Infrasonic

Tripped a breaker in a power strip I used once or twice. It was on the EoT opening at pretty high SPL. I have a ton of amps on a 15amp circuit though.

Yikes! Iron Man looks insane with those settings.

About time!

Awesome news!

Very good.

Hey, John. Sorry if I came off inflammatory about the ratings. I don't mean to be. I just wanted to make it clear that there is a discrepancy between a 5star extension and 1star just by a couple of blips.

You know that I know how hard you worked on this system and I don't fault you. Is it perfect? No. Though I don't have that kind of expectation either.

I guess just ignore my earlier comments.

Fury looks pretty good. Ignoring some extra heft in the 30-40hz range it actually is well extended to 20hz at which point it rolls off.

1 star? Ugh.

So...movies graphed here for bass....

Flatness to the single digits? Good!!!

Movies with a steady or pronounced rolloff from 30hz and then have a huge peak at 1-2hz? Not very useful or exciting in anyway.

We really need to rethink the way this stuff is classified.

Exactly. I wonder often if the way some categories are rated needs some rethinking.

A quick glance at the PvA for Equalizer shows it is very well extending in bass but gets a '2' in extension. Others like Lone Survivor get a '5' yet show that it rolls off ~30hz but with a couple of handful of high intensity effects skew the whole rating.

Anymore I have to ignore the number rating for these movies and have to go off the PvA (as I always have).

You're right. I'd need some ported subs, I think. Right?

Oh, they do.

But not necessarily always very loud and ground-shaking.

 

When ulf is preserved there is a much more involving sense of huge scale and atmosphere.

And the you have the occasional moment with louder impacts.

That's what I meant.

And... I know. ULF is great. I've got that down pretty well, actually.

You got it, John.

People need to hang up the "this was highpassed for the lowest common denominator, people with HTiB's." Nope. Nobody in the production is even thinking about them. Those systems always have hardcore limiters anyway. No, they are monitoring on a typical cinema system. The bottom end is ~30hz hence why we see so many movies with the most energy around there. It's also a very impressive sounding frequency range.

Effects don't all have natural ULF in them. That's why they are called 'effects'. They are not real. While they might derive from real sounds they are also heavily modified and synthesized. The person creating the SFX might knock out the ULF because of extraneous noise, rumble and such.

Obviously this isn't always the case as we do get some real low hitters every once in a while.

Film Mixer confirmed an un-filtered track, that they USED the bottom octave quite judiciously 

Marc doesn't pro-actively use filters. That doesn't mean it will have a flat ULF response.

Yeah. My Super Stuff is the best!

Very cool, Josh. I've been waiting to see the Palehorn come about for some time now.

It's unfortunate that this will not be a shared plan but after reading about the system and the integration with the IPAL amp/dsp system I totally get it.

I also have a WT2 that I have never used.

AVS members get the $999, akaik. You just have to post that you are an AVS member when purchasing.

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.

^^^^^^

That would be interesting. All of it.

Movies like Rush, Dredd, etc have significant <20Hz content.  There are %-wise, more films with ULF included than there were 10 years ago.  But it seems worse because lots of the big blockbuster type films have a rolloff, at times a very significant one.

 

JSS

Truth.

It is frustrating that all the big stuff get's the chop. But we do know why... Bigger, louder.

It's like all current movies are being mixed using the lowest common denominator, HTIB systems. Almost makes me wonder what's the point in having high resolution playback system

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

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.   Ugh.

Nice topic! Good selection of sustained bass all over in frequency in here. Great stuff!

And they sound incredible at my house.

Yeah. His stuff is pretty hit and miss. FE will live on as a Sci-fi classic and it deserves it.

But... yeah by todays standards it's pretty weak on bass. It did come out in like 96-97' though so that's just how it was.

Oh wow! Hey, thanks for doing FE. Bout time I saw what this guy was all about (in the bass) after all these years.

Ahhh..

Interesting take, JSS.

To put it another way...

Look at the PvA for Avengers. Then look again at Frozen.

Which one would you say has a filter applied?