Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Gran Torino sound

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Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 01-22-2009, 01:27 PM:

I'm just curious if anyone else noticed problems with the sound in Gran Torino. In some scenes it seemed like it was center channel only and kind of muted. I didn't think it was a huge deal, but we have had a couple seniors comment about it.

I'm starting to wonder if we have a bad reel or DTS disk.

Posted by Blaine Young (Member # 3992) on 01-22-2009, 02:51 PM:

We've had reports of soft audio in both the DTS and Dolby houses. We're just setting the fader a bit higher.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-22-2009, 02:52 PM:

Same thing here in a Dolby house.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 01-22-2009, 10:55 PM:

Had complaints of soft audio in our DTS house and discovered that it was periodically dropping in to analogue. Reset (Dolby) levels on the analogue and had no further complaints. It has since been moved to a SRD house due to needing more seats (been selling out several shows) and haven't had any complaints thus far.

Posted by Michael Hossen (Member # 4274) on 01-23-2009, 04:14 AM:

We have been having problems with the DTS on this also. Keeps dropping back to SR.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-23-2009, 09:35 AM:

I haven't had any tech issues with the DTS or Dolby track itself, but it does seem that overall, the sound track was mixed at a slightly lower level than normal.

I'm having to turn my fader up about about 1-2points higher to get a "normal" level of volume in the auditorium, especially in a full house or I get complaints of "low sound".

I've watched the film several times now and other than the slightly "soft" audio level, I haven't noticed anything unusual about the mix itself.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 01-24-2009, 11:32 AM:

Remember years ago you would see instructions printed in multiple frames of the Academy leader: "Projectionist - set fader level 3 points higher than normal for this theatre"? I guess this title could benefit from same.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 01-24-2009, 11:36 AM:

Except it only happens in some scenes, not the whole movie so raising the volume could screw things up for the whole movie to make a couple scenes sound levels up to normal.

Posted by John T. Hendrickson, Jr (Member # 849) on 01-24-2009, 01:38 PM:

Took my wife to see it in our biggest house (with DTS). We both noticed low sound at several points.

Agree Chris. Kicking it up would not have done any good.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-25-2009, 10:16 AM:

quote: Chris Slycord
raising the volume could screw things up for the whole movie to make a couple scenes sound levels up to normal.

Normally, I would agree. I like to think that people who get paid a lot of money to do the sound mixes know what they're doing and have thought extensively about the way the final product sounds.

But for whatever reason, the end result just didn't work in our case for this film. So we raised the level and left it up.

Before we did this we got several "low sound complaints" a day.

We haven't gotten ONE complaint since we made the decision to raise the volume on the 2nd day after the movie opened.

I guess it's all in finding a 'happy medium' level.

Before we rasied the level, even my boss grabbed a set of booth keys and went in to raise the volume when he sat down to watch the movie with his family.

(I was busy at another theater down the street)

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 01-28-2009, 10:35 PM:

I saw it at the Regal-UA Union Square 14 in Manhattan and the sound was absolutely fine. Picture was a bit dim though.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-29-2009, 01:08 AM:

Maybe we should look at a particular sound format to be the culprit. For example, I watched this in SRD and the sound was well mixed throughout the entire film. Could this be a dts or an sdds track problem?

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-30-2009, 01:16 AM:

Again, we ran it in SRD, and got quite a few complaints about quiet dialogue when it was run at our usual level.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 01-30-2009, 02:26 AM:

Are you by chance not altering the volume between trailers and feature? If so, then that's your problem. Trailers are recorded too loud and if the fader is adjusted for the trailers, the feature will be too low and dialog will be lost.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-30-2009, 02:45 AM:

We are not adjusting the volume. I'd love for our automation to be set up to do that, but I don't have the know-how to make that happen.

However, we generally do just run the trailers "too loud," and have the fader set for the level of the actual feature, and we still had to run this one higher.

We normally run SRD features at -5.0dB, this one we ran at -3.0dB. We also have DTS in that house... it's continuing to play there this next week, I should try running it in DTS to see if I notice a difference. (We don't have a standard setup, the sound systems for our two largest screens are controlled through touch screens. So, you really have nothing to base those volume levels off of, but they're just to give you an idea.)

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 01-30-2009, 09:57 AM:

quote: Mark Strube
I should try running it in DTS to see if I notice a difference

I've experienced the problem in both DTS and SRD at my location.
We also are not varying the volume level between the trailers and feature. Never have, in that particular auditorium.

And there have never been any 'low sound' complaints prior to Gran Torino. So I have to beleive that it's just something unique to the recording levels on that title.

We've been able to raise the level to a "happy medium" where the trailers aren't totally blasting people out of their seats and the feature isn't making people complain about low audio.

Posted by Mark Strube (Member # 4190) on 01-30-2009, 10:23 AM:

quote: Jim Cassedy
We've been able to raise the level to a "happy medium" where the trailers aren't totally blasting people out of their seats and the feature isn't making people complain about low audio.

Yup, I know exactly of what you speak. The level of the trailers end up at that border line, where it's almost uncomfortably loud, but completely tolerable... where you can tell, one more level up and you'd probably have complaints. [Wink]

Posted by Paul Van Dusen (Member # 3640) on 02-01-2009, 04:39 AM:

Sound format most likely isn't the problem. I had the same complaints and i'm running a digital print. I chalked it up to the fact that the scenes that seemed to have no surround didn't really need surround. They seemed to be scene of dialog and light ambient sound going to the surround channel.