minnjd

Left hand side is the amplitude of the digital signal (with '0' at the top being the highest it can possibly go).  The bottom is the frequency.

Summarizing that graph: the loudest bass is -20dB at 40Hz, and it drops fast under that (10dB lower is about half as loud to your ears, so the bass at 20Hz is over half the volume of the bass at 40Hz).  So ultimately you will not be blown away by any part of the low end in Shang-Chi.  It's all relatively high in the frequency range, and not all that loud.

Shang-Chi in the theater was nothing to write home about, but it was better than Black Widow and Eternals.  All the Marvel movies released this year have been rather poor, bass wise.

So who's gonna be the brave one who get's to compare the DTS DVD of The Haunting with the new Bluray?

Personally, I don't think it'll measure up.  The DVD used a discreet 6.1 mix created specifically for the disc by DTS, whereas the Bluray has a 5.1 soundtrack (the original theatrical release was 5.1 EX) and there's a long standing rumor that DTS really pumped up the LFE effects for it's 6.1 mix.

I actually stole that from HD Digest, I haven’t seen the movie 😬

I did see Rise of Skywalker though. Pretty good soundtrack (once again it had nice use of bass for the Force events), although there was one part where either the theater sound system overloaded or the track itself has massive, farty distortion.

Ad Astra.  Might be worth a spin for the rumbly feeling.

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I did recently see evidence that some, maybe all Dolby AC3 (i.e. "Dolby Digital") encoded tracks are low-pass filtered at 20 kHz, and for a lot of listeners and systems, this could have as much or more impact on the sound quality as the lossy encoding.  So I guess LPFing at the top is one thing that can be objectively assessed.

Dolby Digital is perfectly capable of encoding bass all the way down to 3Hz or so.  Look at some of the early 00's DVD releases that had DD soundtracks.  Some of them hit pretty low.

I think it's really insulting and dismissive to automatically claim that the engineers that work on these releases are incompetent.

I'm not saying that there aren't incompetent people in audio, as there most certainly are.  But in many cases these guys are doing the job that was given to them.

Look, as much as we might want to think otherwise, people with capable home theaters are NOT the vast majority of the buying public.  HTIB and sound bars in a noisy living room rule the market.  So they squash the heck out of the dynamics so those people don't complain about having to constantly adjust the volume.  People with capable home theaters can't compete with those numbers, and to be brutally realistic we shouldn't have any expectation that they will.  Right or wrong that's just the way it works.

Don't misunderstand, I wish things were different too.  I wish they didn't filter sub 20Hz material just so they can overcrank the midbass (looking at you Blade Runner 2049).  But we have to be realistic at some point.

Complain about the quality of the soundtrack all you want, but don't assume that it's automatically because of incompetent engineers.

Looks like proof positive that all these mixes are created by different teams, each with a slightly different idea of what they should sound like.  And it's unlikely the director or lead sound engineer is involved (unless you're someone like Christopher Nolan).

The bathroom wallpaper in my grandparents old house was covered with ads like that one (along side miracle fat removers and hair elimination).  One could easily spend an hour or more taking a dump with that distraction

They also ultimately answer to the director.  If he wants it louder sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.

FOTR always had a hot soundtrack, even in the theaters.

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I was actually surprised at how many problems I heard throughout, some of which were quite embarrassing.  In hindsight, it's kind of remarkable that this was treated as a reference in its time.  

That's still happening today.  Lot's of people think The Dark Knight Rises has a great soundtrack.

Mission Impossible Fallout.  Looks like a killer.

I'm gonna break my geek out and say that they were orbiting a planet and even at that distance there is still minuscule amounts of atmospheric drag, so technically a ship without any propulsion could slow down.

On 6/25/2018 at 4:01 PM, Infrasonic said:

Lol yeah. All us crotchety geezers still postin. ?

Hey, James! *waves* Nice to see you around too!

 

 

I can't get this glorious blaring music loud enough in 2049, man. ?

 

Not even close. ?

 

 

A visit with the DRC fairy might alleviate the issues you're having with this particular movie and/or composer.

DRC faeries aren't real.?

I finally got around to watching my Blu-Ray of Blade Runner 2049.

Like in the theater, lots of bass.  Most of it hovered above 30Hz but it was definitely weighty and sounded pretty good.

But I did run across an acronym that is really appropriate for this movie (plus Interstellar and TDKR):

ZIHL, or 'Zimmer Induced Hearing Loss'. 

Good lord was the music fucking loud.  And not for short amounts of time either.  One sustained synth tone had to be red lining in multiple channels and it went on, continuously, for over ten seconds.  There was no modulation, no variation, just "BWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH"

Something's wrong with your mixing when I have to lower my volume for that but can keep it constant through gunshots, spinner crashes and explosions.

The difference in levels at 20Hz between Star Trek and JP is best described as the difference between a mosquito fart and an earthquake.

Can't take credit for that one.  Read it years ago and never forgot it ?

Sheesh, looks like the soundtrack is nothing but bass.  And lots of it.

On 5/25/2018 at 1:35 PM, Pradeep said:

It was JP1, MrGrey posted the graphs from all four of the 4k releases on avs and 1 and 2 both have rapid rolloff starting at 30Hz. Moreso than the bluray versions. Maybe it can be recovered once you guys have done your magic 3 and 4 look pretty solid.

There might not be much recoverable with 1 and 2.  They were mixed on analog consoles in the early to mid 90's.  Infransonic content didn't start appearing in movies until around 1999.  JP3 was release in 2002

I think you're right on how sound is done.  It's all ProTools these days, and it stores everything including the mixing desk automation.

However I question just how much effort these studios put into their home mixes.  Do they actually take the time to remix the entire film for home viewing or do they just slap some EQ and dynamics processing on the theatrical track and call it a day?  Take a look at The Force Awakens; there is no good reason for a -3dB limiter other than the fact that they were looking for a cheap way of reducing the dynamic range and that was the solution.  That's why I think the amount of bass filtering in home releases is almost always the same (or worse) than the theatrical track, rarely is it better.

Of course it would be a lot easier to figure out if we could just get a peek at a PvA graph for an actual theatrical track.  The Blu-Ray of The Game doesn't count since the theatrical and home mixes on that release were done so far apart (and with completely different mixing setups I would imagine).

For We Were Soldiers (and Master and Commander to boot) appear to have been filtered for BD release, if the original theatrical track is filtered then there's not much a home mix can do about it I would imagine.  

I'm gonna start calling that the 'slope of terror'.

Looks very similar, just louder.

On 2/13/2018 at 4:19 PM, MrEdge said:

Hans Zimmer: Live in Prague (2017) Bass Graph
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/113-subwoofers-bass-transducers/2763785-ultimate-list-bass-movies-w-frequency-charts-153.html#post55415006

That's not surprising.  Zimmer's style of scoring is almost all bass.  Anything else is a garnish

Hmm, that looks pretty meaty

Just remember it may not hard clip much but we've seen more than a few tracks that clip heavily at -.5 dBfs due to overzealous use of a limiter.

Not trying to be negative nancy but it's a good thing to remember

Now this HAS to be a new record for 30Hz peak content.  I'm gonna guess it's from the musical 'score' foghorn blasts since there are peaks at roughly every octave.

But that is one steep filter at 30Hz.  There's really nothing of substance under 18Hz