Good Article on Sound Mixes

[Jon Dent]

We have our preset and we usually stick close to it unless something is overly loud/quiet at that level (and it sure as hell isn't '7'). By doing that some movies are definitely louder than others, but as long as it doesn't feel too off I don't worry about it. To me it seems obvious that Mortal Kombat is going to be louder than Nomadland.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I find the sound mixes of today to often be laughable. Especially the Atmos stuff. I mean, when I went to my first Atmos movie I was expecting "something really special". But nope, it was an Upcharge Let down., and then I remembered that Ray Dolby was no longer with us any longer and all that "something special" that Dolby used to engineer, left when he did.

And when those mixes make it to Nut Flicks, they become disastrous with the use of the expander that Nut Flicks is obviously using...

[Steve Guttag]

I will, again, put up Larry Blake as someone that knows how to mix movies and have a mix that can be played at "7" in most any theatre with decent equipment. His mixes also have very clear, if not a bit bassy dialog. He tends to mix Steven Soderbergh movies so movies like Oceans 11 and its sequels would be examples. His company is Swelltone Labs ("In one ear, out the other"). It certainly CAN be done...it just, often, isn't.

[Scott John]

We adjust our sound levels on films all the time as the mixes seem all over the place.... some crazy loud and some way too quiet.

My best friend is one of the top post audio mixers on the continent (literally hundreds and hundreds of movie and TV credits over 30 year) and was horrified when I said our preset was 4.7 (we adjust down often for movies that skew older... but never up). He was adamant that it needed to be at 7.

When he came for a visit I played a film at 5.0 on our system and he thought it was too loud. It isn't even a cement box like the new cinemas, it is a wooden building with a wood floor, full soundfold along the sides and back... so sound dies incredibly really fast in the room (371 seats).

We are also having our theatre tuned in a couple weeks. We switched out some of the chairs and it made a massive difference to the sound.

[Martin Brooks]

I think there has been a severe disconnect between studios and cinemas on what patrons want from movie sound. As a business, cinemas will need to cater to their clientele. They are not going to play audio at levels that drive customers out. Furthermore, I do believe that the people that mix movies suffer from fatigue that causes them to mix things louder-and-louder without realizing that they are making the movie going experience quite uncomfortable.

I've done my share of honest-to-god studio screenings with anyone from the Director on down in the audience and in room that range from 1st class to "hold together baby for just this one show." And, by and large, they are just too damn loud. They are so loud that they take away the impact that a loud scene can bring when it is surrounded by quieter portions. I, for one, would favor an Leq(m) standard that was enforceable on ads, trailers and features. You can have your loud but you can have it ALL be loud.

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Cinemas play audio at levels that "drive customers out" all the time. They set the fader once and whether it's the best setting or not, they leave it there. Part of the problem is that a suitable level when the theater is full might be way too loud when it's near empty. If I go to see a popcorn movie, I've been taking an SPL meter with me. It's shocking how loud the levels sometimes are in some cases exceeding OSHA rules if a theater was a factory. Just in case the levels become ridiculous, I bring hearing protection - the same I use for music shows, but I rarely need it at theaters.

I totally agree with you on the fatigue issue. It's true in the live sound industry as well. Go to a music show and typically, the sound gets louder during the show because the sound mixer can't hear. And IMO, there's another issue: a lot of the people mixing today (and directors) have never heard very much good sound. They don't know what it should really sound like.

But I don't think the intelligibility problem is really at the theater level (except in theaters with blown tweeters in the center channel). It's a mixing problem. And IMO, it's caused by insecure directors who think by blasting the levels throughout the film, they can create emotion and excitement, but all they're really doing is creating tedium and making it hard to hear the dialogue. It might not actually drive a customer out of the theater, but it might subconsciously affect how often a person feels like going to a theater to see a movie based on the totality of the experience they had.

I have heard some very good sound recently. The sound for both Licorice Pizza (70mm DTS) and The French Dispatch (5.1? digital) were terrific - warm, crisp, well balanced, good tight bass and appropriate levels.

[Steve Guttag]

As far as Q-SYS goes...getting Feature start and stop should be easy enough. Depending on the server, merely add a cue to the normal Feature cue in most show packs (the ones that brings the lights all of the way down) and then either the Credit or Show End cue could also serve as the stop cue to the Leqm. AI could be developed a bit to see how reliably one could "sniff" the audio tracks to determine if one is between content or not. As it is, with the likes of the IMS3000, it is possible to know what content is playing and that could be used as the trigger for start and stop of the Leq(m) session as well as come up with a list of values, by content.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Last time I looked at the SPL / Leq meter component it was still early beta, but it could probably be used by feeding the most important channels through it and come up with some values. I'm not sure how to detect feature start and feature end reliably though. You'd also need something to match feature playback with your measurement: some kind of Feature profile library.

Allowing individual channels to be volume-adjusted based on a "feature profile" may also be a nice fea... euhm... functionality.

[Steve Guttag]

It won't fix muffled talk any more than Seizurecam™ but if, in order to get an MPA rating they had to meet Leq(m) of a specified number, they'd consider it in the mix. I want it for ALL content. They sort of have it for home with DialNorm.

I've been toying with coming up with a scheme for our Q-SYS systems to have Q-SYS analyze the track and then apply appropriate "house levels" based on how loud it is. If that works, perhaps take it a step further and come up with tailored volume controls that do not fade all channels at a uniform rate...lower Left/Right a bit more aggressively than Center to further push dialog up a bit (since they don't like to pan dialog much). But really, I'd rather not need to "fix" a track that so offends movie goers and have a standard that everyone has to play by so that everyone knows what it will sound like in level.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I, for one, would favor an Leq(m) standard that was enforceable on ads, trailers and features. You can have your loud but you can have it ALL be loud.

For ads and trailers: pretty please. For features... well, I don't think that will work at all. In the end, any Leq(m) limits will not fix an essentially broken sound mix.

The best way to solve this is to push the noses of those directors and their sound engineering team onto the cold hard facts. If they don't get it, so they be damned. If Christopher Nolan and the likes think it's cool to continue to deliver features with "MuffleTalk" enabled, while everything around them is blasting at tinnitus-triggering levels, then the audience may just choose to not show up anymore. My own wife, for example, has already indicated that she won't be watching his next feature in a cinema and I know a few others who also don't want to undergo the same experience as watching any of his features with the fader fixed at "7" is simply an unnerving and painful experience for them.

[Steve Guttag]

The JBL 4722 is okay. One could do far worse but it is just a middle of the road speaker. Then again, it isn't claiming to be anything more. The larger the room, the worse it will perform. But, if you keep it in its wheelhouse, it will do well.

As to Leq(m) and compression. Compression doesn't help, it only hurts trying to hit an Leq(m) number because the number is based on the level over time. If you compress a track and then raise the level...you'll have all loud and drive the number up. Leq(m) rewards a good dynamic range that is utilized and penalizes a compressed track that is run hard.

[Jon Dent]

What's your opinion on the JBL 3722/4722 speakers? That's what we're rolling for our screen channels and I think they sound pretty good but I know JBL get's slagged on a lot these days...

As to the article, it reminds me of the spirited discussion around mixing that we had on "Voyagers" and how the stages used for dubbing are far and away better than any commercial cinema. To that end I think that filmmakers need to understand that when they go out into the wild they are going to hear an 'inferior' version of their soundtrack pretty much anywhere they go.

I don't think volume standards would help either. I hate the sound of most trailers because I can hear all the extreme compression manipulation they're using to try to dance around the Leq limits. Don't need the movie itself to start sounding like that.

[Steve Guttag]

I think there has been a severe disconnect between studios and cinemas on what patrons want from movie sound. As a business, cinemas will need to cater to their clientele. They are not going to play audio at levels that drive customers out. Furthermore, I do believe that the people that mix movies suffer from fatigue that causes them to mix things louder-and-louder without realizing that they are making the movie going experience quite uncomfortable.

I've done my share of honest-to-god studio screenings with anyone from the Director on down in the audience and in room that range from 1st class to "hold together baby for just this one show." And, by and large, they are just too damn loud. They are so loud that they take away the impact that a loud scene can bring when it is surrounded by quieter portions. I, for one, would favor an Leq(m) standard that was enforceable on ads, trailers and features. You can have your loud but you can have it ALL be loud.

As to dialog, there was a time when movies HAD to be able to play on a mono sound system. This sort of ensured that dialog would stand atop everything else. The optical soundtrack had a very limited dynamic range and everything had to fit on it. One had to watch their modulation levels to avoid clipping the track. That sort of forced the issue and that really continued even in the Dolby Stereo era because again, it all had to fit on that same sound track. Dolby NR didn't add anything to the top-end either. Only by way of raising the nominal level by 3dB did the studios increase the maximum level on an optical track (and another 3dB when SR came out). Most of what Dolby brought to dynamic range was on the bottom end...getting the surface noise off the track so the HVAC would be the predominate noise down there (the loud popcorn muncher).

When digital tracks came in to prominence in the early mid '90s you had real discrete tracks and dialog could be made to suffer. Yeah, we had that on 70mm but never to the degree that happened when the digital on film stuff became the norm.

I do agree, to a degree with Leo, that tuning can be a contributor but I think a bigger factor is the equipment itself. I've found the better your speakers are, the higher the SPL level you can go without complaints or feeling ear fatigue. This is one of the reasons that movies are perceived as too loud. The dubbing stages have equipment that cinemas cannot afford and have acoustics that cinemas, by and large, also can't afford to put in. So, they hear a nice loud undistorted track that, once it gets to the "typical" cinema system is harsh and painful. For music studios, they often have NS10 speakers sitting on the console to represent "typical" home bookshelf speakers (ever see a picture of a recording studio with a pair of white woofers...that's them). Their purpose is to ensure that once they are done with their ideal mix, it will still sound okay on those. Dubbing stages should probably think about that too.

I'm very particular on my screen speakers because they play a HUGE role in what is deemed acceptable. My current go-to speaker is the QSC SC-424 (and its variants with more or less woofers). It is a speaker that pretty much doesn't need tuning. It's where you want the audio to be before you start tuning and all of its components just sound good. I'm not saying it is the best in the world but it definitely checks a lot of boxes. There are many 3-way systems (some that are quite popular) that are just horrible. They don't sound good and they don't tune well and if you push them, they just sound worse.

I have one site that has evolved and added a screen so there is a smattering of equipment in there that represents the systems from about 1990 to 2021...sure the film stuff is gone but speakers and amplifiers remain (e.g. QSC MXa are still on the job on one screen). I have two theatres where the difference in the audio is nothing more than the amplifier model (MXa versus DCA) and the crossovers and how EQ is performed. They both have the same cinema processors and same speakers. And despite the same person (me) using the same analyzer (D2), the comfortable volume levels differ between the two theatres. I don't attribute the difference to the amplifiers but I do attribute it to crossovers and EQ method. One theatre used QSC's XC-1 in the MXa amps, the other uses a QSYS CORE 110 with DSP based EQ where the time alignment was dialed in and the EQ was done via parametric. The theatre with the QSYS processor can run louder (SPL) than the same theatre, more or less, running traditional EQ (in the CP) and amps with crossovers settable via dip switches for frequency and time alignment to one of the available settings). The 3rd theatre is all Q-SYS and has the SC424s and yes that one can run loudest.

To look on the analyzer, you wouldn't see much difference between the three (the SC-424 plays to both higher and lower frequencies...it really does, effortlessly play up to 16KHz through a screen), and then some.

I guarantee you that part of what makes Trinnov's Ovation get its good marks is how it gets the screen speakers to behave in both tuning and time alignment. Keep the distortion low.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'll take a good 2-way speaker over most of the 3-way speakers out there. The trick, now, is finding good 2-way or 3-way speakers. Once upon a time, we had JBL's 4675...to this day, if I'm in a room that has them, I know it is going to be a good day when tuning up. It's better than 90% of what else is out there.

[Leo Enticknap]

IMHO, poorly tuned auditoria, which this article doesn't mention, are the #1 reason for poor dialogue intelligibility. In particular, the performance of HF drivers drops off over time: set up the mikes and RTA 5-6 years after the original installation, and I'll usually see a response significantly below the curve from about 1.6 to 1.7K up. A retune usually makes these complaints go away.

[Bobby Henderson]

Many cinemas do not have the fader on the cinema processor set at 7 either. Visit any booth and the level will be all over the place, down the scale of how many old farts complained about the movie loudness. These days usually the only time I encounter cinema audio with any dynamic "oomph" to it is when I pay the premium to see a movie in a premium priced auditorium (IMAX, Dolby Cinema, etc). And even in those premium priced auditoriums the sound levels will often be turned down close to home TV speakers level.

This has been a problem for a long time. 30+ years ago when getting a 70mm print was a rarity for most theaters I think the cinemas back then wanted audiences to know the difference. Most 70mm prints were blow ups from 35mm sources. If you turned the magnetic audio way down in volume level to make the sound levels more "comfortable" to crotchety farts who wanted the movie to sound like the black and white Philco TV set in their kitchen at home it would be difficult to see what was so special about "70MM." The audio needed to be cranked a little for people to clearly hear the dynamics. The same was true with the early years of 35mm-based digital audio formats (CDS, Dolby Digital, DTS and SDDS). The theaters had to invest a good bit of money in these systems. Many of these same theaters were also THX certified. What kind of cinema wants to spend that sort of money on THX certification, the gear required to gain the certification as well as a digital sound process yet run the audio at a low, modest level, low enough customers don't notice the difference?

If anything, audio has become far more ho-hum in the age of d-cinema than any other time going back as far as when "Star Wars" first hit screens in 1977. Hardly anything is "special" about 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound anymore. And most people don't have the foggiest clue how newer formats like Dolby Atmos works. So I think it's easier than ever today for movie theaters to turn the volume levels way down when some jackass complains about the slightest level of dynamics in the audio levels. Plus there is the added money making incentive for theaters to make the sound really shitty in all the standard priced auditoriums and only offer powerful audio in the houses that cost $3, $4 or more above normal ticket prices to enter.

[Carsten Kurz]

Well, it is clearly not true that all movies are mixed at 7. Many mixing stages and studios do not even have audio control equipment that offers the cinema fader level scale. They don't have a '7'.

Anyway, the full long article is indeed worth a read.