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minnjd

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Everything posted by minnjd

  1. minnjd
    I've noticed there's a new crop of Skywalker Sound guys that have been working on the last few Pixar movies, and none of them seem to have the same fetish for bass as previous designers like Gary Rydstrom and Randy Thom (and to a lesser extent Tom Myers). The soundtracks are still very nice from a technical standpoint and are well produced, but it's been a long time since they've had anything as memorable, bass wise, as Darla tapping on the glass or the sock detonation from Monsters Inc.
  2. minnjd
    That's the same impression I got. Hell there's a plugin from Waves Audio that can take a 5 channel track and synthesize an octave shifted LFE channel out of it. I knew something was up when the opening song had an annoyingly loud 30Hz synth bass running though it. It just didn't sound natural. Not sure if it's worth doing a poll on this one but I'd give it a 2 at best for execution.
  3. minnjd
    By request: The Neverending Story-Warner Bros. DTS-HD MA 5.1 Supervising Sound Editor: Mike Le Mare Re-Recording Mixers: Milan Bor, Trevor Pyke Level: 3 Stars (108.02dB) Extension: 3 Stars (19Hz) Dynamics: 3 Stars (24.99dB) A lot of people (myself included) have a soft spot for this movie due to watching it countless times while growing up. So it was good news when Warner Bros. decided to put out a decent Blu-Ray of the movie. While the picture quality is good, what is more surprising is the heavy bass contained on the soundtrack. This movie was originally released in Dolby Stereo, so the 5.1 soundtrack is obviously a processed affair. And it appears that part of that processing was a significant level of bass enhancement. This movie goes louder and deeper than any early 80's movie has a right to. While it's not a foundation mover, it does dig under 20Hz with decent authority at times. On top of that there is no clipping in sight, as the levels never go near 0 dB and there are no flattops in the waveforms. That being said there's no escaping the fact that this is a soundtrack originally designed in the early 80's on analog equipment. The dynamics are pretty flat and the soundstage is narrow and messy on occasion. And while the bass levels may be high on paper, subjectively it doesn't sound particularly good. Big events have an absurd amount of booming 20-30Hz thunder to them. It's loud, but it's flabby as all hell and overwhelming at times. I ended up turning my sub down to enjoy the movie. Loud bass is one thing, but the wet thunder farts all over this remix are a bit much.
  4. minnjd
    Finding Dory-Pixar/Disney DTS-HD MA 7.1 Sound Design: Tim Nielsen Supervising Sound Editor: Steve Slanec Re-Recording Mixers: Michael Semanick, Nathan Nance Level: 1 Star (104.53dB) Extension: 3 Stars (16Hz) Dynamics: 5 Stars (31.65dB) Polite.......That's the best word to describe the soundtrack to Pixar's latest eye candy extravaganza. At no point will this track threaten your sound system or annoy the neighbors. It doesn't sound bad per se, but compared to some of Pixar's past thunderhouses (Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo) it's definitely a step down when it comes to low end. There are a few moments where the bass gets a bit more active (the kiddie touch pool), but even then it's more of a noticeable rumble than anything really impressive. Soundtrack quality is quite good for the most part. The overall volume level is pretty low (I had to turn it up about 5dB above my usual setting) and clipping is absent outside of a few isolated (and brief) incidents in the center channel during shouting matches. Like I said before, it's a decent, competent and polite sound mix. However.....there were several opportunities that called for strong impactful bass and it wasn't there, so when the movie ended I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed.
  5. minnjd
    FYI I'll be picking up Finding Dory soon. Will get the numbers up for that.
  6. minnjd
    I second this one. Most movies I've watched do not have much in the way of deep bass, as all things considered it's still not that common of a thing. I haven't been too active on the measuring front lately due to time and a general lack of enthusiasm for any movie released recently. As far as focusing on one thing, well that's pretty much what this forum is for. I doubt anybody would deny that we focus on bass maybe too much, but that's the fun stuff so why not?
  7. minnjd
    Holy crap that looks like something out of the 90's
  8. minnjd
    Well you aren't wrong. Good theater sound systems are expensive and most chains aren't going to spend the money unless there is some kind of benefit. Premium theaters can be worth the money, I saw The Force Awakens in a SDX (or something, can't exactly remember) theater and the sound system was actually really good. Did have to pay a premium but in that case it was money well spent.
  9. minnjd
    Yes, high intensity low bass does eat up bandwidth. That being said, you're right in stating that the Hobbit is a real oddball. Until someone involved in the actual sound mixing pipes in we'll never know for sure why that movie was so weak bass-wise compared to LOTR (despite having most of the same sound crew working in the same facility).
  10. minnjd
    Odds are some theater owners complained that ST didn't have enough of that 'slam' bass audiences love so much. Plus it probably fried a couple of theater sub systems if what Max says is true (about them neglecting to use limiter circuits)
  11. minnjd
    Think you hit the nail on the head there. I'd be curious to see if Zac Snyder's sound crew changed between Man of Steel and BvS. Nolan swapped out Lora Hirschberg with Gregg Landaker after Inception and that's when his soundtracks started going south..... Edit: And I don't think it would be out of the way to claim that Transformers 5 will probably be even louder and more filtered/clipped
  12. minnjd
    That sounds great in theory but I'm pretty sure most professional mixers are quite well aware of the benefit of infrasound. It's simple economics at play: commercial theaters don't go much under 30hz. Why are audio post facilities going to spend thousands of dollars extra on infrasound monitoring when virtually no theater gets any benefit to it? You can argue all day how much those low frequencies add to the experience (a lot, admittedly) at home, but to the money guys there is no reason to pony up when your primary customer (movie theaters) doesnt use it. From the sounds of it several mixing rooms used to have ULF ability but it was likely removed for similar reasons: theaters can't play the material, so why spend the maintenance and power costs for ULF playback? I'm pretty sure getting single Hz playback in a theater space is not easy or cheap. For the record I do like soundtracks with no filters that extend into the low depths. But I also understand that I (and by extension other members of this forum) are distinctly in the minority so I don't expect any favors from re-recording mixers. Which is why it's a nice treat when it happens.
  13. minnjd
    They probably do near field mixes with a system that reflects the majority of what's out there, i.e. cheaper HTIB ones. Much as we wish otherwise the vast majority of listeners do not have good subwoofers. I'm not arguing whether this approach is artistically 'right' (I'd argue it isn't) but we're not making the business decisions at the studios.
  14. minnjd
    I'm going more with happy accident...
  15. minnjd
    Gotta admit I'm surprised to see that graph for BvS.
  16. minnjd
    Usually trailers all sound the same to me: big dramatic 40Hz bass booms and sine ramps. But I've had that happen before where the trailers sounded decent on bass and then the main feature started and the bass vanished. Most commercial theater chains probably have roving groups of calibration techs that only visit a particular theater every few months. If something goes wrong in the meantime, you're SOL. If you want to be positive you can just say Star Trek had a lot of really deep, clean bass that the theater couldn't reproduce .
  17. minnjd
    Most trailers have obnoxiously loud and one dimensional bass so it's not unusual for even crappy theaters to show some amount of low end during them.
  18. minnjd
    Yeah. Saw the first twenty minutes and the last half hour of Man of Steel. Thought it sucked and it looks like BvS is more of the same. Call me nostalgic but Superman isn't supposed to be a morose pouter.
  19. minnjd
    Personally I have no interest in the movie so I can't really justify buying it just to run the numbers.
  20. minnjd
    When you run the analysis there will be two traces that appear. The larger of the two is the maximum instantaneous peak signal and the smaller one is the average signal.
  21. minnjd
    That's only about a 20Hz extension. Not too impressive these days.......
  22. minnjd
    They post a PvA graph?
  23. minnjd
    It's built by geeks for geeks but non-geeks (or borderline geeks like me) can use it well enough to get what we need
  24. minnjd
    Deadpool? No, I wouldn't let a kid watch that. Lots of F bombs and graphic violence.
  25. minnjd
    There might be more than one filter in effect. There's a noticeable dropoff below 30Hz but then it looks like it hits a shelved high pass at 10Hz.
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