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The Low Frequency Content Thread (films, games, music, etc)


maxmercy

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Reasonable Doubt (5.1 DTS-HD MA)

 

Level        - 1 Star (102.3dB composite)

Extension - 5 Stars (1Hz)

Dynamics - 4 Stars (27.13dB)

Execution - 3 Stars (by poll)

 

Overall     - 3.25 Stars

 

Recommendation - Rent (by poll)

 

PvA:

 

post-17-0-30983300-1397093415_thumb.png

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The Book Thief (5.1 DTS-HD MA)

 

Level        - 2 Star (105.48dB composite)

Extension - 3 Stars (19Hz)

Dynamics - 5 Stars (35.92dB!!!)

Execution - 3 Stars (by poll)

 

Overall     - 3.25 Stars

 

Recommendation - Buy (by poll)

 

PvA:

 

post-17-0-58716700-1397099885_thumb.png

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Definitely not. I don't know where this started or why it continues to live on ....like small drivers having faster bass. :P

 

They mix to the standards of typical cinemas. Mains with dual 15's or better, often not bass managed (until very recently and often with newer installs) with extension on their own to 30-40hz. Surrounds with far less extension also not commonly bass managed. Then there is the bass system often of which is 2-4 18's or better and those are almost always tuned in the ~30hz region.

 

This is the standard for cinema. This is what is mixed to except maybe for near field which is more like studio monitors.

 

 

Btw, HTiB systems, like any brand name product, is packed in with self protection limiters of all sorts. They have to make them idiot proof. Now I'm not saying nobody has ever broken a small cheap HTiB system but it's not like it's happening left and right. Nobody with a HTiB watches BHD for good reason. :rolleyes:  Ugh.

 What really bothers me is when such agressive filters are used that effectively elinimates most LFE from the big blockbuster movies. And when the soundtracks are compressed as well so as to make them all but unpleasant to listen to at moderate volumes, that's really a thorn in my side. It seems to be a matter of matter of how loud can we make it. Or maybe I'm viewing it the wrong way.

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Metallica Through the Never (5.1 DTS-HD MA)

 

Level        - 4 Stars (112.27dB composite)

Extension - 2 Stars (24Hz)

Dynamics - 1 Stars (19.01dB)

Execution - 4 Stars (by poll
 

Overall     - 2.75 Stars

 

Recommendation - Buy (by poll)

 

PvA:

 

post-17-0-49875900-1397164343_thumb.png

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wth718:

 

Added [Rec] 2 to the list.  Any other measurement requests, folks?

Death race trilogy(part 3 is maybe 5 star movie) , hitman, eragon, minority report, odd thomas, sherlock holmes 1&2, king kong(peter jackson) 28 days later, 28 weeks later, avp, avp2, five days of war, babylon a.d, max payne, beowulf, resident evil 1-4

, the exorcism of emily rose, prince of persia: sands of time, real steel(god this movie sucks, but bass is good), piranha 3D, ninja assassin, windtalkers(dir cut), hellboy, rambo 4(theatrical vs extended, different mixes i've heard?), crank 1-2, mission impossible 1-4, trollhunter, valkyrie(tom cruise), melancholia, three of life, sinister, the island, sin city, smoking aces, toy story 2, wall-e, robocop(1987), solomon kane, happy feet, legend of guardians, blade 1-3, blade runner, :P 

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Sin City and AvP already measured.  The 2nd Sherlock Holmes was a huge disappointment compared to the first.  Robocop will not measure well, just like most films in the 80s.  Remember, THX was the FIRST to spec a subwoofer that could dig to 40Hz.  Before that, only Sensurround dug lower than 50-60Hz, and only for a bandwidth limited noise 'rumble' effect.  THX was first implemented in 1983, with Return of the Jedi.  It took time to get the bass out there.  Digital did more to expand the bandwidth than anything else, as all analog technologies were highpassed (to avoid wow/flutter/LF noise and to preserve headroom) and the old Dolby Digital and DTS theater mixes were essentially equal in quality to what you could get on DVD (using the space between sprocket holes to encode the 5.1 soundtrack), but they were the best thing since sliced bread (remember the Dolby Digital Train trailer in theaters)?.  Once dependence on the celluloid material itself was eclipsed (DTS was the pioneer in this, with the sync'ed CD player), true ULF could be encoded.  Now with digital projection, the only limitation is the audio playback system.  The foundation is there.  Before, it wasn't.

 

I know people get pissed when they see a blockbuster have the shelf filter profile.  But if you can't monitor the ULF, and the director/boss says 'LOUDER', then to avoid clipping the hell out of the track, you simply shelve off the ULF.  Instant 'headroom'.  You can then turn up the track louder, and compress it further until the director/boss gives the 'thumbs up'.....for all the grief we have given sound designers/editors/mixers, the directors are the ones which we should be complaining to, unless the studio execs are telling the directors what 'needs to happen'.....they are the final givers of the thumbs up.

 

JSS

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The Incredibles:

 

Level - 4 Stars (111.97dB composite)

Extension - 3 Stars (15Hz)

Dynamics - 5 Stars (29.61Hz)

Execution - 4 Stars (by poll)

 

Overall - 4.25 Stars

 

Recommendation - Buy (by poll)

 

Notes - Unfortunately, the center, left, right and LFE channels are riddled with clipped waveforms.

 

 

JSS

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I know people get pissed when they see a blockbuster have the shelf filter profile.  But if you can't monitor the ULF, and the director/boss says 'LOUDER', then to avoid clipping the hell out of the track, you simply shelve off the ULF.  Instant 'headroom'.  You can then turn up the track louder, and compress it further until the director/boss gives the 'thumbs up'.....for all the grief we have given sound designers/editors/mixers, the directors are the ones which we should be complaining to, unless the studio execs are telling the directors what 'needs to happen'.....they are the final givers of the thumbs up.

 

JSS

 

So what's the best way to have our voice heard? I've been occasionally posting that I won't buy certain titles (like The Hobbit) based soley on the high pass filter, but I don't think that really gets anywhere. Are we destined to just accept mediocre results and be pleasantly surprised when the results are good?

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So what's the best way to have our voice heard? I've been occasionally posting that I won't buy certain titles (like The Hobbit) based soley on the high pass filter, but I don't think that really gets anywhere. Are we destined to just accept mediocre results and be pleasantly surprised when the results are good?

Unfortunately, probably so. When you have review sites touting The Hobbit as having 5 star bass, our vocal minority is even less likely to be heard. But that's me being my normal pessimistic self.

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I have to agree.  Even on a recent review of Hobbit 2, there was mention of the lack of LF in Hobbit 1, but that the only people who would notice pour over bitrates and such.  Basically, a nice way to say that what we do here doesn't mean anything to most.

 

I am glad that we are getting more titles w/ ELF/ULF, but it would be nice if the big films could do it like some have.  Unfortunately, it looks like sequels will forever be destine to be filtered, the only exception I can think of is the Resident Evil flicks, they are all over the map bass-wise.

 

We could send mail to a director and let them know how we feel, but not sure that would get anywhere, esp past the mail openers I'm sure these guys have....I dunno.

 

Ideally, we would invite a director to a ULF-capable space and playback a film with and without a shelf.  I'm not sure if there are any ULF-capable screening rooms/stages anymore.  The only ones I was aware of FimMixer commented on, with 16 BagEnd selaed 18" subs handling LFE, and 2 sealed 18" subs under each LCR to monitor LF/ULF in the mains/center.  But I believe the stages he worked on changed to vented subs.  By my calculation, that stage when outfitted with those 22 18" subs had extension to the low teens, maybe even 10-12Hz.  After the switch, they lost at least an octave of monitoring capability.

 

JSS

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Please Please Please could you test (2006) The Hills Have Eyes **Remake A great horror remake especially the last 50mins of the movie 8)

Scenes I remember that might hit hard are 

 

1.The suicide shotgun blast

2.Doug in the freezer with the chopped up body parts (lol)

Be great to know what it measures :)

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 The 2nd Sherlock Holmes was a huge disappointment compared to the first.

 

Yup, pretty harsh clipped sounding mix (little hansel scene, omg.. my ears :wacko: ), still great extension, not quite same in level as first one though.

 

 Robocop will not measure well, just like most films in the 80s.

 

New 5.1 mix will measure pretty good, well maybe levels are something 3 around.

 

(remember the Dolby Digital Train trailer in theaters)?. 

 

Found this one of my old dvd's a while ago, not bad at all... still my favorite from all dolby trailers. :)

 

 

 

Thanks for all the requests, lfe man.  I added them to the spreadsheet list, even old Robocop and Blade Runner!

 

It feels like you're passing the torch.  ;)  We'll try to live up to the high standards you've set.

Thanks, here are few what i forgot to add.

 

District 9

Town

Blood creek

Don't be afraid of the dark(2010)

Monsters ws aliens

Outlander(clipping mess :o?,pretty good movie though)

Doom

Hulk

The One(jet li)

Machete

Cowboys & Aliens

Evil aliens(fun movie, with some good bass scenes)

Grazies(remake)

Sunshine(most clipping than any other movie that i know, still some good bass scenes and great movie)

3:10 to yuma(remake)

30 days of night

10000 B.C(this is good one, mammoths scene :D, movie? :unsure:)

Bee movie(tennis scene, very nice)

Constantine

Downfall

Domino

Top gun(dolby true hd ws dts-hd ma?)

Ghost in shell 2:Innocense(little known great randy thom mix)

The Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy(nuff said ;))

I robot

Ice age 1-4

The invasion

The Iron giant

Jurassic park 2-3

Limitless

Man of fire

The matador

Next

Planet terror(elevator scene,nuff said again ;))

Poseidon(remake)

Priest

Shoot 'em up

Shooter

Silent hill

Tear of the sun

The butcher(eric roberts, this have some very low gun shot bass)

Take shelter(watched this a while a go and it was good for bass and movie)

Below

 

Phew, thats all for now. :P

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Thanks again for the new requests.  I'll add them to the list in the coming days.

 

Start watching some movies, folks, and vote on them!  I'm going to have an avalanche of measurements from all the new requests that I was able to source locally, and we need to clear some space on the forums so there aren't so many movies hanging out waiting for more or tiebreaker votes.  Out of the Furnace and Frozen are two that come immediately to mind.

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Watched TH: TDoS last night & the LFE was a massive letdown, glad I had seen the graphs & kinda knew what to expect especially since the first was also a let down LFE wise, it's such a shame because the rest of the soundtrack obviously had a lot of love and attention poured over it.

The scenes with Smaug were where I really FELT the filter limiting the hard hitting, low bass that made the scene lack impact aurally. (I Loved the film, picture quality & rest of the sound design btw)

I do wonder if the future extended release will also have the same wildly different bass implementation on the new scenes that the first extended release had?

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Sin City and AvP already measured.  The 2nd Sherlock Holmes was a huge disappointment compared to the first.  Robocop will not measure well, just like most films in the 80s.  Remember, THX was the FIRST to spec a subwoofer that could dig to 40Hz.  Before that, only Sensurround dug lower than 50-60Hz, and only for a bandwidth limited noise 'rumble' effect.  THX was first implemented in 1983, with Return of the Jedi.  It took time to get the bass out there.  Digital did more to expand the bandwidth than anything else, as all analog technologies were highpassed (to avoid wow/flutter/LF noise and to preserve headroom) and the old Dolby Digital and DTS theater mixes were essentially equal in quality to what you could get on DVD (using the space between sprocket holes to encode the 5.1 soundtrack), but they were the best thing since sliced bread (remember the Dolby Digital Train trailer in theaters)?.  Once dependence on the celluloid material itself was eclipsed (DTS was the pioneer in this, with the sync'ed CD player), true ULF could be encoded.  Now with digital projection, the only limitation is the audio playback system.  The foundation is there.  Before, it wasn't.

 

I know people get pissed when they see a blockbuster have the shelf filter profile.  But if you can't monitor the ULF, and the director/boss says 'LOUDER', then to avoid clipping the hell out of the track, you simply shelve off the ULF.  Instant 'headroom'.  You can then turn up the track louder, and compress it further until the director/boss gives the 'thumbs up'.....for all the grief we have given sound designers/editors/mixers, the directors are the ones which we should be complaining to, unless the studio execs are telling the directors what 'needs to happen'.....they are the final givers of the thumbs up.

 

JSS

 

John. This is an excellent post.

 I wish it could be auto-posted here and over at AVS once a week, every week. :)

 

So what's the best way to have our voice heard? I've been occasionally posting that I won't buy certain titles (like The Hobbit) based soley on the high pass filter, but I don't think that really gets anywhere. Are we destined to just accept mediocre results and be pleasantly surprised when the results are good?

 

Ummm... Let's just say I am working on this. ;) At least to the best of my ability.

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