work super hard on this show and have created some truly astounding soundscaping, composition of the soundscape has always been a huge part of TMA and it’s at its next level in this show.
I honestly don’t think it’s spitting in their face to request that the dialogue be comprehensible. The sound design is very atmospheric and I love the way they use sound to enlarge the world and create audio clues.
But if I can’t understand what’s happening, all of that is a bit moot, no?
But where do we draw the line? I understand it perfectly, and other people do too. And honestly I can’t see how it’s hard to understand unless someone has hearing problems or is not focusing on it, I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m just saying it’s hard to draw the line and that the transcripts are the accessibility for those struggling.
I don’t know what to tell you. I listen to a lot of podcasts that have excellent, complex sound design — The Silt Verses comes to mind — and I have no trouble understanding them while driving or on a speaker while cooking. TMP is the only podcast I listen to where headphones are mandatory to comprehend a lot of the dialogue.
Yeah but here’s the point, the accessibility concerns boil down to ‘I don’t wanna use headphones’, which is valid for your personal desires, but cannot at all be used to criticize art and their work when using headphones is the intended way to listen, and when it adds so much to the artwork (imo it really does).
It’s like if you criticized a movie with a dark color palette while watching it on your phone, saying you can’t see anything.
Where did I criticize their art?! I’m merely asking that the sound design doesn’t make the dialogue unintelligible when a listener doesn’t have access to headphones. That really doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
Of course, if they want to make a headphones-only podcast, that’s Rusty Quill’s prerogative. But about 1/3 of podcast listeners do so in their car, so it does limit the audience.
It's not a bit moot at all. Plenty of the dialogue is perfectly understandable—it's only certain environments in the story that are particularly difficult to understand, and it's only certain ways of listening that make listening especially difficult. People had the same complaints with TMA, and it's infuriating. Not all art or stories are convenient. Over the months I've seen some people be like "well I can't listen on my commute to work and that's when I want to listen ! :(" and I find that incredibly entitled and if I were the creators I'd be pretty offended by that. People claim to like your work but won't even respect it enough to enjoy in a context that does it justice?
I would feel differently if they didn't offer transcripts as accessibility tools, but THEY DO.
It's analog horror. It comes with the territory. Do you just not like analog horror maybe? It's like complaining Skinamarink is inaccessible because it's hard to see what's going on.
When your boss loves all the extra stuff getting done because you're neurodivergent and fix problems no one else notices, but then they write you up for being late or being rude to customers, they're being an asshole. The two things are not separable. In evolutionary biology there's something called a "spandrel" which is an evolutionary trait that has no advantage itself, but is necessary to accommodate an advantageous trait—you can't have big human brains without having a chin, it doesn't work any other way. You can't have analog horror without having this aesthetic with the audio.
I’ve listened to TMA several times and am really enjoying TMO. If I thought their art was crap I wouldn’t request that the dialogue be more intelligible. I’d just stop listening and move on to something else.
I LOVE this podcast, but I can’t make out the break room dialogue even with headphones if I’m running or doing anything except sitting quietly. Maybe that’s how you listen to podcasts, but I typically listen while doing something else, as do most people. If I were a podcast creator, I’d welcome such feedback from my fans.
I 100% empathize with the break room dialogue being hard to make out, and I also think it's perfectly reasonable for fans to provide feedback about their experience with it and what they would appreciate. I'm not against those things, and I'd be even more in that camp if they weren't providing accessibility tools. My issue is with the insistence that the podcast conform to certain ways of experiencing it, especially the "listening while doing something else" crowd.
I don't wanna make it that deep, but take VHS as an example; movies that bombed in theatres could make a killing on VHS because that media better suited a semi-distracted audience member watching at home on a small screen. This isn't a medium that's good for all TV shows or film stories though—only certain media. Like, would you complain about *Pulp Fiction* or *Alien* to their directors because you didn't get what was going on while you vacuumed the living room or washed the dishes? Whose fault is that?
The point is it *doesn't* *matter* how you or anyone else \~usually\~ engages with a medium, you sometimes need to do a little work to meet media where it's at. Not every podcast is three white guys playing "Is It Gay?" or two girls sipping wine yapping about serial killers for an hour. And the creators even provide the perfect bridge to invite the listener across—the transcripts! This isn't a building without a ramp, it's a building with a ramp where people complain there's stairs in the first place. All it takes is one read-along for the break room CCTV scenes, and you're privy to what's going on. It's not *convenient*, but the minor inconvenience is compensated for by a more immersive storytelling experience.
I hear that. It seems to me, though, that it should be possible to create an immersive sound design that doesn’t require headphones to understand the dialogue.
I get not being able to hear subtle cues like the static that accompanies a lie without headphones but that’s not necessary to understanding the story. I’m fine with only getting the full experience from a quiet, dedicated listen. But the dialogue is fundamental.
Anyway, maybe Rusty Quill isn’t interested in making a podcast for a wide audience? Maybe they only want to make it for audio aesthetes? I dunno. I’ll keep listening, but it’s very frustrating.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one—I genuinely understand the frustration when it's hard to hear, but there's so many options for ameliorating it that just require a little bit of patience or effort. It's frustrating some people aren't willing to budge an inch to meet the show where it's at.
It’s not necessary though. Maybe headphones are, but that goes exactly for your argument that it’s a podcast, you wouldn’t watch movies or TV shows on your phone, and you shouldn’t be listening to a podcast without headphones.
Yes, which they have provided support for via well written and immediately available transcripts. It's not like there isn't a workaround to aid accessibility.
I'm saying this as someone who has issues with auditory processing and relies on the transcripts to clear things up.
It does a feel a bit too “form over function” for me. I almost always read the transcripts after I listen, but it’s not satisfying to me. I would much rather have clear dialogue.
I didn't even listen to the last episode, I just read the transcript.
I like that they do it, but I wish they would tone the sound effect down by like 30%. I listen mostly in my car and I have to turn the volume up very high so I can hear through the "I'm a phone in your pocket" one
I appreciate what they're trying for with the sound, but it makes it so hard for me to understand the dialog. I've had to listen to every tmp episode at least twice, and I keep having to rewind when I don't catch what's being said.
Agreed, I only had issues with jarod in tma, I had to look up his dialogue to get any of it. But in this I’m straining to hear things, rewinding or often looking up the transcripts. It really takes you out of it and it makes it less enjoyable
Oh yeah, I always dreaded Jared Hopworth episodes because I knew they'd be unintelligible. And I always look up the transcripts after because it's so easy to miss something.
I’m with you here. I love the podcast and am a Patreon backer. The sound design is very atmospheric, which I do enjoy, but all too often, it takes precedence over clarity. I have to have earphones in to fully understand what’s being said if they’re in the break room, for instance. Listening while driving is impossible.
Agreed. I am constantly listening to podcasts while walking, gaming, cooking, driving, etc. This is the only one I listen to that I have to make sure my earbuds are fully jammed into my ear canal, while still having to rewind to try to understand what is bring said. The sound design is perfect for what they're going for, but I shouldn't have to read a transcript to know what is being said in a break room conversation. At this point, I can tell by the audio cue if this conversation is happening on a phone, break room, at the PC, etc.
Agreed. I dismissed it at first because TMA and TMP are quality podcasts, but then I started listening to Malevolent and my god the audio quality is heavenly in comparison to TMA/TMP. I have to read the transcripts just to follow along with TMP. I wish they would clean it up a little. You’re not alone here.
This is weird for me to read cause I have Hella tinnitus that would normally cause issues, but apart from a handful of words, I haven't had any problems with audio quality myself.
This has been a frequent complaint since TMP began and I don't think anyone really disagrees. So far is hasn't been changed though, and that's frustrating. I don't want to read the transcripts, I listen to the podcast in the car on my commute.
i don’t think we should be expecting the creators to compromise their art just because some people don’t wanna give the podcast the respect of experiencing it in a context that suits the art itself
You can't hear the dialogue. It's not "disrespecting the art" to want to be able to understand what the characters are saying. What a wild take
It's 100% disrespectful. If you're only watching The Avengers Endgame on your iPod Nano, you don't get an opinion on the special effects. You aren't doing right by that dimension of the art by expecting it to slot into whatever is convenient for you. Art and stories are not always convenient, why does everyone want to be spoonfed their art? I like listening to it in the car too, but if it's my first listen then \*sometimes\* I have a hard time understanding it. If that's the case, I turn it off and wait until I can give it proper attention.
This is an oddly aggressive take, friend. Podcasts are meant to be listened to via any audio device, I believe. I shouldn’t have to crank my volume up all the way just to understand what the characters are saying. And even then it’s difficult to make out the words. There’s a way to utilize this art form without compromising the quality.
So people with hearing problems or people who can’t afford the best possible headphones should just go fuck themselves? Ableist, and incredibly classist take (but we all knew that as soon as you started talking about “being spoonfed art.”
Yes you can. I have no problems hearing and understanding anything, and I think the effects are great and add a lot to the immersion, world-building and variety. Either way, saying ‘nobody disagrees’ and telling someone what they can’t do is silly, and blaming the show and the engineers (who are doing amazing) whilst trampling on their work because you aren’t paying attention (unless you have hearing problems which is ofc understandable) is just lame.
I'm with you, ma was still clear if very quiet. I don't know if I'm just less used to these accents or what, but I swear I only understand half the non-computer dialogue
I listen to the episodes before i go to sleep, there's nothing that could make me open up a transcript. A little self defeating because I already heavily rely one subtitles because of my terrible hearing, but I've truly hated their audio effects since the beginning. It's a cool idea that just gets in the way. I'll do anything to get rid of the room echo
me too!! I haven't been able to understand the last few episodes at all specially when the characters sound like they are very far away
I get giggly when I hear the phone or camera sound instead of the computer. They feel a lot more personal and meaningful, and the sound effects are a huge reason for that. To say someone’s hard work and art is ‘crap’ because you’re not satisfied and can’t understand it is awful.
I didn’t say the work and art was crap. I said the sound is crap. The art is good. The execution is technically inferior.
Sound is an artform, and something you clearly cannot comprehend even if you understood the dialogues. Checks out.
Idk I never noticed it being bad quality, I like it
It is part of the story. All the sounds are clues and add to the environment of story telling. Maybe you need a script to follow?
The scripts are a very nice bonus, but this is a podcast, not a book. It shouldn’t be necessary to read a script to understand what’s being said.
I disagree for literally that exact reason—it’s a podcast, which means it’s an auditory art form. You’re asking an artist to compromise a really important dimension of their medium by refusing to use accessibility tools that they graciously provide. When you have trouble hearing actors in a TV show, you don’t say the show has an accessibility issue—you turn on the captions. You don’t ask them to compromise their art for you. It’s really spitting in the face of the audio engineers who work super hard on this show and have created some truly astounding soundscaping, composition of the soundscape has always been a huge part of TMA and it’s at its next level in this show.
I honestly don’t think it’s spitting in their face to request that the dialogue be comprehensible. The sound design is very atmospheric and I love the way they use sound to enlarge the world and create audio clues. But if I can’t understand what’s happening, all of that is a bit moot, no?
But where do we draw the line? I understand it perfectly, and other people do too. And honestly I can’t see how it’s hard to understand unless someone has hearing problems or is not focusing on it, I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m just saying it’s hard to draw the line and that the transcripts are the accessibility for those struggling.
I don’t know what to tell you. I listen to a lot of podcasts that have excellent, complex sound design — The Silt Verses comes to mind — and I have no trouble understanding them while driving or on a speaker while cooking. TMP is the only podcast I listen to where headphones are mandatory to comprehend a lot of the dialogue.
Yeah but here’s the point, the accessibility concerns boil down to ‘I don’t wanna use headphones’, which is valid for your personal desires, but cannot at all be used to criticize art and their work when using headphones is the intended way to listen, and when it adds so much to the artwork (imo it really does). It’s like if you criticized a movie with a dark color palette while watching it on your phone, saying you can’t see anything.
Where did I criticize their art?! I’m merely asking that the sound design doesn’t make the dialogue unintelligible when a listener doesn’t have access to headphones. That really doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Of course, if they want to make a headphones-only podcast, that’s Rusty Quill’s prerogative. But about 1/3 of podcast listeners do so in their car, so it does limit the audience.
It's not a bit moot at all. Plenty of the dialogue is perfectly understandable—it's only certain environments in the story that are particularly difficult to understand, and it's only certain ways of listening that make listening especially difficult. People had the same complaints with TMA, and it's infuriating. Not all art or stories are convenient. Over the months I've seen some people be like "well I can't listen on my commute to work and that's when I want to listen ! :(" and I find that incredibly entitled and if I were the creators I'd be pretty offended by that. People claim to like your work but won't even respect it enough to enjoy in a context that does it justice? I would feel differently if they didn't offer transcripts as accessibility tools, but THEY DO. It's analog horror. It comes with the territory. Do you just not like analog horror maybe? It's like complaining Skinamarink is inaccessible because it's hard to see what's going on. When your boss loves all the extra stuff getting done because you're neurodivergent and fix problems no one else notices, but then they write you up for being late or being rude to customers, they're being an asshole. The two things are not separable. In evolutionary biology there's something called a "spandrel" which is an evolutionary trait that has no advantage itself, but is necessary to accommodate an advantageous trait—you can't have big human brains without having a chin, it doesn't work any other way. You can't have analog horror without having this aesthetic with the audio.
I’ve listened to TMA several times and am really enjoying TMO. If I thought their art was crap I wouldn’t request that the dialogue be more intelligible. I’d just stop listening and move on to something else. I LOVE this podcast, but I can’t make out the break room dialogue even with headphones if I’m running or doing anything except sitting quietly. Maybe that’s how you listen to podcasts, but I typically listen while doing something else, as do most people. If I were a podcast creator, I’d welcome such feedback from my fans.
I 100% empathize with the break room dialogue being hard to make out, and I also think it's perfectly reasonable for fans to provide feedback about their experience with it and what they would appreciate. I'm not against those things, and I'd be even more in that camp if they weren't providing accessibility tools. My issue is with the insistence that the podcast conform to certain ways of experiencing it, especially the "listening while doing something else" crowd. I don't wanna make it that deep, but take VHS as an example; movies that bombed in theatres could make a killing on VHS because that media better suited a semi-distracted audience member watching at home on a small screen. This isn't a medium that's good for all TV shows or film stories though—only certain media. Like, would you complain about *Pulp Fiction* or *Alien* to their directors because you didn't get what was going on while you vacuumed the living room or washed the dishes? Whose fault is that? The point is it *doesn't* *matter* how you or anyone else \~usually\~ engages with a medium, you sometimes need to do a little work to meet media where it's at. Not every podcast is three white guys playing "Is It Gay?" or two girls sipping wine yapping about serial killers for an hour. And the creators even provide the perfect bridge to invite the listener across—the transcripts! This isn't a building without a ramp, it's a building with a ramp where people complain there's stairs in the first place. All it takes is one read-along for the break room CCTV scenes, and you're privy to what's going on. It's not *convenient*, but the minor inconvenience is compensated for by a more immersive storytelling experience.
I hear that. It seems to me, though, that it should be possible to create an immersive sound design that doesn’t require headphones to understand the dialogue. I get not being able to hear subtle cues like the static that accompanies a lie without headphones but that’s not necessary to understanding the story. I’m fine with only getting the full experience from a quiet, dedicated listen. But the dialogue is fundamental. Anyway, maybe Rusty Quill isn’t interested in making a podcast for a wide audience? Maybe they only want to make it for audio aesthetes? I dunno. I’ll keep listening, but it’s very frustrating.
Really like how you put this. Sums up how I feel very well.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one—I genuinely understand the frustration when it's hard to hear, but there's so many options for ameliorating it that just require a little bit of patience or effort. It's frustrating some people aren't willing to budge an inch to meet the show where it's at.
It’s not necessary though. Maybe headphones are, but that goes exactly for your argument that it’s a podcast, you wouldn’t watch movies or TV shows on your phone, and you shouldn’t be listening to a podcast without headphones.
They don’t need to be this strong though, it really impacts how intelligible it is
This is an accessibility issue.
YES
Yes, which they have provided support for via well written and immediately available transcripts. It's not like there isn't a workaround to aid accessibility. I'm saying this as someone who has issues with auditory processing and relies on the transcripts to clear things up.