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.

[Stefan Scholz]

You don't need a "7". It is 0 dB reference level. Reference in movie recording is - 20dB FS. Theatres and stages must be calibrated to a response. The 7.0 is based or "70 dB at 7.0 fader setting", 70 dB inband level in a 1/3 octave band of the audio spectrum. This full frequency response is guaranteed, sums up to 85 dB C on a slow reading SPL meter. But only in full frequency. Many theatres (and potentially also dubbing stages) have way too few bass cabinets installed, with sub or LFE cabinets as bad as only 5% power of what is required.
With too little bass cabinets and going for 85 dBC, your reproduction will be far louder than intended at the stage. The maximum energy content is in the low end, not in mid or hf.
Do a correct sound system design, there are even tools to support you, and there will not be any complaint over a well mastered sound mix. Dynamics were key in the 1990s, not being loud. TV movies are loud, they scream at you by using compression and extremely low dynamic range, to comply with small 1.5 in speakers of soundbars and TV sets.
Screaming on audiences will also make them go to be noisy. They start chatting, texting, eating corn.
From theory, you must be 26 dB above the noise floor for intelligibility of speech. Movie theatres are designed for NC 25 curve at max AC setting, but with patrons 55 dB noise floor is reality. So, mixing dialogue at 82 dB might sound like a good option. It's not, patrons then can still do their noise creating, detracting activities. Lower 6 dB, and the the audience mutes, to be able to follow dialogue. What option is captioning movies? The dumbest idea I've ever heard. For those deaf I can follow, in special performances, but the rest? And you gained another 6dB for those scenes that require the fun of all bits "1" on all channels, for the perceived dynamics.
Why should you mix, intended for improper, underpowered systems. Why compensate for audience behavior? Mixing movies is an art, just like photography and acting, direction, property handling, accounting, and all other professional crafts involved making a great movie.
Most complaints in the 1990s resulted from improperly set up digital sound systems, installed on existing analog sound systems, some dating back to the 1950s. All it needed to be able to advertise with Digital sound seemed to be the purchase of a digital add on decoder and reader. No other quality check or recertification required.
I remember being at a large multiplex theatre complex in their biggest, THX cert hall, playing their "Maximum Sound" policy trailer at 7.0 setting from their D-cinema source. When it started to get louder, you could see, channel after channel, clipping LEDs turn on, shortly after followed by protect LEDs and muted sound downstairs.
Does anyone really believe 6" or 8" surround bass drivers do enough level for a theatre hall, even a small one, without bass management? They are simply not big enough to move air in bass. At least a 12" bass speaker should be chosen, but rarely was.
The good thing is, most major movies are still mastered in well-known facilities, by well known, experienced mixers and sound consultants. You can be assured, with a good system, you walk upstairs to add another 2 to 3 dB to the playback level, then sit down, and have a smile on your face.
As I learnt in the mid 1990s, 85% of the movie is sound, the rest is important, but does not really paralyze you. Once you censor the movie, either by lowering the fader, or by using an underpowered sound system, the movie loses most of its impression on the audience.

[Ed Gordon]

Help! I’m Watching a Christopher Nolan Movie Without Subtitles

We are watching this Chris Nolan film without subtitles, and I have no idea what is going on...

Now the characters are arguing. And yet they’re still whispering. I made out the word “inverted.” That’s something. Now I must use that one word to work out what the hell is going on.

I already asked “What did he say?” twice. I have one more “What did he say?” left in my arsenal before my friends think I’m stupid. I can’t use it yet. I must try harder to understand.

Maybe it’ll help if I turn up the volume. Nice—that’s better. I just understood an entire sentence and FUCK! It’s so loud! Goddammit! There’s a car chase and my eardrums are about to burst. All right, I’ll turn it back down!

Full article: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/dail...hout-subtitles

[Jim Cassedy]

During the Coronapocalypse lockdown, I often amused myself by going through ancient issues of various
cinema exhibition & projection magazines online. (Box Office, Exhibitor's Herald, Moving Picture World,
International Projectionist, etc) - - There are are dozens of articles going back to the dawn of "talking
pictures" about volume levels ( & bad acoustics). - - and there will probably be dozens more written
long after I'm in my grave. ( not that I plan on leaving the planet anytime soon)
There's probably about as much chance of resolving this problem as there is in finding a
lasting peace in the Middle East. People will give it a noble try- - but there will always be dissenting
opinions.

[William Kucharski]

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'.

However the studio screening rooms where directors watch and approve their films all have their processors set to 7.0, period.

The source article is hilarious, every AMC I've been able to peek into the booth of has run their films at 5.0 or less.

Sadly, even Alamo Drafthouse, home of "movie lovers" won't run their houses at 7.0.

Volume is often low enough you can hear people chewing popcorn during action scenes, not kidding.

If I can find a theater playing at 7.0, I will go there exclusively.

This was a few years ago now, but one of my favorite photos, taken in the booth at the Paramount Theater on the Paramount lot.

F17E4BF2-8DBF-4B47-97AE-06E5B33D9E69.jpeg

[William Kucharski]

Full article: https://www.newyorker.com/humor/dail...hout-subtitles

Nolan has said several times he mixes like that on purpose; he feels the movie industry norm of being able to hear every word makes you constantly aware you are watching a movie, where in real life you can't hear every word when the background is loud and that's what he wants.

I don't recall people complaining in North by Northwest when Hitch purposely makes what the Professor is telling Thornhill as he walks to the plane inaudible behind the plane engines starting.

[Bobby Henderson]

If any important story details are delivered via dialog they damned sure better be clearly audible. That's because such details can be easily and quickly forgotten by audience members. Show, don't tell. Movies that depend on characters blathering out exposition in a fake conversation suck for doing that. Making the dialog hard to understand doesn't improve it.

It's one thing for some meaningless banter, such as exchanges of dialog with background extras, to be inaudible or covered up with noise. If that kind of thing is done with dialog important to the story it needs to be reinforced visually so the audience understands what's happening anyway.

One thing I've found annoying with dialog in movies: scenes with 3 or more characters and two people are talking at the same time, often directing their dialog to the same person. I've long been a fan of Steven Spielberg's movies, but he has at least one or more of those kinds of scenes in everyone of his movies. For once, I'd like the character who is getting double-teamed with dialog to shout, "shut the fuck up! One at a time!!"

However the studio screening rooms where directors watch and approve their films all have their processors set to 7.0, period.

They might be watching a different mix than what actually gets delivered to movie theaters. I can recall test-screening quite a few movies in the 1990's and 2000's where the volume levels absolutely did differ from one movie to the next. One example: MGM/UA movies in the 1990's. Movies like Goldeneye were definitely cranked up in comparison to other movies in the same audio format playing on the same equipment at the same settings. A show from Universal, Paramount, etc wouldn't be quite as "hot."

Today most theaters have the sound turned way the hell down, especially the standard priced houses. Clearly the "policy" is all about trying to prevent damage to speakers save money. The quiet levels make it easier to hear all the annoying and disgusting sounds coming from the audience members.

[Marcel Birgelen]

However the studio screening rooms where directors watch and approve their films all have their processors set to 7.0, period.

The source article is hilarious, every AMC I've been able to peek into the booth of has run their films at 5.0 or less.

Sadly, even Alamo Drafthouse, home of "movie lovers" won't run their houses at 7.0.

Volume is often low enough you can hear people chewing popcorn during action scenes, not kidding.

If I can find a theater playing at 7.0, I will go there exclusively.

This was a few years ago now, but one of my favorite photos, taken in the booth at the Paramount Theater on the Paramount lot.

F17E4BF2-8DBF-4B47-97AE-06E5B33D9E69.jpeg

We do audio post-production. There is no more "7" in digital audio post-production, you have been lied to.

Also, there are legal maximums in many jurisdictions and cinemas don't want lawsuits, because people suffer permanent hearing loss, because some asshat director wants to blow your eardrums to pieces...

[William Kucharski]

We do audio post-production. There is no more "7" in digital audio post-production, you have been lied to.

Also, there are legal maximums in many jurisdictions and cinemas don't want lawsuits, because people suffer permanent hearing loss, because some asshat director wants to blow your eardrums to pieces...

Since you work in the industry, you know that a Dolby processor fader level of 7.0 is still a standard.

Dolby CP950 front panel from the manual:

image_1485.jpg

[Bobby Henderson]

The 7.0 thing is "standard." But a bunch of movie productions do not follow that. And they haven't been doing so for a long time. I have photocopies of old THX TAP notes for specific movies, like Die Hard With A Vengeance, where they recommend playing the movie at 7 on the fader. The problem is a tug of war between certain movie-goers and movie makers that has long ruined that standard. It takes BOTH a combination of a theater's sound system being set up properly and movies being mixed properly to where the level of 7.0 on the fader will be dynamic, but not painfully loud or too quiet either.

Certain customers do not like a theater's sound system to be loud at all. I wonder why the people in this crowd even bother going to a cinema. They want the volume turned way down where it's no different in dynamics from the TV in their living room at home. The movie makers, the advertisers making commercials to play in theaters and the people mixing movie trailers all try to battle that syndrome by mixing their content hotter. In the end you get a situation where some movies will sound right at 7.0. But then others blast you out of your seat with a bunch of shrill shit. Or the movie trailers or TV commercials are blasting the hell out of the sound system during the pre-show, inciting audience complaints. To make the complainers happy the manager turns down the fader and leaves it there. And there's the issue of content being mixed hot enough to blow speaker drivers. Those components are bound to fail after enough wear and tear anyway. But overly hot mixes will ruin speaker drivers faster.

How much work do modern movie theaters put into setting up sound systems these days? Concepts like THX are pretty much a thing of the past. So many commercial theaters have decent, but still unremarkable sound quality. With sound levels turned down low it's harder to tell if the system is properly tuned for that room. Is there a shortage of people who even know how to do that kind of work? Are the theater chains willing to pay for it?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Since you work in the industry, you know that a Dolby processor fader level of 7.0 is still a standard.

Dolby CP950 front panel from the manual:

Yeah, that's all great and all, but it still is a lie. First of all, it's a lie that every room sounds the same at "7" and secondly, it's a lie that movies nowadays are "mixed at 7".

We do advice "mixing at reference", but in the end, it's the customer who decides what he wants... And nobody mixes at "7" when nobody plays it at "7"... Do I hate this practice? Yes. Because we're killing a lot dynamic range here...
Who do I blame? It's hard to blame anybody specific, but it's mostly the movie industry itself who is to blame.

There is a shared responsibility here. In the first place, if you run a cinema, you don't want to hurt your audience and the sound system in many modern rooms has the capability of doing just that. Then there is the director and then there are the studios. The director is, eventually, the one responsible for the end-product. Many directors don't have any clue about sound, many of them are just like the hyped band manager who wants their band to sound "the loudest". Then, like Steve indicated previously, many directors and sound engineers really suffer from a form of "listening fatigue", although they really should know better...

The end-result are mixes so loud, they do have the potential to actually hurt people. But even before that happens, audiences will start to complain, en masse, about the volume. So, what do you expect exhibitors to do? Simple: They'll choose the side of the paying audience and not the side of the director. And yeah, many modern mixes are, in fact, pretty terrible. They're overly compressed, overly loud and constantly screaming at the audience. Instead of using the extreme dynamic range we have, it's like all we get now are overhyped teens screaming at the microphone until all levels clip into the red. Yeah, I'm exaggerating, but it's people like Christopher Nolan who I directly blame for this trend to continue. By disrespecting their own audiences and placing their own damaged hearing and ego before them, we've collectively entered into this mess. We should call them out for their TERRIBLE sound mixes they are.

Like the article I linked indicated, in Belgium, the government got involved, because people got hurt. We shouldn't want that to happen, because if they'll start implementing limits, it's over with the "cinematic sound experience".

So, how do we get out of here?

Steve proposed Leq(m) limits, which may help, but like with all those limits, if the industry itself doesn't change, those limits will just be the new game target. In my humble opinion, there should be much more respect for the paying moviegoer, who wants to be able to enjoy the movie, who wants to be able to understand the dialog and who doesn't want to end up with tinnitus. Directors and sound engineers alike should embrace the wonderful world of extreme dynamic range all those fancy digital formats have to offer. If you want to wow your audience, then showcase that instead of ramping everything up at near-clipping levels. Also, every movie that respects itself should contain a letter to the projectionist, explaining the intended "playback level".

Some big names should start calling those out who don't play ball. Heck, someone at the studios should've the guts to pull a bad mix and have a remix done by competent sound engineers.

[William Kucharski]

A properly calibrated theater will not "hurt" anyone with the fader at 7.0, but I certainly am all for dynamic range; soundtracks are becoming more compressed just as has unfortunately happened with music, where the dynamic range of digital has been thrown away in favor of the waveform instead looking like a paint by number where the urge is to fill in the entire box (this is an adult contemporary song, not even hard rock):


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I don't blame Nolan, I love his mixes and those are the ones more than anything I always, always play at reference volume at home for full effect. They can be loud, yes, but nothing outside of OSHA regulations for temporary exposure.

In fact Nolan is one of the few directors respecting film and that's why he doesn't do 3D or for that matter Atmos, but those are arguments for another place and time.

I respect your opinion on the matter, but when it comes to presentation, I'm glad the studios still present content to their execs and directors at 7.0 on the fader.

If it's that over the top, at least they know how over the top they're being.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm glad the studios still present content to their execs and directors at 7.0 on the fader.

Here's another factor to consider: there is a strong possibility those Hollywood screening rooms in question are getting their A-B chains re-tuned frequently, if not for every show. That makes it easier to play a specific movie at 7.0 without the audio being painfully loud or too quiet. Most commercial cinemas have their sound systems "tuned" just once when construction is complete. They set it and forget it. Then it's a downhill slide from there. Very few commercial cinemas have their sound systems re-tuned on any frequent basis.

On the topic of compressing & limiting techniques, yes that is having an adverse effect on movie sound mixes just like it did with popular music. I have hundreds of music CDs, quite a few of which were fabricated in the early 1990s and 1980s. It is so easy to tell the difference between those discs and anything bought in the mid 1990s going forward. The earlier discs are so much more quiet. I've ripped LPCM WAV files of all my music CDs. When I open a 30+ year old LPCM WAV file in Adobe Audition the wave form looks pretty natural. Anything relatively recent will have its wave-form bled out to the max. It's ridiculous.

[William Kucharski]

They don't get retuned frequently, they are calibrated to the Dolby standard on a regular basis, as that's the whole point of a "standard."

The studios and directors really do want to know what their films will sound like in a proper presentation and playing with the settings in the screening room would be completely anathema to that.

I have had long conversations with the senior projectionist for the Paramount screening rooms on this very topic.

I fully agree that most theaters don't bother to recalibrate, even when replacing equipment, which is just crazy, but really except for Dolby theaters which require regular visits from Dolby techs they see it as a money sink. It's a big reason theater chains dropped THX certification; rather than pay a license fee and go through extra construction expense, they said they could "do they same job ourselves," then of course don't.

I also fully agree with your characterization of music waveforms; today I strictly avoid anything "remastered" and frankly when looking to acquire music if there was a CD released in the late 1980s will always acquire that instead as it's the only way to get a copy without the waveforms squared off, it's horrific.

There thankfully are a few artists/labels that care, but it's generally on a release by release basis.

[Marcel Birgelen]

A properly calibrated theater will not "hurt" anyone with the fader at 7.0,

Look, it doesn't help anyone if we keep denying this. Research has shown that hearing loss can already start at prolonged exposure to 85 dBA. OSHA regulations, to be honest, are a big joke. They allow what? An exposure of 100 dBA for 2 hours in an 8 hour time period? At those levels, a constant exposure of 15 minutes or longer can already cause permanent hearing damage. Also, cinema is supposed to be entertainment for the paying customer, not work.

Governments all over the planet start noticing this and are actively looking at far stricter rules, I for one, are afraid that those rules will be so limiting, that we eventually can't have GREAT sound anymore... I for one, love explosions to be loud, but I don't want to sit through 2 hours of constant explosions...

I don't blame Nolan, I love his mixes and those are the ones more than anything I always, always play at reference volume at home for full effect. They can be loud, yes, but nothing outside of OSHA regulations for temporary exposure.

In fact Nolan is one of the few directors respecting film and that's why he doesn't do 3D or for that matter Atmos, but those are arguments for another place and time.

Well, this is a topic about sound mixes, so why not discuss this right here? I honestly think Nolan's ideas about sound mixes are broken and somewhere between Inception and The Dark Knight Rises, he must have damaged his own hearing.

We've played Interstellar at 7 in our own screening room and some of the scenes are just obscene. If people start sticking their fingers in their ears, you know stuff isn't right... And yeah, that room gets re-calibrated a few times a year, unlike your average multiplex.

In the end, Nolan must remember that he serves his customers, who are those who pay money to see his films. Many people, in fact, most people I speak to, dislike the fact that he allows dialog to be completely muffled. Most people do think that his sound mixes are far too loud and quite a few do avoid his movies in theaters. Theaters, meanwhile struggle with those complaints. While many still want to play those movies as intended, their audience simply isn't buying it, so they take matters in their own hands.

I respect your opinion on the matter, but when it comes to presentation, I'm glad the studios still present content to their execs and directors at 7.0 on the fader.

If it's that over the top, at least they know how over the top they're being.

Well, we had those very same people asking us to "turn it down a notch"...