I've been being asked to start doing some test work for motion picture period pieces. I'd actually like to get some feedback from you guys -- especially on how bass handling is coming out on home systems.

In this case, this is a 3.1 upmix of a song you may recognize from the 1970s. It was taken from the original stereo mix, and then I broke it into pure left, pure center, and pure right.

Since many systems do not have full range speakers on the centers, I've duplicated a bit of the bass in the LFE channel. This may work, or it may be too much.

If you want to help -- and have a chance, click on this link and save the file in a folder that you can remember:

http://www.penteosurround.com/SampleAudio/GTT-DTS.exe
(It's about 25MB, so it may take a while.)

Once you've downloaded it, click on it (it's an executable PC file), and it will simply inflate itself into a 30MB .WAV file named GTT-DTS.wav, which should show up in the same folder that you downloaded the .exe file into.

Burn this .WAV file directly to a CD using any CD burning software. Make sure you don't NORMALIZE the level when you burn it.

The .WAV file is actually DTS-encoded, so it will sound just like noise on a regular CD player, but on any DTS-branded DVD player, it should come out as a 3.1 multichannel mix.

You will hear channel IDs at the head of the song which will denote success with the above!

Let me know how it sounds.

Thanks,

John
john@penteosurround.com

John,
I thought the presentation and soundstage sounded good, but the vocal sounded a bit "thin" if you know what I mean. I don't recall how the original sounded, so I might be off course on this.

I'm not sure what sort of feedback you want, John. I thought the vocals sounded fine, but I thought the center channel was a little bit "hot" in the mix. I think I would have preferred this in only 2-channels.

The feedback is entirely for the bass level in the LFE. I'd really like to know if

1) you have full range speakers all around or mid/highs plus a subwoofer, (which of course is usual these days outside of recording studios and cinemas -- it's the hardest thing to deal with since it has to sound right on both kinds of systems, which is why I'm asking), and,

2) how you handle your bass management -- does your system normally tap off of the 5 channels to divert bass to the "1", or do you are actually listening to the LFE -- you can tell, if you hear the 4th noise set after the channel ID's -- let me know.

3) if the bass came across as way too hot or way too weak.

As far as the center channel vocal -- it's the original -- with the original EQ, designed to sound great on AM radio in mono. It's obviously a ribbon mike, probably a DX77. Everyone used them for pop music vocals back then because the sibilants they produced were in the 7-8k range, which cut through on AM radio.

By the way -- the "mix" is the original -- from 1971 -- so much so that if you were to downmix it to stereo -- then combine it 180 out of phase with the original -- you get silence. That's actually how the "mix" gets tested here on a workstation before shipment. The only thing that's different is the sound source locations within the pan field. Back in those days, a lot of studio monitoring was done in 3 channels, so what you're actually hearing is how it would have sounded behind the mix console.

The only thing that I can't tell (and never can) is how the bass management will sound at a listener's environment. The bass (kick drum/electric bass) is, of course, dead center (it had to be, you couldn't cut those waveforms into the side of a groove, it had to be lateral), so I have to divert part of it to the LFE for home theater listeners -- which Dolby says to never do, but everyone does, so that's why I'm asking. You never would have to do this for just cinema work. (Cinema is easy -- you know you've got 3 full-range JBL Screen Array's behind the screen. :-) )

-----

Trivia (are trivia sections discouraged? --
Isn't Tommy Tedesco's gut string guitar work absolutely over the top? The gut string is EQ'd so bright (to cut through) that it sounds like a "steel string spanish guitar". Solo the right channel. Same with Gayle Levant's harp work on the left. She's really an integral part of the song -- unusual for a harpist in pop music! She's twinned with a glockenspiel for the hooks.

(You gotta remember one of the big reasons that I invented Penteo was to uncover the studio pickers!)

Snuffy Garrett produced this. Ron Hicklin -- who, with his wife Molly, used to let me stay at his guest house in LA when I was a broke kid -- (all my family had died and I was basically homeless at 19) -- contracted the vocals. It's mostly Jackie Ward, just like on the Partridge Family.

Thanks again.

=John

I'm uploading another file -- this time with, three short 30 second bass only excerpts, which you can use to answer the LFE questions.

It's here... http://www.penteosurround.com/SampleAudio/LFE-C-L-LFE-DTS.exe

The first 30 seconds has only bass, only in the center.
The second 30 seconds has only bass, only in the front left.
The last 30 seconds has only bass, only in the LFE channel.

For each of these:
1) what do you hear?
2) where is it coming from? (the LFE, the designated speaker, or both, or none)
3) do they sound the same level? (they are, each is exactly -16.4 db below peak).

Just like before, execute, burn the .wav to a CD, and play back in DTS.

I'm starting to think I should make some DTS and Dolby Digital surround test discs for level and LFE handling!

Thanks.

John, last night I listened to this. Though never a fan of Chair, many things emerged from your mix including what I thought was a harpsicord from the front right, though apparently I'm mistaken. Noticably little bass from any of the front channels and the sub, but at certain times, I would have sworn this were a 5.1 recording (or at least something involving the rear channels). Very enveloping for 3.1. I'm burning the second sample now. Y'know, I'd get more value from my blank discs if you'd provide some amazing full length demos like you did in the old days.;)

First off -- you shouldn't hear anything from the rears; if you do, there's something wrong with your setup :-)

Y'know, I'd get more value from my blank discs if you'd provide some amazing full length demos like you did in the old days.;)

I would LOVE to, except for that nasty little thing called the DMCA, and the fines and penal facilities that they love to put people in. :-)

Maybe I could start a service -- you send me a CD, and I send it back in 5.1... That would be legal I suppose, but I couldn't do it affordably for people, so it probably wouldn't be worth it, unless a lot of people wanted the same album.

Also -- yeah, you're right. Here's basically how the session breaks down by pan pot position:
(this is what we used to do in my high school music classes (!))
LEFT: String section (sounds like about 6-8 violins, couple of violas, couple of cellos); Harp (Gayle Levant); Glockenspiel; Harpsichord; Tambourine.
RIGHT: Gut string guitar (Tommy Tedesco) that's all, except a lot of studio leakage (it was obviously all recorded at once with the rhythm section; the drums in the studio were so loud that they came back in all the mikes).
CENTER: Flute, Lead vocal; rhythm guitar, Jackie's backup vocal stacked 3 times, drums, bass.

The stereo echo returns come back on every channel, of course.

Strangely, there's no piano -- they used the harpsichord as the rhythm keyboard, like you would a piano...

Penteo, I just finished listening to the second recording. The first 30 seconds was the loudest of the 3 sections of sound. I could hear it pretty good through my center channel.

The second was a lot less audible and did come thru the left main and the third did come exclusively from the subwoofer and it was also muted.

I don't know why the sounds were not the same loudness. I guess it may be because my speakers aren't calibrated properly, although I did calibrate them with an spl meter to where they should be fairly close in loudness.

You said that it "has only bass". I'm not real sure what/how that translates into music. I could definitely hear Cher singing in the center channel (first thirty seconds).

Frank

Hey Gimpy, thanks a lot for taking the time. Yeah, they're all three identical in level. They all are from about 200Hz down.

Do you have full-range fronts or are they small? If so, I would think that the LFE, if properly set up, should still have it all sound about equal.

This bass management stuff is a pain.

-John

Then don't try to do it in the mix. :p Make it a 5.0 recording and let the end user sort out their bass management. If they can figure out how to do bass management for a 2.0 recording on a CD, they can figure out how to do it for a 5.0 recording on a DVD-Audio. :rolleyes:

Or would you be putting 2.1 on a CD if you could?

I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve--should not the bass management be left to the individual and his gear?

I have a variety of MCH audio (DVD-A, SACD, DTS-CD, DD/DTS on DVD-V) and it all gets bass managed the same way. Some are 3.0, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1. IF the mixer put LFE information into the mix, it gets read and is output properly. IF there is no LFE information, the bass from all the other channels (80hz 12/24 slope crossover) is sent to the sub anyway (I even do that with one player internally for CD 2 channel playback).

It is my understanding that mixers should NOT be "bass managing" their mixes but rather they should let the gear do at the listening end. Otherwise, one is adding variable that can complicate, and compromise, the signal in a way that the home gear is not equipped to handle.

I'm no expert, of course, and if it turns out that all MCH music mixes are "bass managed" at source, then so be it. But that is not what I understand the procedure to be.

We are all in agreement here. The problem with the original DVD-Audio format was that bass management settting -- on some really high-end receivers -- was ignored. DVD-Audio only put sound into the subwoofer if there was material on the LFE channel -- at least that's the way it was on many of the receivers I auditioned in several high-end stores. The philosophy of DVD-A seemed to be 6 straight wires, with all processing bypassed. That would be nice if everyone had full range all around.

It was different for Dolby Digital and DPLII upmixing, with bass management being properly handled as part of the DSP processing and decoding that had to be done. DVD-Audio doesn't require any processing, so it was bypassed.

This DTS test was specifically to see how receivers handle bass management with DTS CDs.

Thanks again for all your help guys, you really help me to make a lot of decisions.

=John

If they can figure out how to do bass management for a 2.0 recording on a CD, they can figure out how to do it for a 5.0 recording on a DVD-Audio. :rolleyes:

Or would you be putting 2.1 on a CD if you could?

Unfortunately, the philosophy of a lot of hardware makers with DVD-Audio was that it was supposed to be 6 straight wires, bypassing bass management. It then fell upon the DVD-Audio authors to figure out how to do bass using either the fronts or the sub.

One of the other reasons for all these formats to be so frustrating to deal with -- a lack of consistent standards, mostly because not that many people making the hardware really seemed to understand what the standard was supposed to be!

The lack of bass management was never really part of the philosophy of DVD-Audio, it was just a technical limitation on the early gear. They didn't have the DSP oomph to do bass management at 96kHz on 5 channels.

The philosophy of all multichannel music is certainly that the listener should ideally have 5 full range channels, and the music should be mixed on that basis. And it would fit that philosophy for the listener to ensure that they can deal with 5 channels of full-range audio, either by having 5 full-range speakers or installing bass management.

I think it's safe to assume now that anyone who wants bass management on DVD-Audio can have it - even the cheapest DVD-Audio players with analogue outputs do bass management now, as well as the cheapest receivers with multichannel PCM inputs.

The problem is that most (not mine--I made sure of that when I selected it) receivers/pre-pros do NOT apply bass management to the MCH analogue input (leaving aside the whole issue of A/D/A for the moment) AND the bass management available in players is very limited (my player, among the less limited I've encountered without HDMI, has a fixed crossover of 100hz for DVD-A and time alignment and a fixed crossover of 80hz with a 6/12 slope--the DVD-A slope is 12/24--with NO time alignment for SACD; in any case, even with the A/D/A of my receiver, I get a steeper slope (12/24 as per THX specs--my receiver is a THX Select receiver from Integra) and time alignment for SACD AND a better crossover for DVD-A). More recent players, with HDMI output and the appropriate receivers, offer a more flexible option, but this arrived too late, IMO, to help DVD-A and SACD become more widely accepted.

In the end, though, getting good MCH sound requires a level of effort that is beyond that which most people are willing to make (though not beyond their abilities)--and that is with something relatively straightforward like DD/DTS. When it comes to DVD-A/SACD, it is largely within the purview of "the enthusiast" (and I count myself among them)--hardly a recipe for mainstream success. But it won't stop me from trying.

John, my mains are 3-way full range speakers (pretty much, anyway), but, I cannot remember if I have them set to small or large on my receiver (I've tried them both ways) and it has been too long since I last checked them. And, right now, my remote is semi-working (read--broken), so that I can not get into that part of my audio set-up and see how I have them set. Sorry.

Frank

And, right now, my remote is semi-working (read--broken), so that I can not get into that part of my audio set-up and see how I have them set. Sorry.
Frank
OFF TOPIC but:
I think that making hardware that can only be operated by the remote control should be outlawed! There should be a way on every piece of hardware made to still control every function without a remote. Sometimes it kills presentations, etc., because no one can find a working remote for something...

OFF TOPIC but:
I think that making hardware that can only be operated by the remote control should be outlawed! There should be a way on every piece of hardware made to still control every function without a remote. Sometimes it kills presentations, etc., because no one can find a working remote for something...

I offtopically agree with you.