minnjd

Star Wars: The Force Awakens-Disney/Lucasfilm

DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1

Level - 4 Stars (110.94dB composite)

Extension - 4 Stars (13Hz)

Dynamics - 5 Stars (28.39dB)

Execution - TBD

Overall - TBD

Supervising Sound Editors: Matthew Wood, David Acord

Sound Designers: Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom, Robert Stambler, Will Files

Re-Recording Mixers: Andy Nelson, Christopher Scarabosio, Juan Peralta, Nathan Nance

So I'll start this off by saying there's good evidence this soundtrack is brick walled at -3dB, leading to a track that is paradoxically both lower in volume and riddled with clipped wave forms.  I'll take a close look at the waveforms this evening.

Also my PvA graph got messed up so it's almost illegible.  I'll post a good one with the poll thread.

TFA is an absolute monster in the midbass.  It slams hard and it slams often.  The overall level is noticeably lower than many releases, but once the volume is bumped to compensate (6 ticks up in my case) it doesn't pull any punches when something explodes or flies across the screen.  The graph will show that the movie has better than expected ULF content, but it also shows that the dreaded 30Hz filter is still alive and well in mixing, albeit with a noticeably more shallow slope here.  

Unfortunately, you really don't notice the ULF as it gets buried by the much louder 30-40 Hz booms outside of a few exceptions, mainly Kylo Ren's 'Force Rumbles'.  Whenever one of those appear the spectrum lights up with some serious energy at and even below 20Hz.  The mixers take full advantage of the fact that these rumbles happen in quieter scenes, and therefore a lot of bandwidth is available for the bass to abuse.  The resulting rumbles are loud and will reveal every little annoying rattle in your listening room.  On the plus side, the rumbles are not annoying like the one dimensional 30Hz drones in 'Interstellar'.  Here, the rumbles almost become a living entity.  You can hear them breathe, focus, rise in anger and even sound wounded.  It's impressive sound design work.

Aside from those instances the bass is pretty much comprised of bang and slam stuff.  There's enough variety to keep them from getting boring, but on occasion there are some effects that get pushed too far, resulting in a flat and bloated sound (the Starkiller base weapon firing is a prime example).

Have watched the movie and run the numbers, but not enough time to fire up the poll tonight.  Will do tomorrow.

On a whole the sound is very well done though.  Not the loudest or deepest but very impactful and dynamic.  And no clipping!

Will be picking it up after work and watching it first before running numbers.  I'll make every effort to get them up tonight but if I don't they'll be up tomorrow sometime.

I hope EpVII is clean, no blatant flat-tops.

 

Hope BEQ is not necessary, but it always works best when you start with unclipped material.

 

I am not against intentional clipping. Iron Man's repulsors would not sound the same without the square tops.

 

JSS

My guess is there's going to be some clipping.  I recall a few effects in the theater definitely has that 'crack' sound that usually only comes from a square wave.

My system isn't anywhere near the capacity of some other users in this forum (I get into the mid-upper teens at best) but I still enjoy the conversation.

That graph gives the impression that it's fairly dynamic.  For how many action scenes the movie has the average bass levels are noticeably lower than the peaks.

A new hope? 

 

See what I did there? Star Wars jokes are my favorite.

*Groan*

If that graph is right then maybe there's hope.  Yes there's a rolloff but it's a LOT shallower than normal.

Numbers should be posted by Tuesday evening as I plan to get it on release day.

Home is nice but if you can find a theater with a decent sound system (and they are around) there's still occasions where that experience can't be beat.  It pays to do your homework though as I agree that most commercial theaters aren't all that great outside of being incredibly loud.

Just keep in mind that this is a Zack Snyder film. Judging by this forum he has a pretty bad track record so I wouldn't get your hopes up. No doubt the bass was loud, but it likely isn't very deep

Hard to say.  The effect sounded deeper and more powerful than most of the others but I suppose that's not saying much.

Try the scene where Starkiller base fires it's main weapon.  I remember that really chattered my teeth in the theater.

Cool.  Should liven up the discussion around here.  Seems kinda quiet lately.

Meh, I wouldn't trust that torrent on the chance that it might be re compressed or otherwise altered. I'm planning on picking it up on day 1 and posting the numbers as quickly as possible.

Pity about Spectre, Skyfall was such a good mix. The Wolfman and Spiderman 3 are decent ulf contenders. Could someone look into these please? Not sure about spiderman 1 and 2 though...

Spider-Man 3 (LPCM 5.1)

Level: 109.12 dB composite

Dynamics: 30.66 dB

Extension: Debatable.  If you take the PvA at face value then the movie only gets to about 29 Hz for extension, which is kinda poor.  However, that 35 Hz spike is a one time effect during the Sandman's birth, so taking that out of the running gives a more reasonable 22 Hz extension, which is pretty typical for a mid 'aughts action film.

Overall the soundtrack is very well done, with clean wave forms throughout and nice dynamics.  The bass is hardly earthshaking though, and it never gets all that deep or hits all that hard, for the most part.

Mad Max: Fury Road has won two Oscars for Sound Editing and Sound Mixing beating The Martian. Any thoughts on this?

 

Personally, I thought that the surround work for Fury Road was superb but The Martian beats it in the bass department for me.

MM:FR was a much showier soundtrack than the Martian so that might have had something to do with it. Personally I thought the soundtrack was a bit one dimensional but to each their own I guess.

I have Spiderman 3 so if I have time I'll check that out.

Is it odd that having never watched any of the most recent 3 hobbit movies. I mean, not even a second of any of them, that I am slightly interested to watch at least the first one just to see how big of a letdown it really is? I guess I won't even turn my subs on. 

Oh, you will be disappointed.  Words cannot describe the letdown of the first Hobbit movie.  Not only is the soundtrack beyond lame, the movie is really frickin long considering not much happens in it.

Judging by IMDB it isn't the ST:ID crew.  Mixers are listed as Scott Milan and Gregg Rudloff, both of whom are seasoned veterans than have been around for a long time.  

Then again so is Gregg Landaker, the guy who clipped the crap out of TDKR and Interstellar.  I guess experience doesn't count for anything when the director wants it up to '11'.

The Hobbit is a movie no one cared or cares about that may have become of interest if the low end was exceptional.

 

 

As the weight of evidence tells many of us, a PVA that shows a huge peak at 30 Hz and a steep roll off below that is a soundtrack mixed for Max's soundbar.

Or your average commercial movie theater with no thought given to the (admittedly small) home theater crowd that can play back ULF content  .

And for the record I was really looking forward to The Hobbit, until I saw (and heard) what Peter Jackson did to it.........Man that was a rough drive home after seeing 'An Unexpected Waste of Three Hours'.

It's been over a decade since the release of WotW, why wouldn't I expect every large budget action flick to have 5 star extension in the year 2016?

 

Here is Spectre on top of the 1st Avengers movie which as max accurately stated was: "the biggest LF disappointment of all time". 

Pretty obvious what they're going for with this one.

Damn, that is eerie how close they are in frequency response.

Max's numbers should clean that question up.

Yes, according to above post this really has some heavy bass to challenge the soundbar.

*rimshot*

Yeah, chalk up another one to the 'peak at 30Hz' loudness war.  Although it does look like it has more in the ULF range than many filtered tracks.

According to Hi Def Digest Spectre has some pretty good bass so we'll see what the numbers say......

As threatened

Super 8-Paramount Pictures

Dolby TrueHD 7.1

Sound Design: Ben Burtt, Gary Rydstrom

Supervising Sound Editors: Ben Burtt, Matthew Wood

Re-Recording Mixers: Anna Behlmer, Andy Nelson, Tom Johnson, Christopher Scarabosio, Juan Peralta, Jim Bolt

Level - 4 Stars (112.46 dB)

Extension - 2 Stars (21 Hz)

Dynamics - 5 Stars (33.77 dB)

Execution - TBD

Overall - TBD