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minnjd

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Everything posted by minnjd

  1. minnjd
    Nope. But it does well enough for what it is . I'm guessing the first time mark is when the naval bombardment starts.
  2. minnjd
    I don't think there's any particular scene. You look at the PvA and the average graph looks almost identical in shape to the peak graph. I think this soundtrack is a perfect case study on how to mix loud bass that still has incredible depth to it. It doesn't look like they used a HPF anywhere in the mixing.
  3. minnjd
    Sure sounded like one too. This sucker goes DEEP.
  4. minnjd
    The ratio of recent movies with real ULF is about the same as it's been for the last fifteen years, more or less. I think what's risen is the number of high profle movies you would expect to have powerful bass but end up being completely gimped (ST: or the flipside: movies we didn't expect much out of that ended up having a good amount of junk in the trunk (BvS). On the good side it looks like the loudness war is abating, at least a bit. Of course we have movies coming from both Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan this year so we'll see if that war is really over or just dormant. As far as whether a sealed system is worth it........I would love to have one, but it's just not in the cards right now. So I settle for my ported sub that's tuned to 16Hz. It can't plumb the real deep stuff, but it goes low enough that I can hear (and feel) a major difference between movies like Spectre and Hacksaw Ridge.
  5. minnjd
    I'm waiting to see if they fixed that idiot limiter from TFA. So much headroom was lost (and clipping introduced) due to that.
  6. minnjd
    What? That's way better than the first avengers.
  7. minnjd
    Just watched Hacksaw Ridge at low volume cause the kids were sleeping. Even then all I can say is holy balls this film has some serious low end. And it sounds deep. I'll get a poll up soon
  8. minnjd
    I don't know for sure, but I think it was a happy combination of ProTools, digital mixing boards and digital masters. Prior to all of those, the equipment was still based on analog tape and signal paths, I remember reading a story from Jurassic Park on how even though Gary Rydstrom used digital sampling and processing on his dinosaur sounds, they ended up being transferred to analog tape for the editing and mixing sessions. Even final mixes were recorded out to analog tape. Fun fact: According to the Criterion Bluray, The Thin Red Line (another '98 war movie) was mixed to magnetic six track tape, even though it's a full 5.1 surround mix. Long story short, analog stinks when it comes to ULF, so if there was any to begin with it likely got scooped out by a hardwired filter somewhere in the signal chain. Around 1998-1999 is when ProTools really started to worm it's way into studios (Livin La Vida Loca was the first fully ProTools hit single and it was in '98 I think). Being that it was fully digital it could retain all that ULF that sound FX editors were creating when they pitched stuff down or ran it through those brand new Waves Audio digital subharmonic generators. Then the analog mixing boards started to be replaced by digital boards, and the same thing happened there. Then the analog masters turned into PCM masters, and boom, all that lovely ULF finally made it through. I seriously doubt most monitoring stages could reproduce any of this stuff at first, but a few probably could (like Skywalker Sound). I really doubt the internet had anything to do with it. Remember these people mix for movie theaters. They can't do ULF for crap, so I still don't think most film mixers really care too much about it. Thankfully some seem to though, and they leave the high pass off when they mix.
  9. minnjd
    Maybe. It helps to put things in perspective though...... ULF didn't really start showing up until The Phantom Menace in 1999. Prior to that it was rare to see anything of substance under 30Hz, let alone 20Hz. Then it took a few more years after that before the real heavy hitters started coming out. Saving Private Ryan was released in 1998. So even though the sound mix is still pretty spectacular, it will never have the bass impact or power of something like Hacksaw Ridge or War of the Worlds, mostly because that ULF was never there to begin with. A 22Hz extension in a 1998 movie is actually fairly decent and better than most. As far as that review, it's purely subjective. 'Punchy' bass is up in the 30-50Hz region so even if the DTS track did feel 'punchier' it may not actually get any lower. Now it's also true that a number of movies get remixed when they go to BD (usually upconverting an older Dolby Surround track into 5.1). Sometimes when they do that they take steps to improve or enhance the bass. Sometimes it works (the Star Wars trilogy), sometimes it doesn't (Neverending Story). SPR was mixed in 5.1 originally, and those soundtracks tend to not be changed much (if at all) when they go to BD. So ironically a newer movie might actually sound less bassy on BD than an older movie that has been recently remixed. It's an odd state of things for sure, but it is good to keep it in mind when comparing the bass levels of BD soundtracks.
  10. minnjd
    Who knows for sure but back when DTS DVD's first started coming out DTS would create the soundtrack themselves and they were known for modifying the tracks to make them sound 'better' than Dolby releases. Once they finally made their encoders available to outside encoding facilities that trend pretty much stopped. But I think the SPR DTS DVD was created when they were still doing their own soundtracks.
  11. minnjd
    Is there any proof that SPR was filtered on Bluray? I don't recall anything. The movie was made in 1998 and ULF was pretty much non existent at that point. The DTS DVD doesn't count as that was a special home mix created by DTS itself, so it may have been enhanced compared to the original theatrical mix.
  12. minnjd
    My wife wants Hacksaw Ridge so if we pick it up I'll graph it.
  13. minnjd
    So here's another request I finally got around to banging out: The Chronicles of Riddick-Universal DTS-HD MA 5.1 Sound Designers:Scott Martin Gershin, Peter Zinda, Jon Title, Bryan Bowen, Ann Scibelli Re-Recording Mixers:Chris Jenkins, Frank Montano, Rick Kline First off some background: The Blu-Ray contains the theatrical and extended cuts of the movie. While I had been watching the extended version for a few years on DVD, I decided to try out the theatrical cut just to see how it flowed. Right away I noticed something odd: the bass was noticeably louder in the theatrical cut, and the overall dynamics of the track seemed wider too. So I ran both through the ringer: Theatrical Cut: Level: 3 Stars (108.55 dB composite) Extension: 3 Stars (16Hz) Dynamics: 5 Stars (28.3dB) Extended Cut: Level: 2 Stars (107.42 dB composite) Extension: 3 Stars (16Hz) Dynamics: 5 Stars (29.51dB) The numbers don't lie: the theatrical version is definitely louder overall, and especially in the low end. It may not seem like much on paper until you look at the graphs: Theatrical: Extended: There's a bit more in the 30-40Hz region in the theatrical cut, and it's noticeable. While both sound pretty decent (although neither get all that low due to an HPF at 30Hz), the theatrical cut is definitely more punchy than the extended one. Unfortunately that punch also comes with a bit more clipping. While both tracks clip on occasion in everything but the LFE, the theatrical cut does it more often. None of the clipping is particularly bad or frequent (4 samples is the longest I found), but it is hard clipping at 0dBfs, so it may sound ugly on some systems. Still, this is a pretty decent soundtrack (in both incarnations) that has some really interesting sound design work for the ships and weapons. I love the sound of the Necromonger guns, which start out with a high pitched, almost musical initial sound followed by a distinct low frequency 'whomp'. For a 2004 film it is a bit behind the curve in terms of extension (this was less than a year before WOTW), but it still has some decent booms in a few places. I will say though that the dialog on the theatrical cut is unusually low in volume, and compensating for that made the bigger scenes fairly loud. I have a sneaking suspicion that the used the original theatrical mix for that cut and didn't modify it at all (given that it has the type of volume extremes that I've only heard at a good theater), whereas the extended cut was mixed for a home environment.
  14. minnjd
    Doesn't look too special.
  15. minnjd
    Doubt he'd be smiling much at ST:B
  16. minnjd
    I would expect something very similar to TFA (without the clipping hopefully): 30Hz peak but decent ULF content all the way into the single digits. No Force rumbles in this one for the most part (aside from a few Vader moments) but that one part about halfway through probably has some really good ULF, and it goes on for a while.
  17. minnjd
    Pretty much every big movie does these days, Rogue One included.
  18. minnjd
    I wouldn't start celebrating quite yet on the loudness wars being over. We have another Transformers movie being released in 2017 after all .
  19. minnjd
    Saw Rogue One. Theater wasn't the best as AFAIK they only have one dual 18" subwoofer box for the whole space. Imagine my surprise then that a few places in the movie still managed to get some decent low end going (mostly big explosions and that one sequence of significant planetary surface displacement). The sound design was very similar to The Force Awakens (and the two movies have a lot of the same sound people). The overall volume was pretty low but I think that was the theater's fault (thin walls). Sound quality was pretty clean but louder effects had the same 'crunchy' quality as TFA, so I wouldn't be shocked to see clipping when the Blu-Ray comes out. Good movie though. Not the best SW movie but probably on the same level as TFA. You can definitely notice some choppiness in the plot and a few characters go through sudden and poorly explained personality shifts (Jyn Erso especially). Whether it was always this way or something caused by the reshoots we'll probably never know. On a side note, I thought the CGI recreations of two pivotal characters from the original Star Wars didn't work at all. It was close, but off enough for the results to hit the very bottom of the Uncanny Valley, in my opinion. Every time they showed up my brain got yanked right out of the movie.
  20. minnjd
    FYI I'll be putting up some side by side comparisons of the Blade II and Chronicles of Riddick Blu-Ray soundtracks. Some interesting differences between the 5.1 and 7.1 mixes (on Blade II) and the theatrical vs. extended cut soundtracks (on CoR)
  21. minnjd
    Just because it's digital doesn't mean they can pause and rewind. DCP based systems are encrypted and only allow playback at certain times (usually whenever the movie showtime is). Back when those systems were introduced there were a number of incidents where movies wouldn't play because the start time was missed. As far as the technical presentation one of the worst I've ever seen was at a drafthouse/dinner theater as well. The Bourne Identity was the movie and when it started out the optical soundtrack was visible on the left side of the screen. Then the picture slowly went out of focus. Then someone fixed the lens. Then it slowly went out of focus again. This time someone removed the entire lens housing, while the movie was still running! After a minute or so they put the housing back in and everything worked after that. Damn near asked for my money back. It goes without saying that the sound was crap too.
  22. minnjd
    Yes, Dory was a 5 star for dynamics. It's a fairly quiet movie with limited action scenes and the overall volume is pretty low. Boosting it won't do much for the bass as it's limited in that department to start with. It is a good sounding track, just not something anybody's going to use to demo their subwoofer.
  23. minnjd
    That looks like some hardcore bass.
  24. minnjd
    Yeah I think it's a few pages back
  25. minnjd
    The level rating is based on the raw digital signal. So even if something has great dynamics if the overall volume is low it will suffer in the ranking. Traditionally the LFE was used exactly how you stated. The reasoning being that even theaters that didn't have dedicated subwoofers would get some bass through the main channels. A few years ago I did an experiment where I turned off the LFE. Most movies still had decent levels of bass. The only real exception was Attack of the Clones. For whatever reason virtually all the low bass in that movie is in the LFE. As far as why HTTYD2 was so much more tame compared to the first, only the filmmakers know. It is possible that theater owners who didn't put high pass filters in their signal chain cooked their subs and then complained.
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