The New Master List of BASS in Movies with Frequency Charts - Page 42

What do you mean by "not much in the way of lf"?

Plenty of LFE down to 20 Hz.

For the main channels there is plenty of lf content down to 20 Hz along with some higher level infra down to 10 Hz at times.

Do you take bass management into account when you mix? If so, do you mix different for a theatrical release rather than a television release?

TF3 was a letdown in many ways.....mainly due to 'too much hype'.....it was said to be more of a BlackHawk Down story and such.....BlackHawk Down is a FINE piece of cinema, not summer eye candy, so expectations were high......

The first one was so great because of my low expectations for it ('great, please don't screw it up' type expectations), and the subsequent amazing effects....

Second one was plagued by writer's strike, but delivered oh so well in the vis and sound department....greatly improved over the original......

Third one was supposed to 'make up for' TF2......but....

1. Poor storyline - making TF2 look like Billy Shakes penned it.....difficult at best continuity between the films....

2. No Dreamworks logo in the intro- Why? Did Spielberg not sign off on this? And the poorest sonic intro of the three films....Made me think the surrounds in the auditorium were blown.....as well as in my basement....there can sometimes be too much of a good thing (sonic manipulation)

3. Starscream - Important in tf1, relegated to 'igor' status in two, and slapstick comic relief in three.....what a decline for the decepticon science officer...

4. Shockwave - letdown. This guy was supposed to be a galactic badass, not a way to hide a plot twist.....the driller was implemented well, though.

5. Soundwave - i was expecting a Hulk Sonic Cannon scene of epic proportions when this guy got pissed........HIS NAME IS SOUNDWAVE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!........nope.

6. The 'giant roach' ships - C'mon, man.....giant roaches w/ tentacles hanging down?

7. Plot holes - filled w/ many explosions....

8. The random way some bots die....what does it actually take to 'kill' one of these things? Some fights seemed abrupt and could have used some fleshing out, others just didn't make much sense......por ejemplo: optimus just wipes clean 8-9 'cons in one fell swoop, including shockwave, and then proceeds to get his own ass handed to himself by sentinel. Then Megatron (punked by sentinel before), hands Sentinel's ass to him, only to be killed by a one-armed (albeit pissed off) optimus.....again, c'mon man.....only thing worse in a long fight was "anakin, don't....i have the high ground"...


The positive:

1. Unexpected plot twist - blew me away in the theater....well done.

2. Gimme Carly over Mikaela any day.

3. Great visuals, good sound, and the sound experienced in theater was nearly identical to the sound in home, maybe Greg Russell's intent?

4. Wingsuit scene - greatness.

5. The smaller flying decepticon weapon pods - would have been even better if Battle:LA hadn't debut'ed nearly the same thing a few months earlier....

6. Overall, good escapism, just wish I hadn't bought into the hype.....

Oh, yeah, the nonexistent ULF was a complete letdown from the beginning. Lets hope the 'special edition' will correct this.....this film deserves more low end, not just the good midbass madness....hell, TF2 used 27hz notes in the score....

Rant over.

JSS

bosso.. your original post used the term LFE instead of low frequency...

LFE is a channel, not content... they aren't interchangeable when having this discussion.

Doesn't the quote from Dolby confirm everything that I have said to you in my last couple of replies (i.e. why I use the mains for LF content, how we down mix, etc?)

I don't want to clog this thread with that discussion..

You are using quotes about a Dolby decoder to argue a point (if you
want to find out how it handles fold downs on encode, read the 565 manual...)

The other post about an opinion on how to make an LtRt references an old, analog Dolby product, with an opinion that most of the people I've ever worked with don't share (i.e. sub into the LCR at -9..).. almost all "modern" matrix encoders take 5.1 input directly, work in the digital domain, and have an option for what to do with the LFE channel on encoding (my "trick" is to turn off the LFE "inject" and instead buss it to the L and R at -10, with a 10-20msec delay on the R side... that way you get the bass spread out across all channels instead of bunching up in the center (because of the matrix encoders use of phase, hence more LF bass when it is decoded and redirected...)

I think that you would find his methodologies fairly out dated.


They aren't defining "essential" by <80Hz..

It means information that is essential to the story of the film.


Dolby's guidelines are just that. Since they supervise every down mix of a film for theatrical release, they have not only been privy when we go outside of them, but have also, in many cases, been the ones to push us outside of their recommendations.

(And as a point of full disclosure, I've consulted for both them and DTS.)

Again, if you are seeing ULF, the mixer isn't using an HPF (every console I've ever used limit the HPF to 20Hz at 24db octave (at best), which doesn't do a whole lot anyways...) And some consider it poor production technique (if you have raw sounds that you aren't deriving) in that there might be junk down there that you don't want and can't hear/feel..

I don't HP filter my LFE because I never put any "raw" information down there..

I never used the words incompetence, ignorance or accident.. that's your flourish.

I think that all of the wildly differing comments about TF3 reiterate why we find it hard to balance the ultra low frequency content of our tracks...

It's almost impossible to get predictable sound out of content that is so "room" dependent on proper playback (much less having the right equipment to play it at reference SPL..) For those that closely follow the standard of the mixing environment, I have no doubt it will produce a wild LF ride...

I don't post much in this thread... I find it informative to see some of the waterfalls, but as a subjective criticism, I find that sometimes we use them instead of their ears/bodys to subjectively lay praise or damnation on the work of me and my peers..


I think Greg's work over the years "speaks" for itself...

And we will see about the Oscars.. this is my first year to have a say.

I can't speak for everybody or every track.

However in regards to the filtering, there shouldn't be any done after the mix...

The encoders for both codecs offer filtering, and after the films leaves our hands, sometimes they are "mastered" by others before authoring where anything can happen...

However, in most cases, what you are hearing on the lossless encodes is what we intended...

No and no (with caveats.)

But that is me... and I'm lucky that for the past 5 years, the only "tv" work I've done is for HBO, and they let us go very "theatrical." The only exception is that I will make sure to push the background ambiences up a little for tv because I know when the reference level is brought down those things will tend to fall off the bottom and leave the show a little lifeless.

We did "John Adams," "The Pacific" and the new show I am mixing "Luck" as theatrical, 85db SPL mixes, and "fit" them into broadcast spec later (we try and get the "theatrical" mixes onto the BR/DVD.)

Because our monitors are relatively flat and to a standard, going the route of bass management shouldn't result in a wholly different sound, or build up of bass (it can, but usually isn't too large a variable...)

That being said, when we do near field mixes/checks, we usually use the Dolby 565 to bass manage / qc, and some tv stages are setup for full time bass management with a more near field approach/set up...

As with everything, there are a ton of ways to skin the cat... our company, however, is relatively standardized (i.e. no bass management, full 5.1.)

Others have a different opinion on the matter. If you want an expert opinion on the matter, read the posting in this link and the one right after it.


http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post12675550

I think it's very sad to see mixers filtering the lows (<20Hz) away,i mean that is like removing the soul out of the sound : (
Does anyone understand WHY they do it,if i did a soundtrack i would do the otherway around and add some fun stuff in the infra area,imagine Thor hammering the bridge with added sine waves @ 5-10Hz that would be fun : )

Sad to hear that about TF3 but i have to wait for it here in sweden to give it a hear.

Also thanks to Filmmixer for info : )


Best regards // Nicke

Not sure if your company did this one, but recently I took a rather random look at the HBO Band of Brothers DVDs.

LFE covered 20 to 120 Hz with no infra.

Main channels primarily covered 20 to 20 khz, but there were some instances of very high level infra on some of the main channels (8-10 Hz area). Content was shell shots that went through the interior of a troop carrier airplane skin but did not explode. As a comparison anti-aircraft shell fire explosions were loud but had no infra at all.

I guess my basic question is how noticable is that 8-10 Hz content that shows up on a single main channel when played back on your main system? Is your main system flat to that frequency on your main channels or are you down a lot?



Sample from Band of Brothers Disc 1 Part 2 Chapter 2 - Army Troop airplane ride to Normandy

Left side is LFE channel content, right side is L, C and R content.

FilmMixer,

I think I read somewhere you worked on Law Abiding Citizen and Source Code (but I could be wrong) can you please confirm and if possible list a couple of other theater releases you worked on.

I really enjoyed those two movies not only for LFE but more so for pure dynamics of those tracks. The dynamics of those movies are some of the best I've ever experienced in my home. If this is getting off topic, can you please PM them to me?

Thx,
Claude

The term LFE is an acronym for Low Frequency Effects (or Enhancement, depending on what reference you use). The channel is .1. This is semantics to me. As I explained, I use the term to refer to the frequencies in the BW of the .1 channel; 3-120 Hz, because I never know what channel they may end up in. Sorry for the confusion. Sometimes we say ULF or bass or low freqs, etc. Again, sorry for the layman mistake.


I think the problem here is that you're addressing my comments as being directed at you instead of referring to a general industry phenomenon. Virtually all of the 5 star ratings in our Master List have strong content <20 Hz, which is a significant reason for the highest rating.

JPC has relished posting SL graphs of some scenes from those movies of only the .1 channel, then only the FL/FR channels when his methods show none of the ULF is in the .1 channel and all of it is in the FL/FR channels. His inference... well, honestly, I don't really know what his inference is.

EDIT: Speak of the devil, he did it again while I was typing. 2 posts up.


His comments on M&C BR vs DVD were in the same vein, thus my response. I have to say here that I'm not sure if you're comments are agreeing with him or not? It seems as though you're telling me that ULF belongs in the front channels if it's categorized differently than other low frequency content?

I always respond when someone says things like "Everything below 18 Hz is unintended artifact", which someone actually used as a quote from "a noted film mixer" to start a thread on the subject years back. Or, "you're all just bass fanatics... you can't hear anything <20 Hz anyway, so it's irrelevant". All stuff like that.



No... just "outdated method". I'm sure there's a distinction there somewhere.


Like anything else, but especially with HT subwoofers, opinions vary wildly and are usually directly related to one's ability, or lack thereof, to accurately replay the content. Some have no clue what their in-room response is, some use a house curve response, some bump the SW out by +10dB and most have nothing but noise/distortion below 20 Hz.

IMO, all-over-the-map subjective comments, although welcome and many times leading to a spirited discussion, don't influence a 5 star rating on the Master List.


I can only speak for myself in this regard. I've commented on subjective differences in the LF of soundtracks for almost 9 years on this forum, both my own perceptions as well as asking many guests to my HT after A/B of this or that scene with & without a 20 Hz HPF in line... long before I had the ability to create a spectrograph of (or "see") what I was experiencing.

The only guy I've praised by name is Randy Thom. When it comes to movie magic, he's my hero. War Of The Worlds, The Incredibles, Monster House, How To Train Your Dragon, Percy Jackson...The Lightning Thief, The Last Airbender, Horton Hears A Who, Despicable Me, The Simpson's Movie, etc. His interviews in which he goes into some detail about how he creates different effects, etc., also adds a dimension to the enjoyment for me personally.

I really don't know what films you've worked on. I wish you'd list them in your sig so we could all have that information.

As for the rest, I just say whether or not I liked the sound, I SL graph quite a few of them and post the info for others and I never fail to mention how much I believe <20 Hz adds to the experience of watching a good movie at home (I never go to the theater).

In any case, I've read all of your posts and appreciate them more than I usually have time to write in a post. To be honest, watching a movie with SL scrolling, stopping it, capturing the screen shots, labeling them, formatting them, uploading them by the hundreds to photobucket and posting them with identification tags and comments and answering requests for more of them and archiving them in folders in a folder is very time consuming.

I appreciate everyone who contributes to this thread, one of my favorite threads in the interwebs world. Especially lfe man who is THE man for reviving and updating the thread.

Bosso

bosso...

.1 and LFE are synonymous.

You like to quote Dolby, so here's a link.

What is the LFE channel?

Because of the in band gain of the LFE channel, there is most certainly an importance placed on where the LF content originates when mixing.

I know it's how you like to use the term.. however, it is confusing and, IMO, an accurate way to discuss LF content... just my .02..


Not at all... I am very careful to point out where my thoughts lie and what the majority of my peers do... I never speak for them all, and don't imagine to think that your comments are personally directed towards my words or my work (except when they are. )


I wholeheartedly agree about Randy... one of my idols, and I had the great pleasure to have him mix effects on a film for me when I was a sound supervisor a long time ago....

My identity isn't a secret..

Film Mixer's IMDB List

(PS.. where did I say "outdated method?" in regards to filtering.. can't find it in any of my posts... not saying I didn't but don't remember that part of a conversation. )

Thanks for posting this. There's a few on here I have not seen that I'll have to check out.

We are fairly flat into the teens in our film stages (Dolby tunes our rooms, so we try and have some consistency to other stages around town)... our mains use dual 15"s for low end, but we then have dual 18"' Bag Ends for low frequency extension so we can hear that stuff going on down there.) Total of about 2800W of amplification per channel in the mains.

Each of our mains consist of:

HF Driver x 1 JBL 2360A Horn, Driver BMS with 700W Amplification

Mid Freq x 2 JBL 15" 700W

Bag End ELF 18" x 2 - 700W each.


I don't know exactly where the ELF integrates at, but they do go down to ~8Hz (I need to find out exactly where we last tuned the rooms, at what point we are integrating and what are floor is.)

And we just put in new subs for the LFE, which consist of 4 x 18" drivers.. haven't mixed on them yet, but can't wait to hear them.

Our company has stayed on a 2 way system for now.. it ensure the highest percentage of translation, and we haven't moved into the realm of 3 or 4 way systems yet...

in contrast to this, in the late 70's i worked for a while as a projectionist in a cinema;
their amp (stereo/transistorized) put out 45 Watts/ch.; the cinema could seat around 800 people.

Any idea why they are "mastered" by other before authoring? Since you guys have already created the mix and the original sound intent, why does someone else want to modify it? And does this need the consent of the mixer or director or producer?

Back to another question, when you create the mix does the playback capability of the intended venue come into play? I guess you guys mix for a commercial theater, where there may be some guidelines for the hardware setup. I guess this 'theatrical mix' (I hope the term is correct) gets translated to bluray for home theater, where the systems vary a lot. In the past less 'woofage' was available, many people didn't have the capability to play low and loud. So discussion of low bass wasn't as vocal.

Nowadays (as you can see from this thread and others on AVS), many enthusiasts have access to some very capable subs and often multiples too. I'm one of them So the expectation is there for soundtracks that are low and loud, when appropriate to the movie. Do film mixers take that into consideration? Namely that with better home theater subs, the mixer can push the envelope when it comes to deep bass.

Or perhaps the theatrical hardware standard is already quite high, so if you mix for that it would also satisfy the bass-heads in home theater?

TF3 had a lot of nice bass scenes, but yeah, could have went lower and louder.

Louder? I can't imagine wanting bass recorded any louder than in TF3. It seemed very hot to me. Perhaps a little more depth would have nice on occasions, but it seemed pretty loud througout. Generally it was a very good soundtrack.

I noticed that they slowed the action scenes down a bit so you could actually see the machines fighting instead of a big blur. Good for them.

T III DSOTM; "I hereby discharge you from service".



This is one of the hottest effects.

Check out how they used the exact same effect with some sound in between but dropped -6dB. Pretty cool.

Bosso

Compare that to the intro for TF2 (Dreamworks/Paramount logos):



Or Sideswipe's flip over the Audi:



The hottest effect in TF2 (not the deepest, though):



I was expecting TF2 goodness and more....do not get me wrong. The mix is excellent, but I defininitely miss the 15-25Hz effects that were included in TF2....one of the deeper scenes is when the stone pillars fall on the decepticons in the desert toward the end....great use of ULF rumble. It helps that my main seat has a resonance at 18-22Hz...

The 'impact' of the effects in TF3 is better than TF2, though. The gunblasts were done very well.

But just like when Thor creates a 'land tsunami' with mjolnir, a building coming down should have something below 25Hz....IMO.

FilmMixer,

Thanks so much for your comments, even though the discussion strays OT, I really learn a lot from it.....

Oh, and I use two horn-loaded subs which give me +/- 3dB from 15-100Hz. I am 12dB down at 10Hz. I have a dip at 120Hz (which is criminal for 'slam), but it is a quarter-wave cancellation I can do little about (for now). I also listen at -10dB from reference (-7dB occasionally), to preserve my hearing. Audyssey's Dynamic EQ provides some LF boost (around 3dB at high signal strength) to the lowest freqs at -10dBRef, and ups the surrounds output so that sound does not collapse to the front at lower listening levels....it works very well.

JSS

I have watched 30 minutes of Transformers 3 thus far. So far, there is a good amount of bass; however, not a lot below ~30Hz.

I was hoping for more during the opening scene. The opening introduction scene (Paramount stars) was basically a good hint as to the type of mix they used for the movie. I would say that Transformers 3 has the hottest surround mix I have heard for an action movie. The material going to the surrounds seems to be full range. That opening Paramount scene, the stars do a bass heavy (not low) glide around the room. Perhaps the best workout my surrounds have ever had. For the first time it made me notice how different the tonality is with my front mains and my surrounds. This movie will be great for those that have full size floor-standers for surrounds.

I guess my question is what are the chances of actually getting an unfiltered low end in the 3d/2d release at the end of the year? I would so LOVE to see this, but I am guessing the chances of that actually happening are VERY slim. The more I think about the low end filtering in this movie (and others) the more it bothers me since this track is SO awesome otherwise

Agreed....for as much as I complained above, the track is impressive. The imagery is impressive, I think back to Spinal Tap, though:

"Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?

Marty DiBergi: I don't know.

Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?

Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.

Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder."

I want the push over the cliff for this film!!!!

JSS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuzpsO4ErOQ

I agree. The LFE was pretty good, although not in abundance, but what there was, seemed some what deeper then what I experienced from Thor. I've heard similar complaints form those who have recently seen T3, which I'll be watching tonight. The question is, with the advent of non-compressed audio formats, why all the low bass filtering?


Ian

Watched Troll Hunter on Netflix last night. It said it was streaming in 5.1. Not sure how deep it went but there was a ton of bass when the trolls were stomping around. Not bad...

Everyone is complaining about TF3 bass cause it wasn't deep enough. Let it go cause this movie had about 2 hours of bass throughout. I have a conquest and it kept going the entire movie. Great bass throughout even though it didn't hit WOW depth. It was still great IMO.

Zero.

Why?! One word (uh...acronym) : HTIB. And laziness/cheapness.

Unfortunately, most mixes (both movie and music) are made to accommodate the lowest quality consumer equipment, which would be the iPod for music and the HTIB for movies. This is done by heavy use of both compression & limiting and sometimes by just boosting the mix into nasty hard clipping. The thinking for doing this (if you can call it that) goes that anything over a few dBs will cause heavy distortion from a iPod or HTIB, so to eliminate the possibility of any distortion, almost all of the soundtrack's original dynamic range is permanently removed! The end result is taking what started out as an amazing and powerful theatrical master or stereo music master (@30-40dB RMS DR for most action movie scenes in all channels and @15-30dB for most rock/pop/hip-hop songs) and smashing that down to 1/4 (or less!) of what it started out as.

This is one of the movie and music industries dirty secrets which has compromised &/or ruined 99.9% of our favorite CDs and DVD/BDs. Thank God for that last 0.1%!

I say laziness because this could all be solved by just including both the dynamically uncompressed theatrical mix as a selectable option along with the standard, dynamically compressed "home-theater" mix as the default. And I say cheapness because the same should go for CDs, all CD albums should come with 2 discs, one having the dynamically uncompressed version of the album for people with high quality stereo/HT systems, the other having a dynamically compressed version for iPod, boombox, car, etc.

Dare to dream......

I agree. The battle scene at the end was outrageous! Great bass, enough to shake the room and terrific surround effects that put you right in the middle of the action. I wanted to go for a weapon!



Actually the Blu-Ray version of T3 does offer the standard compressed DD tract (in English) as an option. See audio set up.


Ian

I'm afraid you are making a common mistake by confusing the term 'dynamic compression' (i.e. the compression of the dynamic range of a sound) with the term 'data compression' or 'lossy compression' (i.e. the compression and subsequent reduction of a digital soundtrack's data size).

Most lossy data compression codecs (DD, DD+, DTS, etc.) do an excellent job of preserving the soundtrack's original dynamic range but make sacrifices in the soundtracks perceived (audible) resolution.

The codecs aren't the problem (either lossy or lossless), it's the crappy dymanically compressed & clipped mixes that are!