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.

I'm pretty sure they used a subharmonic synthesizer on that one, indiscriminately across the whole track and with the effect level turned up pretty high.  Some of the bass effects are  entertaining, but I found most to sound unbalanced, weird, and just plain annoying.

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.

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.

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. 

FYI I'll be picking up Finding Dory soon.  Will get the numbers up for that.

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?

Holy crap that looks like something out of the 90's

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.

But does it??

 

Assuming I'm not going insane and mis-remembering, the graphs for the failure that was The Hobbit vs The Hobbit Extended Edition were interesting - IIRC they just added new scenes with new (30Hz filtered) audio and didn't touch the existing (40Hz filtered?) audio, so the bass (if you can call it that) came in with the new material and disappeared again when it finished.  When the original and extended versions were graphed onto the same graph, the additional extension was obvious but the upper end was literally virtually identical, even taking into account whole new scenes that would have changed the graphs somewhat.

 

I'm just not convinced it is a valid justification from the mixing people!  unless, of course, they are dealing with Nolan and any other similar directors who personally crank everything up to 11 and are touching/flat-topping to 0dB on the levels on the disc. 

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).

That was a great response.  I just wish that there was more of a standard. I would rather control the loudness level myself.  Just give me a nice, clean soundtrack that maybe goes up a little at the low end since that is the hardest to reproduce.  I mean how can we go from the first Star Trek movie which was awesome to all of sudden thinking we need to really blast the user in ST:ID.  I just don't get it.  At least some still seem good.  

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)

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

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.

Anyone else see the video here?

 

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/138-avs-foruma-podcasts/2561913-mixing-atmos.html

 

Near the beginning there is some good video of a re-recording room.  We are told that it is used for both theatrical and home mixes.  The theatrical mixes are done with behind screen Meyer Sound speakers installed into a baffle wall, and presumably there are cinema subs back there too.  (No idea what extension.)  The home mixes are done with a near-field setup using much smaller standalone speakers.  On the one hand, the room looks a bit too small for the acoustic conditions required to do theatrical mixes.  On the other, the near-field setup looks woefully under-capable.  It looks like there's a pair of small subs that are also run near-field.  At least they are sealed, but I can't imagine them keeping up with low frequency demands even at the reduced levels used for home mixes.

 

Still, that room was apparently used to do the home mix for "John Wick", which appears to be well received around here, so it can't be all that bad in the hands of a skilled re-recording mixer.  The room itself is gorgeous to look at and has what appears to be a custom ceiling diffusion design intended to work down into the bass.  I'd love to have that room, even though I'd just chuck the near-fields out do everything with the Meyers and extra subs if needed. 

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.

Given how badly recent stuff (including Batman) has been slated for poor / non-existent / inconsistent bass and/or clipping, I would like to think our despair is reaching those making decisions - and perhaps the reason why we then get unexpected surprises like this one!

I'm going more with happy accident...

Gotta admit I'm surprised to see that graph for BvS.

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  .

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.

But, but, but....yeah, I've got nothing.  Don't blame you one bit.

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.

Personally I have no interest in the movie so I can't really justify buying it just to run the numbers.

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.

That's only about a 20Hz extension.  Not too impressive these days.......

They post a PvA graph?

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 

I haven't watched it.  Would it be good for shows Nick...ie, violence not too bad and clean language?

Deadpool?  No, I wouldn't let a kid watch that.  Lots of F bombs and graphic violence.

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.