Inside Out 2 - Sound Issues?

[Harry Smolin]

Hello,

I am the projectionist at an independent first-run movie theater about to open Inside Out 2. I quality checked the DCP this morning and observed that the sound mix is uneven, specifically that the music and sound effects are much louder than the dialogue and appear to be muffling it at times. Additionally, the sound levels appear to vary between scenes, with one especially loud high-pitched sound of an alarm blaring at around the 12-minute mark.

For anyone else who is running the film, have you encountered similar issues? Any insight and/or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Harry

[Mike Blakesley]

They showed the first half-hour of it at CinemaCon and the sound seemed fine there. I do remember the "alarm" sound you're mentioning -- it's in all the trailers too -- and I'm sure it's meant to be very loud in the movie. I'll be QC'ing our copy tonight so we'll see.

[William Kucharski]

Saw it last night at an AMC IMAX and noticed no sound issues.

[Jim Cassedy]

I set up a "Tech Check" screening for several employees of it on Wed nite, which I didn't
hang around for, since I needed to be at the theater before 7am the next morning. I asked
them the next day if they noticed any issues, and they said there were none. We've also
run at least a ½-dozen shows so far today- - and neither the day staff or any customers
complained about anything. (well, not about the sound anyway. there were the usual
"the auditorium is too hot / too cold" / "It's too loud", " 'Is that a fly in my popcorn?", etc)
It would help if you mentioned what sound format you are running. 5.1?, 7.1? IAB? etc .

[Harry Smolin]

Running IAB in our largest auditorium, which is an Atmos auditorium, and 7.1 in our two smaller auditoriums. It's mostly just the dialogue that seemed a little faint in all three. Based on testing, we currently have it set to 6.5 on the fader for the largest and one of the smaller auditoriums and 6.0 in the other smaller auditorium. No sound-related complaints here so far either from yesterday's shows or the early shows on Thursday.

[Max Fetter]

If I remember correctly, Pixar wants the fader to be set at 7 for there films. They usually update there projection website with there standards but didn't see it updated for Inside Out 2. I'm not a projectionist though so can't really confirm anything.

https://projection.pixar.com/

[Mike Blakesley]

Well, that doesn't say much, because almost every studio wants almost every movie run at 7. It's the "standard" setting, but it's too loud in a lot of places (opinions vary as to what "too loud" means).

[Martin Brooks]

Well, that doesn't say much, because almost every studio wants almost every movie run at 7. It's the "standard" setting, but it's too loud in a lot of places (opinions vary as to what "too loud" means).

"Too loud" is when the sound is distorted or if people want to instinctively plug their ears or if they tense up or if it seems like everyone in the movie is yelling all the time or if one walks out with ears ringing. I will say that it doesn't happen as often as it used to. But it would also be nice if we didn't damage kids' hearing.
IMO and as a former recording engineer, sound levels have gotten completely ridiculous almost everywhere. I sometimes bring an SPL meter with me to the movies just to see how loud it is and I've been at movies where the audio levels exceeded OSHA regulations if it had been a factory. . And of course the trailers are much louder than the feature. Why the industry doesn't do something about this is beyond my comprehension. I know that Dolby tried a few decades ago, but the effort failed.

[Jon Dent]

I thought the dialog seemed a bit low at first but it was always understandable and it got better as the movie went along. Definitely not as loud as your typical movie, but Disney/Pixar animated movies usually aren't.