The New Master List of BASS in Movies with Frequency Charts - Page 7

Woot, thread sticky!

X-men in our local theater was also loud with a lot LFE. The russian jet flyover sound seemed really realistic, I live near an AFB. I'm looking forward to the Blu-ray release.

That's weird, it seems some locations got good LFE for X-Men First Class, others didn't.

Glad you liked Godzilla. I hear there's supposed to be a new Godzilla coming out next year, I hope it'll be cgi again.

Talking about monster movies, I hear Super 8 which comes out tomorrow at theaters is a monster movie. It's directed by the same guy that did Cloverfield, so maybe it'll have awesome LFE?

I'm finally going to watch Thor tomorrow night, hoping the LFE is as good as you all are saying.

I have very high hopes for it. Anna Behlmer and Andy Nelson are listed in the sound department as re-recording mixers. They both worked on Cloverfield

Battle: Los Angeles this Tuesday this movie has LFE written all over it. Review is up on Hi Def Digest looks promising.

Just for clarification...

Matt Reeves directed Cloverfield and Let Me In.

JJ Abrams directed Mission Impossible 3, Start Trek and Super 8. He produced Cloverfield.

Yay! Glad to see this one back in action.

How to understand waterfall diagrams. I noticed red spots in the low frequency band. What is meant by these colors? Not sure what does it mean to go from top to bottom.

In laymen's terms, just look at the color chart like you would a weather radar. Red means louder (db) bass just like reds indicated stronger storms.

A point of clarification is needed in post#1:

It lists these as 5-star:
The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring
The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

From my understanding, it's only the extended editions that are 5-star. The versions that are currently out on Blu-ray are NOT the extended editions and therefore don't have the 5-star bass. But the extended versions are coming out June 28, 2011.

That waterfall is missing the color scale, so you really can't tell anything from it. Here's one with the color scale, this one is from the Godzilla blu-ray:


At the left you see the color scale, my scale has the blacks at -70db to -58db, blues at -56db to -50db, light blue at -46db to -48db, greens at -32db to -44db, yellow from -28db to -30db, and finally red from 0db to -26db.

With this scale you'd want to see reds in the chart but you also want some yellows and greens as this range (0db to -44db) will give you a nice dynamic LFE experience. A dynamic LFE experience is one in which loud scenes sound/feel loud and scenes that shouldn't be as loud aren't. A huge spaceship crashing into a planet should be very loud, while a human's footstep should obviously be less loud.

If the chart were filled with greens and barely any yellow or reds, that movie would be considered poor for LFE and shouldn't be rated higher than 2 stars. As you can see from my chart it has plenty of reds, yellow, and greens, but unfortunately it barely has any LFE below 35hz. That's not a good thing because LFE below 35hz increases the LFE experience. Even though most humans can't hear below 20hz, you can most definitely feel the pressure it produces.

Earthquakes for example produce sound below 20hz, which is why most people feel an earthquake before they can hear it.

Because the movie lacks LFE below 35hz it should get a rating penalty of at least 1 star. What could have easily been a 4, maybe 4.5 star bass movie is pushed down to 3, maybe 3.5 stars.

As for going from top to bottom, things near the top of the chart are more recent than things near the bottom of the chart. The chart I posted has events that happened a minute before the events at the top. Likewise the events at the middle happened around 30 seconds before the top events.

To get a better understanding you can download Speclab here:
http://dl4yhf.ssl7.com/speclab/install_speclab.zip

After you install it, run it and play an mp3. If you're interested in helping us analyse movies for LFE, try these settings for a start:
croseiv's settings part 1
croiseiv's settings part 2
croiseiv's settings part 3


Watched it last night, definite 5 star LFE There was also a scene after the credits, I think it gives an idea of who the villan, or at least one of the villans, will be in the Avengers movie.

This one from Unbreakable isn't... the color scale hasn't changed between the two:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...breakable1.jpg

True, just pointing out to Sukumar the importance of the color scale.
That waterfall is interesting, it's very rare to see so much LFE focused on the 15hz to 26hz range. If you don't have subs that go that low, and then you go see the movie at a friend's place with subs that can, the experience would be completely different.

Yes indeed. I didn't even know it was there... the last time I'd watched Unbreakable was well before I had anything like a decent subwoofer.

Thanks a lot for providing detailed explanation. I installed tool and playing with it and it is very interesting.

I had bought Paradigm Studio 100 speakers. I am in the process buying either Paradigm Sub 12 or 15. I am creating home theater as hobby;-). I will explore the tool an will ask for any help.

Bought a new HT speakers system, a SVS 5.1 with a PC12-NSD and I stumble across this thread for bass heavy movies. Just want to thank the OP for providing such a good list.

WOTW and Cloverfield kick ass!


Keep up the good work.


PS Saw Thor in Theater, a potential 5-star when it comes out on blu ray.

I am both shocked and hurt that Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World is not in the 4-5 star range even more so that it is not on the list. This is one of the most impressive movies for Bass that I have seen and owned.
So yeah, please add it to the list. I give it a 4.5 start with ease.

I think the Unstoppable soundtrack uses LFE about as effectively as any I've ever heard. In earlier years I spent a lot of time in rail yards and on and around locomotive engines, and Unstoppable sounded like what I had heard then, to the life. Unstoppable is high on my list of all time best soundtracks.

I agree that Scott Pilgrim was silly but I kind of liked it and it does, indeed, have GREAT LFE.

I assume the release for tomorrow you are talking about is Battle: Los Angeles. I didn't see it in the theater but have heard that it has a wonderful soundtrack. Despite my reservations about the quality of the film dramatically, I have reserved the BD at my neighborhood Blockbuster for tomorrow.

Blockbuster still exists?

Dish recently bought Blockbuster's assets and installed a new management team. They then had to make new deals with the studios for discs. It took a while but BB is now back on an even keel and providing better customer service than at any time in recent memory. Netflix still does better at getting out new discs to replace returned ones but their policy is not to buy newly released BD editions of classic old films, which means you can't get any of the newly released Criterion BDs from them. Thus, these days BB carries many BDs that NF doesn't have. My solution was to dump NF, return to BB and hope that BB survived. So far, at least, the change back to BB has been good for me.

It's at least a 4.5 star in my opinion, lacking only in extension. Indeed, The Haunting doesn't go all that low either, and it's a fiver. I need to check this one out again soon.

Battle LA... might be skipping that one. Not decided yet. Heard it's a terrible movie, but then again I have two 16Hz tapped horns now. Might make up for it

I can hardly wait to see Battle: LA. I have heard that it is dumb but I don't mind dumb films if they are loud and exciting and have great production values, including a terrific soundtrack with first class LFE.


I get at least 95 percent of the BDs I see under a BB or NF subscription, depending on whom I am signed up with at the time. For that reason, I am very, very selective about which BD movies I buy. I think I am going to buy Unstoppable, though, because of its wonderful audio.

I actually recently purchased Unstopable as whim without watching it instead of seeing a movie at the theater. I am very pleased with this spontaneous buy.
Great sound and a good movie to boot.

Same here! Very much looking forward to the waterfall plots for B:LA

That's all the reason you need, Wolf.