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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Topic: DTS - SRD Levels and quality considerations
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Thomas Jonsson
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 216
From: Bromolla, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted 05-07-2005 06:39 AM
Antonio, I think you deserve credits for your effort. There is
nothing wrong in being curious. Iīve been wondering myself why
films can sound so different.
My theater is a single, THX with all three digital systems. What
Iīve found out over the years, is that some films sounds better in
DTS, some in SRD, and some actually sounds best in analog Dolby SR.
Generally SDDS sounds best, but since only 1 out of 3 films will
play, itīs perhaps beside the point.
The techs Iīve used over the years to tune the soundsystem, all
work the same way; tune by the book - then add a little color.
After all, itīs the ear thatīs going to listen, not a computer.
Thomas
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 05-07-2005 03:43 PM
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think in Sweden you get to hear the original version in the cinema, with subtitles. Although I have always been wildly opposed to dubbing in languages other than the original, I had to concede to defenders of the process in Germany that they at least do it very professionally there. With very good voice actors, as lipsync as possible, with correct dialog levels.
There was a time when they recorded the dialog at a higher level than the original because some dubbing directors felt that "the Americans record at the wrong level because the voices are too low and the dialog is drowned by the athmosphere elements". That was nonsense of course. Nobody knows better than the people who make the original how it is supposed to sound. These directors came from TV and limited headroom analog (mono) times. Interestingly though, some of them had been involved in high quality dubbing in the 50s and 60s for 6-channel magnetic releases, with directional dialog and all that done very neatly. Maybe they felt that the plunge back into optical mono standards before the advent of Dolby Stereo necessitated "correcting" the dialog levels. Whatever. For many years now, they have been doing it correctly.
However, in Italy, the dubbings I have seen even of prime releases were really bad. Flat non-lipsync voices, too high dialog levels with too little headroom. To give US readers an idea what that sounds like: about the quality level of 70s Kung Fu movie dubbings. It really seems to me not to make too much sense to invest a lot of time in squeezing "the last 3%" out of the sound quality when the material then played back is so heavily compromised.
As Lyle has pointed out, Dolby Digital uses psychoacoustic masking across the channels as part of the process. It does not make sense to compare channels individually. The sound picture as a whole is what needs to be judged. Just like you can not judge the acoustical quality of a concert hall reliably by listening to individual instruments - you have to hear the whole orchestra to see how transparent, even and balanced the whole sound picture is.
I can't believe that this whole "I don't need test equipment because I can trust my ears" nonsense is coming up again and again. Nobody says that finetuning is illegal, b ut is has to happen within certain defined rarameters that are elements of the industry standard, and those can not be subjectively judged. Whoever says he can is full of it. Our hearing is not made to measure SPL levels and we can not judge even response over a sound spectrum, for the same reasons that psychoacoustical codecs can fool us to a certain degree. Because aural perception is so subjective, there is a huge grey area where pseudo experts can roam freely. But most people don't even have trained ears, yet they still feel they are experts because "they know what they like".
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Antonio Marcheselli
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1260
From: Florence, Italy
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 05-07-2005 04:46 PM
Michael
Original voices cannot be substituted, of course. But in Italy we had dubbed movie since the beginning and if you try to show a movie in Italy with subtitles none will go to see it, trust me. About the levels, the biggest problems is that usually the dialogs are LOWER than the original and not higher. About the lipsync, I know that we usually change something in the translation to maintain the highest possibile lipsync. About the flatten dialogues: I believe that is a matter of personal taste, I usually find German dubbing worse than Italian one, with too high level dialogue... ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
This is what we see in our movie, and this cannot justify a less quality presentation. For Italian audience a dubbed movie is the normal thing to see, see it with 3 more subwoofer will give something more to the experience, I do not see why I should not do it. Just because our quality of the presentation is no "as high" as yours should not justify someone to have an even more lower quality in his cinema. This is my opinion of course.
However, the purpose of my post was not this one, the only reply I had was about the psycoacustical code that Dolby uses in their encoder. It's right, I didn't think about that. But usually lower frequencies are not a problem for encoding, seems strange to me that AC3 contains some tricks at very low frequencies... But it could be the answer.
Bye
A
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Michael Schaffer
"Where is the
Boardwalk Hotel?"
Posts: 4143
From: Boston, MA
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 05-07-2005 05:38 PM
quote: Antonio Marcheselli
But in Italy we had dubbed movie since the beginning and if you try to show a movie in Italy with subtitles none will go to see it, trust me. About the levels, the biggest problems is that usually the dialogs are LOWER than the original and not higher. About the lipsync, I know that we usually change something in the translation to maintain the highest possibile lipsync. About the flatten dialogues: I believe that is a matter of personal taste, I usually find German dubbing worse than Italian one, with too high level dialogue...
This is what we see in our movie, and this cannot justify a less quality presentation.
Honestly, Antonio, that's a bunch of nonsense. I did not say that you should give people a "less quality presentation". I also know it's not your fault that people want to see the dubbed versions. That's the same everywhere that evil practice is common, unfortunately. Although more and more theatres at least in the big cities in Germany now play OVs, and a lot of other countries which do not have a big enough market to finance the dubbings always did it. My ex-chain in Germany even has a modern 8-screen in downtown Berlin which only plays OVs, the only modern multiplex in Europe in a non-English-speaking countries which plays OVs exclusively, I believe.
I am pretty sure you never watched a movie dubbed in German in a movie theatre, and to answer the next question, yes, I did watch several movies in theatres in Rome when I was there 2 years ago (and a few years before that in Bolzano and Milano). opinion, all dubbings are "bad taste", I hate the concept as such. But where the dialog levels are is not a matter of taste, it's an industry standard too. The dialog levels in Germany now (for the last 7-10 years or so) are right where they belong. I have seen them do it a couple of times in the dubbing studios in Berlin myself. I am not even going to go deeper into matters of quality, such as embedding the dialog in the athmosphere of the scene by using different response characteristics (in the street, in a small room, in a large room, etc). None of these happened in the Italian dubbings I watched. They were all completely dry - or "flat" - studio sound in the mid of whatever the actual ambience of the scene was. It is not really possible to lipsync different languages, but they can at least match the timing of the mouth movements and the dialog, and that was really bad too. I wonder if you have ever seen a number of OVs (we are basically talking about US product here since they make up most of the big releases) in a good movie theater either?
Anyway, what all this comes down to is not that I or anyone else doubts or criticizes your desire to give people the possible best presentation. But I have to say I do find it somewhat strange that you spend so much time investigating the tiny quality differences between formats when the actual product you are presenting is very far from what the ideal quality standards are anyway.
Now I am going off to watch a movie in the OV - in Dolby Digital. Sorry about that.
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