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Author Topic: DTS - SRD Levels and quality considerations Frank Dubrois Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 896 From: Cleveland, OH Registered: Mar 2005 posted 05-07-2005 07:26 PM                    So what does Darth Vader sound like speaking Italian?  |  IP: Logged Antonio Marcheselli Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1260 From: Florence, Italy Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-08-2005 12:36 PM                        Just know that in the original Trilogy Darth Vader was renamed "Lord fener", don't ask me why... The effect of the mask is recreated of course!! Bye A [ 05-08-2005, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: Antonio Marcheselli ]  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-08-2005 02:13 PM                        of course, even italian-made films have traditionally had dubbed, or post-synced, dialog, in the flat manner that michael describes. personally, i find that very hard to watch. i'll watch it, but it's hard. isn't it getting more common for italian films do have dialogue recorded during shooting? is there any chance of italians being "spoiled" on synced dialogue to the point of accepting subtitles as a compromise? what would happen if, for example, george lucas insisted that star wars play only in OV in italy? would people still see it? and to stray further off-topic, is there any truth to the stories i've heard about how in italy it is considered acceptable to answer a phone and to smoke in the theater? i don't think i've ever seen a film in italy and i certainly wouln't want to if that is the case. carl  |  IP: Logged Antonio Marcheselli Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1260 From: Florence, Italy Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-08-2005 02:39 PM                        Carl, Italian movie are recorded on the field. Too often they have a very poor quality on dialogues... I do not think that our dialogues are very flat, please consider the fact that it is not your language and that each language has a difference "sound"... For example english language has a sound that in some condition is not possibile to have in Italian. I', sometimes amazed on how different sounds dialogues in english than italian ones, but I can not see the way to make them the same (in some condition). Our language is different, you cannot expect that an italian man speaks exactly as an english man! If George Lucas have Star Wars in OV in our theaters, I do not think that he'll find Italians' favour... You're not used to see much foreign movie since the most of production is made by US. When I see OV movie with subtitles (often in English...) I realize that I cannot have time to see the action. Today on MTV there was a special called "Pimp my car", I looked at the subtitles and I was not able to see what happened on the screen 'cause the dialogues was very fast... About smoking and talking at the phone in Italian's theaters... We're not so primitive, it is not allowed to smoke in theaters since 20 years; about cellular, it depends of people kindness but if someone starts talking at the phone and an usher see it (or the customer come to complain) that people is asked to stop talking and to shut off the phone! It is not a law but in a movie theater you can not disturb the others! After that, rude people are everywhere, you too find sometime used condom in theaters... Bye Antonio  |  IP: Logged Thomas Jonsson Expert Film Handler Posts: 216 From: Bromolla, Sweden Registered: Sep 2003 posted 05-08-2005 03:09 PM                       Michael Correct. In Sweden only films for children are dubbed. Most films in Swedish theaters are from the USA, OV with subtitles. I´ve heard John Wayne speak German. I didn´t like it. The French also seem to dub films, but the ones I´ve seen had english subtitles. Is that the case in Italy, Antonio? Since we´re off the topic anyway - another thing I´ve experienced both in Italy and the Netherlands, is a nasty habit of stopping the show in the middle to make people go to the concession stand one more time. Thomas  |  IP: Logged Antonio Marcheselli Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1260 From: Florence, Italy Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-08-2005 03:48 PM                        Thomas No, we do not have subtitles at all! And, yes, we usually had the behaviour to stop film in the middle to have people go to the "concession stand". Then US style multiplex arrived and this behaviour has stopped! Bye A  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 05-08-2005 04:14 PM                        Actually John Wayne's "German voice" is not a good negative example since he liked it himself. He was friends with the actor Arnold Marquis who dubbed him, they went drinking heavily together when Wayne was in Germany to work on their coarse whiskey voices... What we mean here by "flat" is not the actual melody or intonation of the language - Italian is actually more melodic than English - but the manner in which the voices are recorded and also the texts are delivered. Those dubbings I have heard had no athmospheric recording at all (meaning they are recorded and treated with an ambience that matches the scene and the acoustical environment in which the scene takes place), they were just dry sounding studio takes which did not match the acoustical athmosphere. Another feature I did not like was that the voices mostly had a very different color than the original actors, and the texts were usually delivered very straight, basically just people reading through their texts instead of really "acting" them. BTW "Lord Fener" in Italian sounds like a guy talking into a handkerchief. I once saw "L'Emperio battuta ancora" in a cinema in Milano. Antonio, I am a little surprised that you apparently haven't noticed these acoustical "incompabilities" so far. Sorry, but that makes me doubt the validity of your extended listening tests even more. And no, watching Star Trek on DVD does not count. You need to watch and listen to a lot of OVs in a good cinema to get a feeling for what US productions really sound like. Thomas - Yes, in France they dub movies too. Interestingly though, they also show a lot of OVs. Very surprising for a country in which everyone emphatically pretends not to be interested in speaking foreign languages. Big releases are often shown in dubbed and OVs on may screens. For that reson, DTS is really big in France. I guess that is because they have a very special appreciation for cinema as an art form there and they understand that the original language is part of the stylistic texture of the movie.  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-08-2005 04:34 PM                        ah, i'm glad about the smoking and cell phones. when i said "flat" i meant it in the sense michael did. in other words, the dialogue all sounds like it was recorded by someone in a booth, and not in the environment in which the action takes place. i'm sure it's much better done now than it was in the 40's-70's. that mtv show seems like rather an extreme example of subtitling problems. usually it's possible to read titles in a movie and catch most of the action. true, it is a compromise. but in a dubbed film you are missing the entirety of the original vocal performance. perhaps the worst case scenario is a post-synced foreign-language film, shown OV with subtitles. when i saw roma, citta aperta, for example, i often couldn't figure out who was speaking the lines because the translation was incomplete and all the normal aural cues we normally have at our disposal were not there. btw, if you were talking about me personally, i am quite used to seeing foreign language films. but you're probably right about people in general. thomas, i could be wrong, but i seem to remember seeing a donald duck cartoon subtitled in malmö about 20 years ago. carl  |  IP: Logged Joop de Gruiter Film Handler Posts: 33 From: Lund, Sweden Registered: Jul 99 posted 05-08-2005 05:14 PM                     The break in the middle of the film is a nasty habit that is becoming less common in the Netherlands in the past years. I think the break has been accepted since you have a different way of going out to see a movie in the Netherlands. Many theaters have a bar and you can have a beer in the break and discuss the movie so far. Another aspect which I didn't think of before I became a projectionist is that this way, if the film is of normal length, you only need one projector which can run 6000'/1800 meter reels. That's also a money saver. Interesting that the spreading of Hollywood movies > multiplexes has created a culture of running a film without intermission, as it should be.  |  IP: Logged Antonio Marcheselli Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1260 From: Florence, Italy Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-09-2005 08:16 AM                        Michael I didn't say that dubbed movie are better than OV... I just say that I will live to see OV movie sometimes (in my home theater since there are just few theaters showing OV movies) BUT I'll prefer to see them dubbed in Italian since that way I can fully appreciate the images and the action! I realize that many of the feature of the sound is lost in dubbed version. I just understand that it is not easy for dubbing mixers to recreate PERFECTLY the surrounding environment. Sometimes they do it poorly, sometime they do it in a good way. I just think that to have the full featured movie you have to see it in OV. It's a compromise, as has been said! I'm sorry that this personal feeling can judge the analisys I post before, made in my best objective way... You don't like dubbed movie (remember that you know perfectly english, I don't), this does not make me think that your opinion on sound systems is inadequate! When you saw "L'impero colpisce ancora" in italy? Remember that was a 1970's dubbing work, even in the reissue version. Bye A  |  IP: Logged Thomas Jonsson Expert Film Handler Posts: 216 From: Bromolla, Sweden Registered: Sep 2003 posted 05-09-2005 03:00 PM                       Carl, You´re right about seeing a subtitled Donald Duck. Most cartoons showed in Swedish theaters used to have subtitles. Unfortunately cartoons in theaters is a thing of the past here. However, most full length movies for kids are dubbed, and has been for as long as I can remember. Many Disney and Pixar releases usually have a dozen or so OV prints with subtitles. As for Donald Duck; one man - and one man ONLY - could do the voice perfect, and that was Clarence Nash. Period! As for the intermissions in Netherlands, I have seen a couple of movies without a stop. As for Italy, the one and only film I saw in Rome was Les Miserables, OV with subtitles. We were 4 people in the theater. In the middle of the film there was a stop. A man with a box full of snacks walk up in front of the screen, clapped his hands very hard four times to get attention. Nobody bought anything. He walk all the way around the auditorium and back to the screen and clapped his hands again. After standing there for about 3 more minutes with nobody buying anything the film started again. Annoying, perhaps - but it was Italian charm, the old-fashioned way, you can only see in movies today. Boy, am I way off topic now... Thomas  |  IP: Logged Antonio Marcheselli Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1260 From: Florence, Italy Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-11-2005 09:37 AM                        Thomas I never saw a clapping man during intermissions in Florence! There were intermissions, sure. But it is a behavior that is slowly disappearing. There are no intermission in most of the theaters right now! Yesterday I spend part of the time comparing OV with dubbed version of Matrix. Sure, the OV cannot be reproduced at 100% but I strongly disagree with the "dubbed version are a piece of crap => do not try doing better shows"... About sounds surrounding the dialogues, some are lost, some not, some are recreated. And, yes, dialogues changes tonality only when the ambience change drastically. So you'll find the same "studio" dialogue in a little room, in a big room, but they'll change in a church or in the road. It's not 100%, of course, but it is 70%. AND, dialogues do not continues when the actor stop talking! At least, the dialogues are almost synchronized, someone that know english and check the lipsync can see the differences, but if you're hearing the dialogues and watching the action you won't notice the delay. I would love to see only OV movie. I do not know english so well to fully understand without subtitles. So I prefer dubbed version. Perhaps I'd love to see italian version and then see it again in OV with subtitles... Just my 2cent opinion! Bye A  |  IP: Logged Michael Schaffer "Where is the Boardwalk Hotel?" Posts: 4143 From: Boston, MA Registered: Apr 2002 posted 05-11-2005 02:05 PM                        quote: Antonio Marcheselli Sure, the OV cannot be reproduced at 100% but I strongly disagree with the "dubbed version are a piece of crap => do not try doing better shows"... I really regret that I answered in this thread! You just don't get it, Antonio. You kill my nerves!!! I am NOT saying you should quit trying to improve things. I simply said that the small differences between DTS and SRD don't matter that much, and it does appear to me to be slightly ridiculous that you apparently spend so much time "optimizing" your sound systems when the material that you play through them is far from optimal to begin with. Answer to the original question: DTS or SRD? It doesn't matter AT ALL. Rather listen to the soundtrack of a movie in the original version created by the people who made the movie. That does matter.  |  IP: Logged Brad Miller Administrator Posts: 17775 From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall) Registered: May 99 posted 05-11-2005 02:10 PM                     Mike, I couldn't have said that better myself. If Antonio ever should end up in the US, I want to run a quad track print for him in my screening room while you randomly switch between SRD, DTS and SDDS and have him identify which format he is listening to. Once he fails to be able to do that, we will then simply have him start to identify when a format change has happened. When he fails to be able to do that more often than not, we can both laugh in his face as he wonders why he has become so oddly infatuated with finding a difference. I have done this test for many people and everyone agrees that even on a direct A/B/C comparison, the difference is SO MINISCUAL that it is damn near impossible to tell, and when each person is told that "you HAVE to pick the best sounding one", they end up selecting SDDS every time. Then when each person is told "of the remaining two formats, which sounds best", they end up picking SRD. Remember though, my SDDS is ran through the Dolby processor. I do not have it handling the B-chain on it's own, which is why my setup is a truly fair test between formats. (SDDS always loses the battle when it's B-chain controls are used.)  |  IP: Logged Ferdinando Innocenti Film Handler Posts: 79 From: Genova / Italy Registered: Jun 2004 posted 05-11-2005 04:28 PM                     Sorry, people, but… how/why did you become technicians? Isn’t there in you any curiosity, any hunger for knowledge? Your scope is “to obtain the best from what you have” or “to obtain the best, but if I don’t have the best, no matter, it won’t sound best, so it’s no use to work hard”. Antonio is trying to understand which is the better system for his theatre, why would he “get over it”? I prefer SRD for its low response, and DTS for surround. But I never tried to do what Antonio tried, I found it very interesting and I’ll do when I’ll have time enough. I agree that the most important tool is the ear, but I am sure that explaining in scientific terms why a sound is better than another could help many of us in choosing equipment. I would’t answer about the Italian dubbing, but I must remember that Italian dubbing is famous in the world and some of the best USA actors became friends with their dubbers (Pacino, Cary Grant, James Stewart, John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn; De Niro said his Italian voice was better than his!). But, about the sound levels, you are right, in these years they are terribly low!  |  IP: Logged

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