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Reminds me of a funny story I heard Tom Petty once tell. Apparently, he had a buddy with a POS car with a crappy stereo, and Tom insisted that all his records had to be mixed and mastered not so that they sound great on the studio's million dollar equipment but in his friend's car.
That's how my professors instructed me to mix. To make it sound as good on shitty speakers as possible and also sound good on expensive systems.
Reminds me of the ass audio mixing in movies where it is only enjoyable in a 7.1 cinema or your rich friends home theater but not on your own setup
It seems we've lost sight of reality there.
As we don't intend to attend much cinema any more, I hope they bring back essentially a Dolby Noise Switch for movies. I don't want to sacrifice too much, but booming noise followed by what comes out as whispered dialogue really cheapens the experience.
I hope they can find a process that gives us back a sound track for the sub-17:7 sound system.
Dynamic Range Compression. VLC player has it, possibly under a different name though. Set it up on my theater pc, and I almost don't need subtitles anymore.
On Windows: https://www.fxsound.com/ (now free and open source)
On old Linux: PulseEffects
On new Linux: EasyEffectsThose really make your crappy speakers or headphones go the extra mile.
They could add more audio tracks for different systems. Blurays support multiple audio tracks and they are almost never full.
I've always wanted to try putting something like a guitar compressor pedal in the audio chain just to normalize the peaks. My wife will find something to watch, but ends up spending half the time adjusting the volume, or just turning on subtitles.
A lot of media players have a compressor if you are watching ripped movies on an HTPC.
I have a much simpler setup though. Just a 'smart' TV and a sound bar I paid about $200 for so nothing fancy.
Not actually looking for advice, just a thought experiment of quick, easy and cheap fixes.
Add 3db to the center channel.
I had the same exact approach back in the late 90's. My friends had several band projects and when they were mixing their demos, I insisted that if the mixes sound good in a standard car stereo, they'll sound good anywhere.
This is still a perfectly sound method.
Getting the music you made in your own DAW to sound good on your home speakers is almost easy. getting it to not suck on shitty speakers? that's an art.
Mr. Petty is a wise man.
Then again my 2016 stock yaris had the best sound I ever heard anywhere.