Deadpool: Discussion and Poll

[minnjd]

Deadpool-20th Century Fox

DTS-HD MA 7.1

 

 

Sound Designers:Craig Henighan, Wayne Lemmer, Ai-Ling Lee, Warren Hendriks

Supervising Sound Editors: Wayne Lemmer, Jim Brookshire

Re-Recording Mixers: Paul Massey, Will Files, Craig Henighan

 

Level: 4 Stars (111.3dB composite)

Extension: 4 Stars (10Hz)

Dynamics: 5 Stars (29.58dB)

Execution: TBD

Overall: TBD

 

 

 

 

Deadpool.......Wasn't expecting that.  Really good parody on the whole superhero genre while also giving superhero movie fans most of the scenes they expect.  I liked it.

 

Sound wise, this film is very bassy.  There are a handful of potent boom effects that are narrow band and centered around 30Hz, which is why the peak graph looks a bit skewed.  Many other effects are full band (or quite close to it).  One thing to notice though is once the extension point is hit, the track has little falloff below that, leaving quite a bit of ULF in the mix.  It is definitely noticeable and there are some effects in this movie that really get the room moving.

 

Sound quality is a bit more mixed.  As expected (feared?), there is clipping.  A limiter has been set on the track somewhere around -.5dB and you can see it being hit during loud scenes.  The center channel is the most affected, but all channels clip to some extent (even the LFE).  While this might sound bad, the clipping doesn't appear anywhere near as severe as several other recent films (Spectre, The Force Awakens).  Given the ridiculously over the top tone of the movie it may even be intentional.

 

I'll post some screencaps in the next few days as time permits.

[MKtheater]

What I see here is a full band movie with a peak at 30hz.  If it did not have a peak at 30hz it would look like the amazing Spiderman.  The problem is with the Amazing spiderman one can crank it up to a 5 star level where to do this here it would make that 30hz peak too much.  I did like this movie and the overall sound was good.  I still prefer a cleaner track. 

[bmoney]

is it me? or is the avg graph 13hz extension?

[minnjd]

Nope you're not imagining that. For the extension you are supposed to take the -10 dB of either the peak trace or average trace, whichever is higher. In this case those narrow band 30hz hits skewed the peak graph towards a higher extension number than it might have otherwise gotten. That's why I felt I should point it out in my notes.

[bmoney]

oh I thought it was whichever Yielded the "better" score....meaning the deeper extension...I interpreted the "rules" wrong

[Rowan611]

Really enjoyed this movie. Nice twist on the whole "super hero" genera.

[maxmercy]

oh I thought it was whichever Yielded the "better" score....meaning the deeper extension...I interpreted the "rules" wrong

 

The better score is what I have used in the past.

 

JSS

[minnjd]

Oh, I read the rules to mean the opposite.  In the case of Deadpool I do think the 10Hz average extension is more accurate.  I'll change it.

[bmoney]

I knew I was right!!

[lilmike]

Watched this last night, was a refreshing break from the superhero genre.

 

Glad I've got this one in the collection.

[SME]

I liked the bass in this one.  It was a lot better than I expected with the experience in the theater being underwhelming.  Lots of tactile punch, and the effects seemed pretty varied.  Lots of stuff seemed to go low but didn't add a whole lot of extra weight.  I reckon hearing the < 15 Hz content would help a bit with that, but I doubt it would do much.  The real problem is that almost anything deep will have 30-40 Hz stuff that dominates and mostly masks the lower stuff.  It's a common problem in movies these days, which are optimized to sound impressive on theater subs.  Still, the 30-40 Hz bloat seemed a lot less prominent than a lot of stuff that I've seen lately.

 

The rest of the soundtrack was just meh.  I thought it was a bit loud and would have preferred a bit more headroom like in other films I've seen recently.  (AntMan and Django Unchained)  The clipping was a bit obvious to me in some places.  In particular, at the end there's some real heavy 30ish Hz bass that seems to clip pretty noticeably in the front LCR.

 

The movie itself was a bit better than meh.  I appreciate it for what it was and don't really mind the gratuitous violence and vulgarity, but I would have liked the humor to have a little bit more sophistication.  Then again, there's not a whole lot of sophistication with the rest of the Marvel stuff either, but I still enjoy it.

 

Edit: I'll just add an observation about clipping.  Very often, it's not audible as such.  In the example I give above, the clipping was obvious because the scene was very quiet except for a lot of intense 30-40 Hz rumble.  At the same time, I don't doubt that there was plenty of clipping in other loud scenes.  The mids and treble sounded quite congested on a lot of the louder hits.  Also, did anyone else find some of the music to be obnoxiously loud?  OK, a lot of that may be the music's fault, and the mixer is doing his/her part to mix it at a "lively.  I just don't play shit mixes like that at such high levels.  They make most of the EDM/ambient/dub music I listen to sound clean and dynamic.  Seriously.

[Electrodynamic]

After watching this as a rental I went out and purchased it. It now sits near the top of my demo stack. I think I've watched it four or five times now, haha. 

 

I posted some Speclab shots in the LFE thread after not even getting past the first fight scene before thinking "man this thing digs deeper than I thought it would". I can't wait to have the house to myself and really crank it up. The Speclab shots I took were at night at a fairly low volume but when I get alone in my house (send the wife out to Discovery Place with my son) I'll let it rip and take more Speclab captures. 

 

Click here for the link to my Speclab captures.