The New Master List of BASS in Movies with Frequency Charts - Page 44

I listen at 10dB below reference due to speaker limitations, and to preserve my hearing. The system can easily reach reference, but I am at 5% THD at -7dB. -10dB is very clean, no distortion. -7dB has some distortion, but not many can tell. Reference just doesn't sound great on my system to me. You need high efficiency speakers to hit reference levels on receiver power, and they need to be operating well within their linear range to sound good.

And my room is quite well treated. 20 4" thick bass traps and 9 2" thick panels at the first reflection points for LCR. My subs have more than enough output. I am at less than 5% THD from 16hz on up at reference level.


JSS

Thanks for the kind words...

However, I disagree fundamentally with some points you put forward as "fact" and "truth," so we'll have to agree to disagree...


Please tell me the percentage of films that aren't the theatrical print master? And of those films, can you quantify how different they might be from said master?

How many near field mixes have you been to?

As I said, the differences most mixer I work with do amount to no more than 1-3 db changes in the relative balances of the stems... hardly the 75% change you alluded to earlier.

This argument comes up every two or three years about how those who spend more money on there systems are somehow entitled to the industry giving them what they want...

You said this in no uncertain terms:


If that is the case, why do we do HT remasters on Genelecs (my monitor of choice), or other "high" end near field monitors, in world class mixing stages? Is that "lowest quality consumer" equipment?

The idea behind a remaster is to account for the vast majority of situations where the work will be hear in perpetuity, i.e. home theaters or living rooms...

And again, and this won't be the last time I say this, the changes are minor at best.... (and while I can't account for what some see as the lack of ULF in TF3, neither you or I know if that was designed that way for the theatrical, or if Greg and the mixing team felt it best for the home mix...)


While it may indeed be better than some megaplexs, it will never be better than what we did on the dub stage.

That is the reference.

It's what the director signed off on, and it is what we strive to maintain all the way down the line.


Sure it can be denied... just because you say it doesn't make it true.

Majority? How do you know if you haven't heard the original? And no one is complaining about the low bass dynamics in TF3, they are complaining about the lack of ULF.. two completely different things.


I will go out on a limb and say that a majority of "dialog-heavy" mixes have a greater dialog dynamic range than most action films....

There's a saying in my business.. "loud is easy, quiet is hard." There's nothing to hide behind....


In order..

Don't agree with that...

How and where did you do comparisons to the theatrical masters (the only comparison that would ever matter would be on the dub stage in a level match test...) Hearing a screener and then later hearing the "commercial" release doesn't count, btw...

I know, based on the client, if they plan on "altering" or "mixing.." I those situations, I approve such material (if time and schedules permit... if not me, another qualified part of the sound team.)

Authoring houses don't, in general, have the capability of remixing for the most part.. and even if they did, what would be the point of a vendor (i.e. authoring house) changing the work of it's client (i.e. the studio?) Because they can? Because??????? There's no logical answer for that, and it just doesn't happen as a general practice (and the studios, at this point in time) do a lot more work in house, and are fairly competent in how they go about it..

Authoring can change some things, but the core of the .bwav files stay in tact in lossless codecs.. you, of course, can set the Dialog Norm flag, automatically engage DRC (which is a post process, i.e. not damaging to the audio) etc.. and in the lossy encoders, you can indeed filter content, etc...


Which is what we are striving to do.. give you a mix that translates.

It was originally mixed with a large venue acoustic space in mind, with speaker systems, eq and amplification that aren't matched in 99.999% of any home theater.... are we really supposed to cater to the .001% (even if you guys are the ones that are the most vocal?)

I've been doing this going on 21+ years.. dedicated my life, and even some of my health, to it... do you really think I'd knowingly do something, or support, willy nilly destroying my lives work because we don't have the experience or education behind the "why's" and "how's?"

As I've said so many times in the thread in the last couple of days... what is changed for these home theatre remasters is slight at best... without a direct knowledge of what the theatrical presentation sounded like, speculation about the neutering of a track is pure speculation.. trust me, not all mixes are created equal, even the blockbusters...

I understand people who spend their hard earned money want the best... I want that for them too.. but I think you are making assumption of what is, can and has been done to a lot of titles out there, and instead of always chalking it up to the conclusion that it was neutered by the studio and mixers for some Joe Consumer listening to it on a HTIB, you should consider that maybe the mix wasn't all that to begin with..

I'm lucky enough to do what I love, and love what I do.... I wouldn't sit idly by if the industry as a whole was on a crusade to ruin our work, or not present it in it's best light...

Home theaters are cinemas, and cinemas aren't home theaters.....

There has to be some consideration for that fact, even if the big spenders don't like it.

(and thanks for keeping the debate civil and well thought out... I'm not the last word on this subject, and I wish there were other mixers who cared to chime in... I'm just as passionate as you are on the subject, and hope my comments come off as they are meant to.. )

X-Formers III; Dark Side Of The Moon

After watching the movie several more times and more closely analyzing the 3-120 Hz content (LFE+RB through the SW output), my personal opinion is that the soundtrack as a whole is not filtered.

It appears by the evidence that the individual effects were filtered. Most of them are filtered, but a few of them are not because some spots show content to 5 Hz.

The <20 Hz content is much more sparse and attenuated than in X-Formers. In fact, in scrutinizing all 3 movies, there is a trend of filtering <20 Hz in the effects. The best example is the footsteps of the bots. As I posted 2 captures earlier, the bots' footsteps were very prominently ULF in the 1st movie, less so in the 2nd and non-existent in the 3rd, which typifies the trend.

This is really a shame, IMO. In the 1st movie, the footsteps, staying with that example, typically do not coincide with a headroom problem and very effectively convey the weight/size of the bots. In my case, situated on a large wood frame floor system, the ULF pressure waves cause the room to react as though the bots were right in front of you. This sort of ULF-reproduction-in-the-home experience is relatively a very recent one for humans, and, therefore, a very impressive experience for everyone, either way one may view them.

IMO, these sort of effects are a huge plus to the experience if your system has the capability to reproduce them, but have no effect, ill or otherwise, on a system that isn't capable of reproducing them. So, why filter them?

I recently played the opening scene in Star Trek, where the Romulun mining ship emerges from the black hole, for guests, with full bandwidth playback and with a 20 Hz HPF in line, and asked them if they perceived any difference and if so, could they describe the difference.

One person said something like; "Waaay different. the whole seat moves. It feels like the walls are moving... the whole room moves!".

Here's a visual:



Anyway, I retract my first declaration that TF III; DSOTM is filtered. I now believe that individual effects have been either designed with no ULF or filtered as part of their creation, but some are not, based on the SpecLab graphs. I also believe that the 3 movies in the series trend toward less and less ULF content, thus my 3.5 star rating, bumped to 4 stars by sheer amount of bass content.

Bosso

Film mixer,
Although I enjoyed the bass mix in Transformers 3, what I don't understand is why we can have films on Blu-Ray like Inception, which offered so much deep bass that I found it at times a bit distracting, and yet we have films like T3 and Thor, which pretty much offer more shallow plots in return for loads of action with superb graphics, and yet their bass tracks in comparison, at least to me, yielded less impact.

Ian

After reading through a few pages, I'd like to throw a couple of things out there:

1) I think we tend to listen at lower levels at home than what the local cinemas usually put out, and this skews our perception of what dynamic range the theater has. Personally, I find that I can set the volume lower because I don't need the dialogue to be as loud at home as they have it in the theater. At the theater, they have to overcome all sorts of noise: popcorn munching, patrons talking, etc. I think our ability to detect the difference between 75 db and 85 (possible levels for dialogue) is not nearly as sensitive as our ability to distinguish between 105 db and 115 (possible peak levels). Ergo, the overall volume at the theater could be higher than what we have at home, but we don't notice it very well because we assume the volume of the dialogue is the same. Thus we conclude that the dynamic range at the theater is higher. ... just a theory.

... of course, I'm sure plenty of people set their volume levels equally or excessively high than the theater, but I would think most of us don't.

2) Certain films can seem to have more bass than others because our rooms and system have uneven bass responses and certain films can focus in on certain frequencies more than others.

3) "X" usually stands for literally the letter 'X' or "cross", but not usually for "trans"

Cause that's what the director intended.

Hmmm.....I woudln't be so sure about that.



Ian

Why not just turn up the bass on your system until it becomes distracting?

Can someone say "Double Blind Level Matched Listen Test"

Bosso,

I'll get level-matched (to account for dialnorm) peak v average graphs this weekend for all 3 movies with bass management engaged, with anything below 200Hz sent to the sub out. Then we can see what each film really does....

Here are TF1 and TF2 not level matched:

Transformers:



Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen:




JSS

Man, I must not be paying attention or someone forgot to warn me about...

Hanna

I set it to '0' MV and bumped the SW +3dB, thinking little of it until Wham! Anyone ever see 8-15s trying to climb out of their boxes?

In no particular order:











I loved this movie and the <20 Hz content was very well done. Many more scenes available, I just captured a few to post here...

Bosso

I wish I understood what all that means :-/

I just got Hanna from Netflix, looks like fun

I posted a few waterfalls a while back. Was going to post more, but never got around to it.

Yeah, Hanna is very well done.

Guys,

What's the verdict on Green Lantern's LFE? Any ULF since it's been debated with such vigor lately

Basically wasted overkill.

Same here. Just got it yesterday and hope to give it a watch tonight.

The dog fight is cool but that's about it

I've been searching most of this thread for Speclab config but did not find it;
can anyone post it ?

thanks in advance! :-)

Yes the LFE in Hanna totally takes you by surprise......Very good

Watched Hanna the night after TF3. Interesting comparison...

As a result of this thread, rented TF3 (from Redbox - Bluray) and played it at just below reference. FUN movie, thin plot, lots of action and special effects. I thought both the audio and video were excellent. While there may not have been much sub 20hz material, it did not take away from the soundtrack for me.

However, MAJOR downgrade in the female lead MAJOR !!

The girl may be a downgrade from the neck up, but not from the neck down.

Wait, you mean this girl is even dumber than the last?

Someone needs an eye and pulse check.

I still think Megan Fox is far hotter.

I was only talking about looks.

I could settle for her if I had to

I don't know about you guys but I wouldn't kick either out of bed

Take a look at the old thread.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ight=waterfall

I didn't like fox in the second one either. I hate how the lips looks on this girl and she is a terrible actress. That's a lot of botox in those lips.