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The Low Frequency Content Thread (films, games, music, etc)


maxmercy

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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'.

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Bummer!  At least movies like this are less common than they used to be.

 

I agree that limits in the capability of monitoring equipment is a big factor in mix quality, and I'm sure this is especially relevant for ULF and bass filtering.  When it comes to straight-up loudness, however, I don't know that monitoring equipment is really the issue.  My experience has been that clipping is no less audible on low end systems, and in fact, it often sounds worse on low end systems.  The effect is to make home viewers turn it down a lot more for the action scenes versus what they would have done for just the dialog, which means they have to ride the volume even more.

 

I'm not sure what effect compression has on listening with lower end systems, but I know my own experience comparing the more compressed "Spirited Away" BD with the DVD was that the sounds in the DVD were much more distinct.  In the more compressed BD, the dialog often got buried by the music, but in the DVD, the dialog punched through very well.  I wonder if the dialog would have punched through better on the DVD versus the BD on a HTIB system too?  Given that dialog intelligibility is a very common consumer complaint ("the music and effects drown out their voices"), could it be that efforts made to improve dialog intelligibility using compression often have the opposite effect?  I fear a lot of the problem is that, even in this Hollywood, a lot of audio people just don't know better.

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What a bunch of ULF pansies.  :)  Might be right though, this video kind of blew my mind (it has to do with ULF in a very similar way as the above story)

 

I read a case report about a workplace environment complaint in which the employee complained about there being "bad air".  Apparently many different specialists were called to address this problem including mold remediation specialists and so on.  Nothing alleviated the complaint, until a clever engineer noted that part of the HVAC system was resonating and producing a strong infrasonic tone.  Rebuilding the affected ducts mitigated the resonance, and solved the problem once and for all.

 

The morale of this story is that people do not necessarily experience infrasound as either auditory or tactile sensation, at least until they actually understand what it is that they are sensing.

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"flat tops" meaning it's all clipped up? :(

 

 

Well there it is. Another one I'll be skipping.

 

It's weird to me that there is so much clipping getting through onto the final product. I understand loudness wars and going to 11 and all of that but the thing is this stuff is audibly distorted a lot of the time. It doesn't  sound good to anyone I know. It sounds like something is overloaded or clipping. I can understand it with music / movie mixing for an occasional effect and a change in tone on certain parts but some of this is in the dialog, the center and main channels and just sounds like a distorted mess or a blown speaker.  I don't see how this could be missed during mixing or construed as intentional for effect? I'm thinking of movies like Immortals here. Has anyone listened to that on a HTIB or soundbar type system? I have and it seems to sound even worse on those types of capability limited systems. There is an art to getting a highly compressed "crushed" mix with little dynamic range that is right up to the edge of digital clipping but remains just under. The music engineers have been doing it for decades but you don't typically hear this type of problem even in very heavily compressed mixes.

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 Guess I'm no one. I was interested in the Hobbit movies. I dug the LOTR trilogy movies and thought the sound work was good. Read all the books as a kid.  I'd say a gigantic fire breathing dragon should have had a bit of low end as well. It's not like that wasn't a very big movie as well. It had plenty of backing. There was like no bass at all...Or damn near. Not even a loud 40Hz rumble rehashed 50x in a row. Avengers at least had some bass. Generic action movie bass to be sure but at least it wasn't MIA completely.

 

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. 

 

 

The Mrs & I screened Everest tonight. Lots of rumble throughout, but next to nothing <30 Hz. When the largest rock formation on planet earth lets loose a few mega tons of glacial ice and rock, I guess there's no ULF to experience.

 

I just hope I never get to find out. Climb this, you complete maniacs who pay a small fortune to climb Everest "because it's there". :o

 

Great story and film. Frenetic and emotional. ULF would have cemented it's place in history. Bummer.

 

Like he said, "Humans aren't supposed to survive at the cruising altitude of a 747." This movie shook me to the core. Not only did I feel cold basically the whole second half, but I was emotionally connected to the characters, knowing that they were portraying REAL actual human beings that made that trek.  I even had some unsettling dreams that night after watching it. Few movies have ever done that to me.

 

I'm with you though. $65k is a pretty expensive unexpected funeral for many that go up that hill. Not for me bro, no way. If a chairlift or helicopter can't take me to the top and I can ride my snowboard back down it, then it ain't happenin'  :lol:

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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.

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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.

 

 

Wow, perhaps one day when there are no more movies out there to watch, and I just want to be a stinky mood, I will watch it.

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That's too bad.  I forget where I read about it (and can't seem to find it on Google), but anyway.  There's supposedly a camp in the Himalayas where climbers have been known to die mysteriously when storms passed through.  Storms that should have been survivable for experience crews wiped them out.  Investigation and interviews with survivors led to the understanding that something about the conditions in the environment caused many among the crews to literally panic and disregard precautions (like staying sheltered during the worst of weather).  In the end, the best explanation offered was that nearby rock formations formed a resonant cavity through which the wind flowed through to produce intense infrasonic sounds, and that the mountaineers, lacking familiarity with high intensity ULF suffered from immense confusion, became consumed with panic, and then froze (or fell) trying to escape their predicament.

 

I guess it sounds like a bit of an urban legend, but I think it's noteworthy nonetheless.

 

I think infrasound is a rather unexplored area that deserves more attention - even back in ancient times, I believe that it was used to elicit an unusual physiological response:

 

http://orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/tombacoustics.htm

 

 

 

The principle of "Helmholtz Resonance" - the phenomenon of air resonance in a cavity – was found to apply to a number of prehistoric cairns.

 

The most commonly-used example of this phenomenon is the noise created when blowing across the neck of a bottle. Maeshowe, for example, shares the same basic structure as a bottle - an air filled chamber connected to the outside world by a long, narrow neck.

 

To create this effect, the users of the cairn had to create a sound that was at the correct frequency for the dimensions, and design, of the chamber. The larger the chamber, the lower the pitch required to create the effect and, therefore, the slower the required drumbeat.

 

In Maeshowe, a drum was used and the researchers discovered that the correct frequency was 2 hz. This is an "infrasonic frequency" which means that, although inaudible to humans, it can be felt as distinct physical, or psychological, sensation.

 

Test subjects reported the feeling that sounds were emerging from inside their head and body. They experienced feelings of dizziness, nausea, headaches, flying sensations and also that their pulse-rate was being affected.

 

Dr Watson suggests that prolonged exposure to these "sounds" could have had a profound effect - an effect that Neolithic man could only ascribe to the supernatural.

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I think infrasound is a rather unexplored area that deserves more attention - even back in ancient times, I believe that it was used to elicit an unusual physiological response:

 

http://orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/tombacoustics.htm

 

I agree.  Now to just turn that into a business mission statement. LOL!

 

Fascinating read.  Thanks for sharing.

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I think infrasound is a rather unexplored area that deserves more attention - even back in ancient times, I believe that it was used to elicit an unusual physiological response:

 

http://orkneyjar.com/history/tombs/tombacoustics.htm

 

 

OH boy!!! If you liked that one, try out this one!  Tested by one of our very own! 

 

http://www.livesoundint.com/archives/2000/julyaug/pyramid/pyramid.php

 

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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.

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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.

 

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