NEW Audio Tier Thread - Page 56

Here is to FilmMixer and hoping he has a clean recovery.........hope to see him up and posting again soon

Speedy Recovery Marc!

Good to hear, hope all goes well with the recovery.

This should help FilmMixer get well soon. I rented the Law Abiding Citizen when it first came out and thought Marc did an excellent job on the sound mix so I recently added it to my collection. Get well FilmMixer!

Thanks everyone for the thoughts. Home and feeling better today. Will be back and making noise soon I hope. .

Robin Hood (DTS HD MA) Tier 1

This was a rather disappointment to me after seeing and hearing Red Cliff, not to mention some of the raving reviews. The major issue I had is with dialog, mostly of the recording of it. On top of that Crowe mumbles many of his lines which didn't help matters. Very few occasions where the location matched the recording of voices. Balance was all over the place as well. The overall presentation sounded a bit thin and bright.The goods were sound design, and surround coverage. Dynamics were good if not great, but bass was only adequate. Ridley's "Kingdom Of Heaven" was far superior for both sound, and as a movie.

Green Zone....DTS-MA 5.1.....Reference

This BD sounded very good to me and had everything that I look for, clear dialogue, even during high action scenes, great use of the surrounds, especially with all the helicopters in the movie, and great LFE when needed.

Last of the Mohicans (DTS-HD MA) Tier 0

Not as much LFE from the cannons as i would have liked, did use the surrounds in some of the battle scenes, and the sound of the falls in Chimney Rock State Park took me back to when i was in school. As with every DTS -MA i had to adjust the center channel for dialogue from where audyssey has it set. This is a middle to low tier 0 imho.

Iron Man 2 (DTS-HD MA 5.1) Reference

I gave this reference but over all am a little disappointed n the trac. Of course the dialogue and mains are clear and precise - but I expect that. Usually what separates a track from another, for me, is how they handle the surrounds and LFE. Right off the bat, when IM drops out of the plane and he hits his turbos it sends a nice charge throuh the room. And later, throughout the action scenes there is a ton of powerful pulses of lfe. The problem I had was the good audio was saved only for the action scenes and the rest of the flic was pretty dead. The music was so front heavy and lame. MANY movies kick the music through the fronts and strongly to the surrounds making a wonderful, powerful effect. IM2 playing some Kick A$$ ACDC was not nearly as potent as it could have been. Also, while the LFE was strong, and plentiful , the tone could have been richer and deeper at spots. I heard some better quality bass in the Tinkerbelle 3 movie we watched right before this. Not kidding. All in all it did do enough things right to stand above a lot of movies but...

I am very confused by Ironman 2 as a reference tittle.

I will watch it again and check my system setup but it was not reference to me at first watching. Heck not even sure if it was Tier 0

Ultimate Avengers: The Movie.....PCM 7.1 ...Tier 0

I was surprised how well this movie actually sounded with great use of all 7 speakers and some hard hitting lfe. Dialogue was never a problem.

IRON MAN 2 -- ARE WE SURE THIS IS REFERENCE?? DTS-HD MA 5.1 (7.1 engaged, via dolby IIx)

I know this is controversial here (based on most of the other reviews), but I finally watched/listened to Iron Man 2 yesterday. My thoughts are, this film was only "reference" starting with the scene where the drones are introduced to the public -- from that time until the end of the movie. I believe this was the last 20 - 25 minutes or so. The other 1.5 hours consisted of too few and far between sonic treats (that went past much too quickly when they did happen) for this to be deemed reference.

I'm not saying a film needs to be chock full of action sequences to be reference, but in this movie, outside of the action scenes (and maybe the scenes with Stark's talking computer), the audio was purely ho hum. There was little presence to the non-action scenes, as far as atmospherics, music or anything else. The little details and nuances from the quieter scenes were not there to bring this into reference land. (For point of reference -- no pun intended -- check out some of the forest scenes in Robin Hood -- with the noise of the forest all around you).

As others have pointed out, the music was generally in the front speakers only. This particularly seemed really weak when AC/DC kicked in at the end.

Overall this was, IMHO, either a strong Tier 1 or a weak Tier 0. A little dissapointing to say the least. To me this felt like the audio team decided that outside of the action sequences, no need to go all out. This strategy leads a film to seem unbalanced and lacking polish in the audio department.

Percy Jackson, DTS-MA, Reference.

Can't believe this is only Tier0..I think I see more "reference" vote to this than Tier0. In any case, I am casting my vote now!

I guess the issue is whether a reference "ending" is enough to make an entire film be deemed reference, where the rest of the film is not quite up to the same standard.

To me, I use "reference" to demo the system and listen to a few favorite scenes. Hence, if IronMan2 had about 20-25 mins of "reference" quality sound material, that's certainly good enough for me. (I haven't watched IM2 yet, as I am waiting for my PJ to come back from repair...)

IMHO, reference should apply to the movie as a whole, not just a few good scenes within a movie. The sound design has to be steller throughout. Take Master and Commander for instance-- even the non-battle scenes are fantastic, with the steps overhead, the creaking, the bells, the wind, etc. there is a prime example of stellar sound design.

Whether a scene is reference is a different animal altogether than whether a film is reference.

And I agree with you on Saving Private Ryan. It is not reference, when taken as a whole. Probably low Tier 0 or high Tier 1.

+1

The Thin Red Line (DTS-HD MA 5.1) Tier 0

Good timing on this one as it seems relevant to the discussion going on here regarding what constitutes reference. TTRL does have a couple reference moments, especially the 15 minute barrage of sound around the 40 minute mark. But overall, it doesn't have the complete envelopment that SPR gave me when I watched it about 6 months ago. Ambience is good - wind blowing the palm trees, bombs and gunfire in the distance, etc. LFE is above average but not anything mind blowing for this type of content.

caesar1's post should be stickied.

Ah yes, I meant to mention that. It certainly made me turn up the volume a couple more notches than usual.

To me TTRL's biggest contribution of it's excellent soundtrack/mix is it's score and various other incidental music.Rarely I find that the music truly carries not only the mood, but clearly [to me] the director's state of mind in regards to this film. This reminds me to get a BD copy asap,

Iron Man 2 (DTS HD MA) Tier 0

Much what has been said is what I would have wrote myself regarding why it's not a ref title to me.There isn't a much of a demo scenes beyond the action ones. Probably the only that stands out is the lab scene where Tony creates a new element.The mix was front heavy in overall. Dynamics were almost solely relied on heavy bass frs as opposed to the entire Fr range which I would prefer. There is no denying that the action scenes are exciting and carries much of my rating as well.