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The last Blu-ray you watched.


liebherr954

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And all previews are playing in stereo. All of em sounded great till the new hobbit showed. It sounded SO HORRIBLE like the speakers were distorting to death. I don't get it. What's up with movies lately and the loudness on them. I heard the new soundtrack is horrible. People blowing tweeters all over the place, headaches from watching it at -15?wish list.

The hobbit does not sound distorted here (Klipschorns & Belle Klipsch center with 150 wts RMS per channel amps, all channels operating, Heresy II surrounds & RSW15 sub). It may not be the best movie sound I've heard, but it doesn't sound distorted. I play almost all movies at Audyssey determined Reference level, including this one. I agree with the person who said that your complaint sounds like you could have clipping. If you have your front speakers set on "large" (warned against by Audyssey and THX) the bass being channeled through your fronts can put a strain on the amp feeding each front. Another possibility is that they jacked up the volume when recording the preview. This is a bad habit that the studios were warned about by Dolby. What is the sensitivity of your main speakers and the RMS power of your amps, all channels operating?

Edited by Garyrc
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Sorry Gary no setup issues no clipping issues on my end. Something was wrong with the recording. If your talking about the hobbit movie that is entirely different. I was talking about a preview for it. I run the Klipsch thx ultra 2 setup with a 350 watt x 7 channel amp. I can ASSURE you zero clipping happening and mains are crossed at 100hz to 4 18" subs. It was the recording.

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Sorry Gary no setup issues no clipping issues on my end. Something was wrong with the recording. If your talking about the hobbit movie that is entirely different. I was talking about a preview for it. I run the Klipsch thx ultra 2 setup with a 350 watt x 7 channel amp. I can ASSURE you zero clipping happening and mains are crossed at 100hz to 4 18" subs. It was the recording.

Wow, what a nice system!

You're correct, I was talking about the movie itself. I thought you said someone else reported that the movie itself had horrible sound that seemed to resemble what you heard during the preview. I would rate the movie itself's sound as below average for a new soundtrack, but not particularly distorted, just "glumpy," and short of "air," compared to, say, LOTR Fellowship of the Ring. As I said, on the preview (which I have not seen) somebody may have jacked up the recording volume well into the red, ending up flooding the recording with IM, THD, TIM, clipping, or whatever. Some previews have infuriated me. I believe that in Dolby's warning to diskmakers (of several years ago) they used the wording "shooting yourselves in the foot," but that could have been somebody else lecturing them.

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Just a side note, of all the movies that I have, The Grey is the most demanding on the system and subs. I have Oblivion, OHF, Cloverfied, LOTR, and pretty much all the major ones with LFE. The plane crash seen is so intense and the LFE are off the hook! I ran it last night and it has produced the highest wattage/amp use to date on my system. This beat every other movie by 2-300 watts. The rest of the movie is OK but few LFE.

Agree completely. The Grey made me worry about my system, which we had set at reference level. During the prolonged crash, they seemed to use the surrounds almost as much as the fronts, and our surrounds have a lower max SPL capability than the fronts. I wish I had grabbed my SPL meter, but It wasn't nearby. The sound was clean, though. The system came through O.K.

Here's the question that comes to mind: If you have a system carefully set for Audyssey determined Reference level * is there an absolute maximum limit at 105 dB for each channel except the sub (which, they say, is limited to 115 dB @ Reference), or are there very brief peaks at higher levels, such as the 115 dB PWK said was necessary to reproduce the maximum orchestral peaks? I'm not sure whether the 115 dB PWK referred to would have been below 80 Hz, in which case he would be in agreement with THX, Dolby and Audyssey, or whether he meant 115 dB above 80, in which case he would hav been in disagreement. In those days there were charts of the maximum SPL of orchestral music that located the highest SPL between 100 and 500 Hz, rather than in the deep bass.

*0 for most people, but I had to temporarily (thanks to Chris K of Audyssey's advice) put 12 dB attenuators in all the lines during calibration due to the efficiency of the Klipschorns and the Belle, to prevent Audyssey from reading - 12 on everything, when a figure well below was the real trim needed, then removed the attenuators to play movies and music. Since the attenuators were confirmed to cut 12 dB on my equipment, using a stationary SPL meter before and after, Audyssey advised me that, after set-up, with the attenuators gone, Reference level would be -12, rather than 0. I've been using -12 for Reference, and it sounds very much like there are occasional peaks at 105 dB in the upper bass and midrange, except for The Grey, which sounded louder.

Edited by Garyrc
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In a calibrated system the 105 and 115 db max are for the speakers and sub respectively. A sub may be ask to produce 121 or 123 db if the speakers set to small have their bass output summed and playback is thru the sub. If EQ or the trim is raised for any speaker, then 0 is not reference level and it may be -5 or -12 depending or how much some of the speakers are running hot.

The movie The Grey extends to around 5 Hz which is what is drawing all the power. Surprisingly it does not have has much LFE as compared to OHF, Cloverfied or Oblivion. Some system will not experience the LFE in The Grey due to built in limiters in the subwoofer to protect the sub. The intesity of the plane crash does make you worry about the sub, system and room, lol. It is interesting that if the movies has enough 15-30 Hz LFE that it will sound just as tactile as the below 15 Hz stuff. IMHO it is not worth chasing after below 15-20 Hz since most movies don't go that low. A sub with good 16-70 Hz performance will do nicely for HT duty.

Edited by derrickdj1
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Scrappydue, did autocalibation pick the 100Hz XO? i am just curious since it is a THX system. Oh, the Hobbit thing, not a clue, he he.

nope it definitely picks all from three as full range. i found out after buying an omnimic and doing lots of full frequency sweeps and graphs that my mains crossed at 80 was causing a dip around 90. so i tried a few other notches(90,100,120) 100 had the smoothest graph. so apparently my subs play up to 100 better than my mains playing down to 80. so thats what i roll with

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... If EQ or the trim is raised for any speaker, then 0 is not reference level and it may be -5 or -12 depending or how much some of the speakers are running hot.

The movie The Grey extends to around 5 Hz which is what is drawing all the power. Surprisingly it does not have has much LFE as compared to OHF, Cloverfied or Oblivion. Some system will not experience the LFE in The Grey due to built in limiters in the subwoofer to protect the sub. The intesity of the plane crash does make you worry about the sub, system and room, lol.

Our LF, C, RF all have trims that are below 0. The surrounds don't (less efficient), but much less sound comes through the surrounds, except the one time we ran The Grey! There are just a few other BDs we've run with a lot of surround, and none with as much as The Grey.

I'm assuming and hoping that the 5 Hz stuff is coming out of the subwoofer output only on my pre/pro, and thus sending it to the sub only. I'm also assuming that all of the true LFE the movie people put on is sent out of the sub output only. I've been told that this is true, and I hope it is.

With a few movies, we do something that is absolutely against the advice of Audyssey, THX, etc, and I hope it is safe. Here is the scary part. Although I follow Audyssey's advice on most movies and have the LF & LR set on "small," for some movies that need more bass punch I set the LF & RF to "large." REW graphs we ran show boosted response in the octave between 60 and 120 Hz with the LF & RF set to "large" and the pre-pro's Subwoofer Mode set for LFE + MAIN and the LPF for LFE set for 120 Hz (as usual). In our room, with our speaker placement, from the center listening position, there is no sign of phase cancellation on the graphs, i.e., the response throughout the bass is either equal or boosted in SPL compared to curves run with the mains set to "small." When set to "large," the bass punch sounds distinctly better when playing anemic soundtracks (mostly restored films of the '50s, '60s, '70s). The center (Belle Klipsch) is always set to "small." I feel confident our Klipschorns can handle anything an orchestra could put out, but not outrageous LFE, so I hope it can't be sent there. I believe our sub has a filter to cut out ultra low frequences; it doesn't do much below 24 Hz.

Edited by Garyrc
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i found out after buying an omnimic and doing lots of full frequency sweeps and graphs that my mains crossed at 80 was causing a dip around 90. so i tried a few other notches(90,100,120) 100 had the smoothest graph. so apparently my subs play up to 100 better than my mains playing down to 80. so thats what i roll with
With a few movies, we do something that is absolutely against the advice of Audyssey, THX, etc, and I hope it is safe. Here is the scary part. Although I follow Audyssey's advice on most movies and have the LF & LR set on "small," for some movies that need more bass punch I set the LF & RF to "large." REW graphs we ran show boosted response in the octave between 60 and 120 Hz with the LF & RF set to "large" and the pre-pro's Subwoofer Mode set for LFE + MAIN and the LPF for LFE set for 120 Hz (as usual). In our room, with our speaker placement, from the center listening position, there is no sign of phase cancellation on the graphs, i.e., the response throughout the bass is either equal or boosted in SPL compared to curves run with the mains set to "small." When set to "large," the bass punch sounds distinctly better when playing anemic soundtracks (mostly restored films of the '50s,

It sound like you are safe Garyc. It sound like you and Scrappydue are using REW and really know what your systems are doing. This is a good thing! :huh:

Next movie for me is Elysium with Matt Damon. Some people say it has good LFE and some people say it does not. I will just have to be the judge of that! he he.

Edited by derrickdj1
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  • 2 weeks later...

Next movie for me is Elysium with Matt Damon. Some people say it has good LFE and some people say it does not. I will just have to be the judge of that! he he.

I can see why that would happen! Watched it last night. There's no upper LFE to speak off, but my ceiling (and entire house really) was creaking in a weird way that I never experienced before and I could feel weird in my pants myself. Very low frequencies, and my system drops like a rock at 18 Hz. I can imagine the DTS-10 and IB people giving it an amazing review!

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