Volume was not an issue. Sync was.
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Riffs were a bit on the loud side. Not terribly so, but I had to turn the movie up pretty loud to hear it (not great hearing here) and that made the riffs a little louder than ideal.
I watched it on Saturday, on Roku.
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We watched on Saturday through the Google TV Chromecast app on a home theater system with professionally balanced speakers. The movie volume was too soft while the riffs were too loud. We managed to find a sweet spot where the riffs werenât quite as deafening, but there was a definite difference.
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I think there are times when the Moon 1 segments, while wearing my headphones, are either loud or quiet. But when I watch them on my iPad without any headphones, they sound pretty balanced.
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Thanks for this, Lesley! I appreciate the crewâs dedication to making Season 13 the best it can be.
Movie/riff balance sounded fine to me until Santoâs disappearance (a.k.a. the scenes in the past involving Draculalucard that Santo and Perico watch on the TV monitor).
In those scenes, the riffs overpowered the dialog. Most notable to me was the âit looks like a batâ scene that was in the original Turkey Day Teaser Countdown spot.
I watched the original livestream on the MST3K Google/Android TV app via Nvidia Shield and watched the episode again today on-demand via the MST3K Android app (via Pixel 5).
The volume seemed to be all right after that, but it stood out to me during that sequence (it ends just before the intermission).
The on-demand volume might not have been as noticeable since I was listening through phone speakers as opposed to headphones or my 5.1 speaker setup (which I watched the livestream on).
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I voted I donât know, though in truth, it was a little of both.
I watched on the Gizmoplex on my laptop, on the premiere I had the laptop plugged into my TV, on rewatches I put on headphone and watched on the laptop only.
The movie on the Livestream was âslightly, ever so slightlyâ lower. But not to the degree where I had to raise then lower the volume. It was not difficult to hear the movie⌠if you were around for the early days of Rifftrax, where getting volumes to match, even with the original Rifftrax Player⌠It wasnât like that. It was there, I noticed it, but it wasnât to that level of drastic.
With headphones, on a Saturday reviewing, didnât have an issue with volume at all during the theater segments, movie and riffing were a good match. However, the host segments were loud enough to hurt my ears, I actually had to take them off my head, so with phones I was lowering volume at the host segs.
Most others have already commented on similar issues to what I heard. Just adding my 2 cents in case itâs helpful data.
I watched live via the app on GoogleTV. I even exited and reloaded to see if it helped a bit which it did not. I had the sound going through a sound bar & sub which sounded better than just the TV speakers when I compared.
The movie seemed quieter than the riffs but not unbearable to those without hearing issues. Jonahâs riffing in particular seemed louder than the others which was a bit jarring a couple times.
I had some similar issues but even worse with movie volume being very low during the kickstarter & endless summer livestreams. For those I found I usually had to turn the volume up significantly higher than normal (close to or at max) and then once any of the cast spoke it was super loud. 1301 wasnât nearly as bad though.
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This was my experience when I watched it VOD on Roku.
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I watched via Roku live on Friday night (which is HDMI connected to my Onkyo receiver) and both by a Firefox browser and by Roku during a gradual replay over the weekend. I watched via headphones almost exclusively for both viewings.
After having it pointed out by people on this forum, I agree that the riff volume level was a little higher than that for the film. However, I perceived the differences as not a big deal. Both the film and riffers were clearly audible to me and the volume difference was not distressing.
I am wondering if the audio issues could be due to how certain peopleâs equipment was handling a 5.1 mix (if there was one for the stream). If the film audio was mostly being pushed the the surround speakers, some TVs or stereo systems may have suppressed the volume for those channels a bit.
I did notice a moderate lip sync delay when watching via Firefox, but the Roku audio sync seemed better and not distracting.
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Just to add more data
I was doing (another) rewatch via the app on iPhone. Watching the offline version of the premiere (very cool that it can be downloaded in app) and during the theme song and opening host introduction the audio came and went. As if someone was turning the audio dial (dated) up and down as Kinga and Pearl were speaking. I got into the movie the film was whisper quiet again while Jonah and Bots were normal
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I watched the event live through the Android app (installed directly on my cable box), and did not have any audio issues.
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I watched it way early Saturday morning on Roku while the rest of the house was sleeping. So I couldnât crank the volume. But at a normal volume level for riffs, I could barely make out the movie dialogue. So lots of riffs that played off the dialogue seemed like a non sequitur.
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So what is regular sequitur?
(Sorry couldnât resist 
)
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Watched live on a Roku sound bar and had no audio issues. It does have a leveling feature for the audio, and speech clarity is set to high, so it may have fixed any issues.
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The bots were about the right level, though sometimes a bit too low but Jonah was real loud.
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I watched live on an Amazon Fire TV, and the volume of the movie was significantly lower than the riffs and the host segments. However, I could only watch approximately the first half of the live stream and finished the second half a couple of days later (also on an Amazon Fire TV), and the volume levels were closer to what I consider normal for MST3K.
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Thanks for looking into this! I originally tried to watch the recording on Saturday night (3/5) via the Roku app and using a soundbar for the audio. The movie volume was too low to hear at my usual setting, and the riffs were a bit too loud. Turning up the volume to hear the movie made the riffs so loud that unfortunately we couldnât make it through the episode.
This afternoon (Monday, 3/7) I tried listening to the beginning of the episode from the MST3K app on an Android phone and using headphones for the audio. The result was much better â maybe a touch too low on the movie volume still but very reasonable to hear everything without it being uncomfortable.
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My experience seems to mirror the majority here - movie was definitely on the quiet side, riffs were louder, host segments were overall louder than the in-theater segments. But within the riffs & segments the levels on each specific source/performer/etc seemed to drift around. Jonah was mostly consistent and loud enough (maybe a touch too loud compared to the others). Crow, Tom, the Mads were a bit all over the place⌠often right up there with Jonah but other times notably lower. It was rarely to the degree that the family & I missed lines (maybe once or twice for film lines, but really hard to isolate the baseline bad audio so often present in these movies from any MST3k specific ones) but it was absolutely present enough to get multiple comments during the screening and be a bit distracting.
Setup: Hisense H9G TV running the GoogleTV platform played through the new Gizmoplex/MST3k app. Running the audio via TOSlink optical out to a 1996 era Sony 5.1 receiver and played in 5.1 theater mode.
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I listened to the episode with headphones and aside from Joelâs introduction where the sound was too low until somebody turned it up near the end, the levels didnât seem very problematic. There were a couple of times I couldnât hear a riff over the swelling soundtrack, which seems to be the opposite of what most people are complaining about (movie too soft, riffs too loud).
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