"Club Penton" - Ask questions to Hollywood insider "Penton-Man"

[SpaceDog]

I'm not sure if it was meant to sound artificial, but it was surely meant to sound like it was, modified, electronic. It wasn't a matter of trying to make her voice sound more professional or anything like that. Cher can sing, unlike many of today's pop-tartlets.

[HDJK]

Originally Posted by patrick99

If that is the same Cher song that I am remembering, I thought the effect was so extreme that it was intentionally meant to sound artificial.

Oh, I'm sure of it. But it still sounds like crap (imho) and it is a good reference for people who don't know what AT does. Because even if it's used lightly for correction, the basic 'sound' of AT is the same.

[Grubert]

Going back to topic, it's like the movie Ultraviolet and digital video filtering. It was intentional for that movie, but if you see that movie, you know what extreme DNR would look like.

[mhafner]

I'm not against lossless sounds at all. From my experience with my high end equipment (which is fully digital right into the speakers which are digital active) I know that well done measly 16 bit uncompressed PCM sounds incredibly good once the whole chain is optimised for the source and all unnecessary conversions and room influence is accounted for. Because of that I don't care much if I get 16 bit or 24 bit as long as the 16 bit are optimally derived from the 24 bit. Much more relevant is the quality of the stems and how they are mixed. Concerning lossless versus lossy I don't have firm opinions concerning high bit rate lossy but if you believe professional sound mixers like FilmMixer over at AVS the difference between lossy DTS at 1.5 Mbit/s and uncompressed is small even in professional mixing rooms. Given the nature of most sountracks with their sound effects and totally artificially created sound spaces that is more than understandable.

[lgans316]

Now I am beginning to truly trust the gains brought by lossless audio. I compared the DTS-HD MA track on Aviator (Dutch Import) vs the lossy DD track on Aviator (Warner - U.S ) and the difference is night and day. Every element of the sound mix was brought to life. Even the TV speakers were good enough to discern the difference.

[milou6]

Originally Posted by lgans316

Now I am beginning to truly trust the gains brought by lossless audio. I compared the DTS-HD MA track on Aviator (Dutch Import) vs the lossy DD track on Aviator (Warner - U.S ) and the difference is night and day. Every element of the sound mix was brought to life. Even the TV speakers were good enough to discern the difference.

What's the bitrate on the DD? If it's 340 then I imagine it's royally compressed.

That is why people like me who can't yet get lossless on their systems love DTS lossless, since the core DTS track is 1.5 and can sound extremely good and plays on legacy equipment.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by milou6

What's the bitrate on the DD? If it's 340 then I imagine it's royally compressed.

That is why people like me who can't yet get lossless on their systems love DTS lossless, since the core DTS track is 1.5 and can sound extremely good and plays on legacy equipment.

There's no 340 bitrate for DD.

DTS lossless is nice, it's the original master. Keep in mind if Warner had used TrueHD on The Aviator it would have sounded the same, unless the Dutch version used a different printmaster.

I prefer TrueHD because nearly all BD players support it, 640kbps core DD is just as good as DTS 1536kbps, and it has dynamic range options for those of us stuck in apartments or who like to watch their movies well into the night (nor worry about pops or speaker damaging cracks).

[JasonR]

Penton,

Where in the heck has Paidgeek been?

Jason

[Mystery Clock]

To also circle the discussion back around...

While I think Autotune (& compression) for audio - like DNR and other digital tools for film - can be a useful tool to fix small mistakes in an otherwise good take, I think it is the overuse of these tools in both music and film that raise all our hackles.

Now if you want to use them to achieve a particular artist-intended effect (the Cher song, grain matching or conforming in a film, etc.) that's fine. But if you want to digitally dumb down the source material to make it all squeaky clean so J6P can find it more accessible, I think you've gone too far.

That's my $0.04 at least.

-John

[Teazle]

I’d refer anyone who doesn’t see the motivation for lossless audio in films to titles with heavy musical content.

By way of negative example, take Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. This BD is utterly let down by a lossy DD soundtrack which makes the musical numbers – which are foci of the story – flat and insipid. Contentwise the film takes a hit from inferior audio. It was such a shame to have Danny Elfman’s work treated in this way.

Perhaps some artificial sound effects are computer-generated in the studio at 16-bit. Recorded music never is. Dialogue and explosions might sound fine at 250 Kbits/sec/channel. But who really wants to hear John Williams or Spinal Tap at that quality?

If anything, given the importance of high audio bitrates to music, and the importance of music to film, for some titles the argument shouldn’t be DTS vs. 16/48 but 24/48 vs. 24/96.

[Kris Deering]

Let's take a step out for a minute. While I am a HUGE supporter of lossless audio and have spoken my word about it time and again (including most of my Warner reviews) I think this lossy thing can be taken a bit far. People claiming that the lossy soundtracks just sound flat, crappy and any other adjective are almost amusing considering the fact that even the lossy Dolby soundtracks on Blu-ray are at a higher bitrate than any other pre-packaged media before it including D-Theater and Dolby Digital in cinemas.

640kbps Dolby Digital is by no means a slouch and motion picture soundtracks aren't nearly as challenging as music when it comes to encoding. While there is no reason at all not to support lossless across the board I think people should be a bit more realistic whilie they are sharpening their pitchforks with this stuff.

I can't wait for everything to be lossless personally. Then we can sit back and watch the mob go back and forth on why one lossless codec sounds so much better than the other and so on.

[HeavyHitter]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Then we can sit back and watch the mob go back and forth on why one lossless codec sounds so much better than the other and so on.

Hey, they're doing that now.

[Robert Harris]

What Kris said. Most people don't have gear to reproduce it anyway.

Is there a difference?

Yes.

Is it a Yugo to a Veyron?

Don't think so.

RAH

[lgans316]

Originally Posted by Kris Deering

Let's take a step out for a minute. While I am a HUGE supporter of lossless audio and have spoken my word about it time and again (including most of my Warner reviews) I think this lossy thing can be taken a bit far. People claiming that the lossy soundtracks just sound flat, crappy and any other adjective are almost amusing considering the fact that even the lossy Dolby soundtracks on Blu-ray are at a higher bitrate than any other pre-packaged media before it including D-Theater and Dolby Digital in cinemas.

640kbps Dolby Digital is by no means a slouch and motion picture soundtracks aren't nearly as challenging as music when it comes to encoding. While there is no reason at all not to support lossless across the board I think people should be a bit more realistic whilie they are sharpening their pitchforks with this stuff.

I can't wait for everything to be lossless personally. Then we can sit back and watch the mob go back and forth on why one lossless codec sounds so much better than the other and so on.

No offense Kris but this kind of mentality gives more room to Studios like Warner to make lossless audio look like a luxury. It would be insane to ask for lossless audio when the original recording was done in mono or extremely bland in nature. But if a movie like Aviator which was Oscar nominated for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing doesn't deserve high bit rate or lossless audio then I really feel embarrassed by those who call themselves AV buffs. Even the core DTS core track sounded 5 times better than the DD AC3 track encoded @640 Kbps.

Penton, RAH & Kris should go through this thread and throw in their sincere comments.

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...ghlight=Warner

There is simply no excuse to the atrocities committed by our big brothers at Warner.

[blitz6speed]

This is how it starts. Some douche know it all (kris) says that not everything needs Lossless. Then the studios see that the consumer is ok with lower quality, so we see lower bitrate used per encode. And then we see more things cut/lost in the translation because it was never standardized. This is 100% UNACCEPTABLE. Either do it right, or just do not bother. Seriously, grow some balls, Lossless audio on EVERY disc is ALREADY a reality on every studio but warner, they do not get a special pass to screw blu-ray supporters.

[CAB]

Originally Posted by blitz6speed

This is how it starts. Some douche know it all (kris) says that not everything needs Lossless. Then the studios see that the consumer is ok with lower quality, so we see lower bitrate used per encode. And then we see more things cut/lost in the translation because it was never standardized. This is 100% UNACCEPTABLE. Either do it right, or just do not bother. Seriously, grow some balls, Lossless audio on EVERY disc is ALREADY a reality on every studio but warner, they do not get a special pass to screw blu-ray supporters.

So Mr. Harris is included in this since he agreed? Yikes! Time to dial it back a few db.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by CAB

Time to dial it back a few db.

Agreed!

Plus, I didn't see anything wrong in what Kris said. It appeared all true to me!

I don't agree with RAH's comments about gear though, but everybody's different.

~Alan

[CAB]

I do agree with Mr. Harris if I am to take "most" literally. Most people could be 50.001% which, to me, is easily believable. I don't know anyone that has my kind of gear so that make me one of very many. I don't think those that participate on blu-ray.com are a good representative sample of the home viewing planet.

[Alan Gordon]

Originally Posted by CAB

I do agree with Mr. Harris if I am to take "most" literally. Most people could be 50.001% which, to me, is easily believable. I don't know anyone that has my kind of gear so that make me one of very many. I don't think those that participate on blu-ray.com are a good representative sample of the home viewing planet.

There are quite a few people out there who don't own surround sound receivers. There are also quite a majority of Blu-ray owners who view Blu-ray on the PS3... which only provides "lossless" via HDMI output. If this is what he meant, I agree too. In fact, I'm one of them.

However, if he meant that "expensive" receivers and speakers were needed, I disagree. I have NEVER heard 5.1 "lossless". If I did, I might be disappointed... but I have on a few occasions switched to 2.0 PCM and found a WORLD of difference in sound on my speakers... which came from a HTiB around 9 years ago. If 2.0 PCM can offer richer, more lifelike sounds than a "lossy" 640k, I have little doubt in my head that "lossless" 5.1 will be just as impressive.

~Alan<~~~~~~~~~~Who just last night watched a little of "Hellboy" in 2.0 PCM...

[CAB]

Yessir and I'm thinking of all those out there using the speakers that are attached to their displays. *shiver*