The New Master List of BASS in Movies with Frequency Charts - Page 64

As a lurker here who enjoys the thread but has little to contribute, mainly because I don't share your guys' extreme love of extreme bass, I'm intrigued by any mention of "realism" and I agree with your comments above.

No matter how big nor good our subs, no matter how powerful our amps, we will never, fortunately, achieve 'realistic' impressions of things like explosions and earthquakes, or even gun shots.

I had the misfortune to be within 50 metres of a terrorist bomb explosion some years ago. The noise was so loud that it was literally deafening. I could not hear properly for at least 48 hours and my hearing has never totally recovered to where it was before. Also, at the same time, the force of the blast literally picked me up and hurled me many metres distant. You will never get that in a home theatre, and nor would you want it, for obvious reasons! Similarly, if you achieved anything even approaching a 'realistic' earthquake, then your house would actually shake and probably fall down. That is what happens in earthquakes. And even those gun shots you hear in your HT are not realistic - if they were, then you'd have to wear ear defenders just like guys have to do on the shooting range to prevent permanent hearing loss or damage. Same with an aircraft taking off - when Bruce leaps onto the undercarriage as the 747 takes off, his hearing would be gone for all time. He would be totally, permanently deaf. So when we watch a scene like that sure it sounds absolutely great in a good HT - but no way is it even remotely 'realistic' and nor would we want it to be.

Yes it appears obvious, and that's only because it was obvious upon popping in the BR version and listening. And, anyone who couldn't hear the difference immediately should not be rating soundtracks, especially ones that contain as renowned a scene as this one, IMHO, YMMV.



Bosso

I would agree with milkfat and the statement above...Iam more interested in realism of a scene...I understand that its not possible to have 100% realism, but its nice to get as close as possible at reasonable levels...but there are scenes in movies where the bass is very extreme but IMO, not appropiate...Bass heads luv it...I do to from a bass stand point, but it still leaves me shaking my head, why in the heck was that put in there??

Yeah - it's all about enjoyment really. Whatever floats your boat is good - after all it's your HT, you paid for it etc. I'm no bass head - I like a good level of performance from my single SVS subwoofer, but the lack of what I perceive to be 'true' bass doesn't spoil my enjoyment of an otherwise good film. For example, I think some guys didn't enjoy Transformers 3 because it didn't have bass down into single figures, but I thought that, on the whole, it had one of the very best sound tracks I have ever heard. In terms of clarity, dynamics, precision and so on it was reference material IMO.

Often I think, as you do, that the bass has been put in there 'just because they can'. I've never heard car doors slam in such a way they shake the surrounding buildings for instance And when someone punches someone on the head, it does NOT have a huge deep bass component in real life! But yeah, I enjoy it even though I know it is all very far from 'realistic'. I can get realism in everyday life - when I watch a movie I want to enter a different world for a couple of hours.

Nice descriptor

I'm a bass-head as much as most who hang out here, but I find that it isn't necessary to have room-shuddering bass in every action scene in order to enjoy a movie. Of course Super 8 does not exrecise your subs the way WOTW or Cloverfield does, but the scenes in the movie are fun and well-recorded despite that fact.

I think you'll find that Cowboys and Aliens will give you the fix you need.

Unless one has his infrasonics blinders on, higher level bass content all the way up to 60 Hz is obviously missing from your Bluray waterfall. To my eyes it looks like the LFE track is missing from the Bluray. Not sure if that means a hardware or software problem.

I am also confused by the fact that Roger Dressler says that the M&C Bluray audio is better than the DVD since he knows what he is talking about.

It's all a crazy conspiracy, man! The evil housewives have grown sick of our bassery and were able to convince 20th Century Fox to neuter M&C. Since, as manly men, we no longer refer to our movies by name and now abreviation... it was the only movie they could remember off hand.

And that's how the mighty Goliath was brought down...

RIP Master and Commander

"Bassery" for some reason that just made me snort my coffee. nice one. lol

The "audio" is not only about bass. Perhaps the Bluray audio in general is better even if the heavier bass is lacking. We here are fixated on bass with this being a subwoofer forum and all, but in the rest of the world, there is more to the audio track than just the deep bass.

Exactly and for those playing the home game, one would notice that in each post I've ever mentioned the BD of M&C I've mentioned how much better the lossless DTS-MA is over the lossy stuff on disc. If the bass had not had it's balls cut off, it would be perfect.

I'll just say that if there is a problem it's definitely software related. And then there is the French dubbed version on the BR, which has what appears to be a completely different 3rd audio version.

It would be great if Roger could post his in-room FR. Then we might get to the crux of his "better" comment. Otherwise, it's nothing more than a subjective review.

Bosso

Ask him. He posted about M&C yesterday on a new M&C thread in the subwoofer section.


Subjective comment by RD:

"I have both the DVD and the BD. The BD is indeed stunning. Very few systems can reveal the difference in the bass. Mine can, but the DVD is no fun to watch after the BD."


http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...3#post21267743

I agree. I watched the Super 8 BD last night and thought the sound design of its 7.1 soundtrack was terrific. That said, the lower end of its LFE track was curiously lacking, most noticeably so during the train wreck scene. As good as the rest of the film's sound was, I can't figure why its low end fell short but there it is.

FWIW, I thought Roger was saying he preferred the BluRay despite the audio mishaps, which I took to mean he liked the picture better. Would not be the first (or even second) time I was wrong.

And, Bosso, thanks for the way you keep things real around here. Even though I'm not a bottom dweller at this point, I get a lot out of your posts.

Was not expecting that bass in Hanna when the house gets raided lol

Well, scott, it turned there was something wrong with my settings.

I put on the usual demo movies and they didn't sound like i remember. LFE was lacking. I couldn't figure out what it was. So i chalked it up to me "looking for a problem so i expect a problem".

Today i decided to do more test. I put on X-Men FC. That movie has some amazing lows when magneto does his thing. I played the beginning when young magneto crushes the bell. It was average. I didn't remember it sounding like this! Something is definitely wrong! What made me check a certain setting was that my front right speaker was rattling at that part. I removed the grill and listened and it was the driver rattling.

The heck? Why is rattling i say to myself. So i go into my speaker setting to try a higher Xover to see if that would relieve it. What do i find? The Xover is set to 50hz!!!!!!!!! And i have a pioneer elite SC37 so ALL speakers including the sub is crossed at 50hz!!!!!!!! I was missing a ton of LFE information that my speakers cant obviously handle. I raised it back to 100hz (i would like 80hz but like i said the pioneers dont do individual Xovers so i use 100hz for the sub) and everything sounded great again. The magneto lows pressurized my room. I have no idea how the settings changed to 50hz.

I looked over at my super 8 case shaking my head thinking what the hell did i miss? I played the train scene again and while i still agree it doesn't go that low, it sounded so much better than before. I missed alot. Before the train comes and they show the track the LFE was so low in volume. Now with fixed settings it much more louder. LFE throughout the whole movie sound 10x better. I have to watch it again.

So i guess my comment about the train scene still stands a little bit but it sounds way better than before. LFE was there but not the kind this thread about.

Check your settings!!!!!!!!!!

The train wreck was freaking colossal. ULF or not.

Colossal.

James

Watched Super 8 and Capt. America back to back. Super 8 may have been lacking in the deep lows but by my ears the sound was much better then Capt. and it seems like my subs were working much harder during many scenes in Super 8 compared to Capt. By the way, thought super 8 overall sounded amazing.

No, Battle LA was colossal:



Train wreck is Epic, as in Epic Fail:




Bosso

Bosso, why do you even bother to turn your mains on? It seems as though all those highs that come out would only annoy you.

Bosso -- I agree that Battle LA's LFE was spectacular and that Super 8's was not. As noted in an earlier post, though, thought the overall sound design of Super 8 was excellent, which made its inadequate low end even more frustrating and disappointing.

You could always start a Master List Of TREBLE in Movies With Frequency Charts thread and let me know how that turns out.

Calling the scene Colossal is stretching it 'til the lens cracks. And, to remind you, the movie was 110 more minutes than the train wreck. When the military was tanking through the town, being obliterated by homing missiles, the sound (and video) was like a home movie.

Bosso

There is no crime to turning up the sub level for movies that are mixed a little light on the bass. While that won't miraculously produce ultra-low content if none exists, it will bring the mix back into harmony. Your waterfalls show that there is content extending to and slightly below 20hz, but the level is not that high. Turn it up. The same thing applies to music as well.

If the cook didn't use enough salt, then sprinkle on some salt.

Unfortunate analogy since there is not too much worse for you than too much salt (sodium) !

I would applaud a cook for undersalting rather than over salting. It's easy to add salt, but you can't really remove it.

It would be really nice if we could enhance this already awesome effort to include time stamps for the heaviest sequence of bass in a film so people could FF to that scene(presumably before watching the whole movie) and dial in their bass levels. This would also provide some assistance for folks with DIY subs who like to run right up to clipping or mechanical limits without potential damage.

Further enhancement would be a way to measure the levels of some commonly accepted scenes like inception-dunk, WOTW-emerge, and assign like a + or - db rating to new movies. This would give a heads up for folks to expect the mix to be "x" many dbs from what those benchmarks produce.

1. Scene time stamps for heaviest bass scene
2. Possibly a +/- db rating system for folks who want to bump/trim their sub levels.

Has this ground been plowed before?

Narnia 3 - don't know how this hasn't been waterfalled yet, but I'll get a few tomorrow hopefully. Easy 4.5 stars on this one, particularly the storm at sea, dragon attack, and sea monster scenes. Made good use of the tapped horns.

I bought the BR+DVD combo pack, so I'll be yanking the waterfalls off the DVD copy's Dolby Digital. Hope it's not too much different from the DTS-MA LFE.

What's wrong with a slight raise in your blood pressure? Isn't that what all that deep bass is about?



Ian