Setting the volume on problem movies

[Michael Jamieson]

Just wondering, how do you deal with films which have quiet dialogue and loud sound effects? Our system is balanced every year by our service tech, but some films seem very difficult to strike a good balance volume wise. “The Faraway Magic Tree” seems to have quiet dialogue and thundering effects throughout, so much so we’ve had a couple of complaints, even though we’ve set the volume to a hopefully happy medium.

What’s your experience of this sort of thing? Any advice gratefully received,

[Mike Blakesley]

I always pick two or three random spots in the movie and listen to the dialouge. I set the volume where I think it sounds right. If the "loud" stuff comes out very loud, I assume that's how the director intended it. My setting is usually somewhere between 5.7 and 6.5 on our Ovation processor.

It must work, because we almost never get sound complaints of any type. Sometimes people will come out with a big smile saying "Wow, that was loud!"

[Steve Guttag]

I don't want to get into a long discussion here on loud sound as it is MUCH more complex than mere volume. Anytime you try to assign a single number (be that SPL or fader level) to describe a complex thing, like sound, or picture you are, necessarily throwing away a lot of the detail that went into that number. For instance, you can set your projector's center brightness to 14fL but that tells you nothing about its distribution or its color (in any part of the screen). Likewise, setting your level to 85dBc doesn't tell you anything about the theatre's frequency response, THD...etc. There is also the mix too that factors in. A Nolan movie is, notoriously, going to have crappy dialog compared to other parts of the mix.

But, for what you can do, make sure your theatre is in order first. To put it in a single sentence, build your theatre as if it was to meet THX requirements.

That is, make sure the RT60 (reverberation time) of your theatre is proper, use good equipment (speakers, amps, processor) and then tune it properly (which if you get the first two parts right, should be minimal). Those items alone will significantly reduce your audio complaint problems, including level. When people say it is too loud...more often than not, they mean it sounds too distorted. That is, it hurts to sit there and listen to it. I have theatres where I tuned multiple theatres with the same equipment and just due to the equipment in the theatre and how the theatre was treated (acoustically), the theatre with the better equipment and better treatment, run at a higher level EVERY TIME. Seriously, with the same movie and tuned identically, the volume level in the better theatre may be at 7.0 while in the theatres with lesser equipment/treatment need to be turned down to avoid complaints. And that is on the same movie. If you go in there with an SPL meter, they all will measure the same. If you go in there with an RTA, they will measure mostly the same. The better theatre has a little better top and bottom end.

What you might try, prior to really looking at your equipment and your theatre's acoustics is to lower Left/Right by 3-dB (give or take) and see if that doesn't address the bulk of your problem. Also, resist the urge to boost Left/Right with the SPL. If you set Left/Right to 85dBc as you did with Center, then you've boosted them to overcome their distance to the reference mic (longer distance). If your three speakers are functioning properly (all have similar measurements), set Left/Right no higher than Center on your processor's output such that if you were to measure each speaker standing directly in front of them, that they measure the same. Again, this isn't the "proper" way but in a theatre with less than ideal equipment/treatment, it can lessen the complaints.

[Michael Jamieson]

Excellent advice, thanks guys!

[Marcel Birgelen]

We recently screened Tenet, the 2020 Christopher Nolan Time Travel Thriller. I'm pretty sure that masochism runs deep with Nolan, you need to make some sacrifices to watch his films, like tinnitus...
The pounding, deep and extremely loud soundtrack regularly drowns out the dialogue, which makes a rather hard to follow movie, even harder to follow.

I know it's sacrilege, but for those kind of movies, I'd really wish we had something like a "Midnight Mode" on professional cinema sound equipment. A mode that compresses the sound, knocks the edge off of the soundtrack, but boosts and normalizes the dialog in the movie.

[Michael Jamieson]

We recently screened Tenet, the 2020 Christopher Nolan Time Travel Thriller. I'm pretty sure that masochism runs deep with Nolan, you need to make some sacrifices to watch his films, like tinnitus...
The pounding, deep and extremely loud soundtrack regularly drowns out the dialogue, which makes a rather hard to follow movie, even harder to follow.

I know it's sacrilege, but for those kind of movies, I'd really wish we had something like a "Midnight Mode" on professional cinema sound equipment. A mode that compresses the sound, knocks the edge off of the soundtrack, but boosts and normalizes the dialog in the movie.

I hear you! We're running a National Theatre Live show just now, a stage play, filmed in a large theatre. The microphones seem to have been placed far from the stage, the result being whisper quiet dialogue, and thundering applause, music and incidental sound effects. I've had to lace the show with audio cues, which we shouldn't have to do.

[Marco Giustini]

As Steve said, the EQ is a small part of a sound system. The acoustic of your room, the speakers, the amplifiers play a massive role. You can't fix a bad acoustic with EQ. Also, sound tuning is a (scientific) art. It's not like setting colours and brightness on a projector.

If you show me a colour meter confirming your colours and brightness are within DCI specs, there is not much I can say about that (unless Silver Screens and Laser come into play)
If you show me an RTA trace showing that your sound system is perfectly aligned to the reference standards it won't tell me much.

And that is without mentioning that someone else might show up using different equipment or technique and you'll have a completely different set of traces!

The National Theatre Live show might be bad recording/mixing of course. I do not know. Same for the movie.
But there are many people who don't appreciate the dynamic of a modern, well-mixed, movie. I can watch a modern, well-mixed, movie at 7.0 in a good cinema. Zero issues and I enjoy that. Others just can't tolerate that.

But once again, if your sound system is not producing "good sound" (and RTA traces will NOT tell you that), then movies will generally sound "too loud" to the average ears.

[Martin McCaffery]

I hear you! We're running a National Theatre Live show just now, a stage play, filmed in a large theatre. The microphones seem to have been placed far from the stage, the result being whisper quiet dialogue, and thundering applause, music and incidental sound effects. I've had to lace the show with audio cues, which we shouldn't have to do.

I've run into that on several NTL presentations. All I can suggest is set it to the dialog and hope for the best. The other problem with NTL is all of the stuff they put in front of the show. Each "bonus" seems to be set to a different level.

[Hong Sung Hyeok]

The filmmaker who created a monster movie that devours the speakers bears no responsibility. I am really dissatisfied.

The theater operator just lowers the fader.
The filmmaker gets furious watching their movie being screened at a low volume.
The filmmaker ends up mixing the sound to sound like a 7, setting the standard volume to 6.

The theater operator just lowers the fader.
The filmmaker gets furious watching their movie being screened at a low volume.
The filmmaker ends up mixing the sound to sound like a 7, setting the standard volume to 5.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a vicious cycle?

[Marcel Birgelen]

The solution is: Fire incompetent sound mixers and give miserable, clueless directors a little plastic toy to play with.

The loudness war already destroyed most modern records, no need to do this all over again for cinema.

Directors should really try to comprehend that they're making a movie for an audience, not just for their own ego. Depending on the type audience, there are certain expectations regarding the general loudness of the soundtrack. Maybe it's a good idea to try to adhere to those mostly unwritten rules.

The nice thing is that a proper, modern digital cinema sound system offers an enormous dynamic range, all the way from hearing a paperclip falling towards standing right besides a jet engine and this is true for any decent system, not just for those laser-aligned four-letter look-how-cool-I-am sound systems. But, with great power comes great responsibility...

[Marco Giustini]

Oh, this has been a problem since the beginning of time.

While I don't justify some horribly loud movies, I doubt that if movies were mixed more responsibly cinemas would play them at 7.0.
Even a comedy show properly mixed will sound "too loud" in a badly built-tuned room. And some people just cannot stand cinema sound. I think it's something to do with having "big" sound in a big room from multiple speakers. They just don't comprehend it and tag it as "too loud". And this is without mentioning the LFE.

It's a quite wide subject which has been discussed many times on these pages. But I think the core points are:

1. most cinema technicians just do a very basic job in setting up rooms (sometimes because they are not given enough time to do a good job)
2. 85dBC and good RTA traces don't tell the whole story
3. EQ and tuning CANNOT compensate for poor speakers/acoustics/electronics

[Steve Guttag]

No...this has not been a problem since the beginning of time. This is a more recent problem. Once every film had the dynamic range possibilities once reserved for 70mm with magnetic sound, then it became a problem. Run any vintage movie, including in the 1980s...the problem isn't there. Arguably, film sound got better with Dolby Stereo from the '70s and into the '80s. Yes, trailers were always mixed extra loud but the limited range of optical only got you but so much (nominally 91dBc). Furthermore, mixing for mono also will force one to not bury the dialog since they all must share the same speaker.

Once digital sound became the norm, then studios and ad agencies could go hog wild with the levels.

[Marco Giustini]

I'm probably too young then

[Tj Hopland]

With all these wacky mixes and aspect ratios I am wondering if part of the blame goes to the premiere and festival techs? Those people often go out of their way to make this non standard stuff look and sound as good as it can. It could be the in house crew or some sort of advance team sent by the studio. The result is the 'talent' see it presented in these venues and things looks and sounds great so they figure they must have done it right.

Next movie they do could be worse and again the techs work some magic that may not even be possible for the average theater and certainly won't be practical. Looks good again so send it to the masses.... Every screen has a full time tech and the time and ability to fully custom tune the picture and sound for each title right?

I'm not knocking those techs or crews for making things work but I really wonder if the creative folks really understand what its really going to look like for most people that see their movie. Someone needs to do a big premiere with one of these aspect ratios with no masking or custom projector files and see what the people that decided to go non standard think of the presentation.

[Ryan Gallagher]

With all these wacky mixes and aspect ratios I am wondering if part of the blame goes to the premiere and festival techs? Those people often go out of their way to make this non standard stuff look and sound as good as it can. It could be the in house crew or some sort of advance team sent by the studio. The result is the 'talent' see it presented in these venues and things looks and sounds great so they figure they must have done it right.

Next movie they do could be worse and again the techs work some magic that may not even be possible for the average theater and certainly won't be practical. Looks good again so send it to the masses.... Every screen has a full time tech and the time and ability to fully custom tune the picture and sound for each title right?

I'm not knocking those techs or crews for making things work but I really wonder if the creative folks really understand what its really going to look like for most people that see their movie. Someone needs to do a big premiere with one of these aspect ratios with no masking or custom projector files and see what the people that decided to go non standard think of the presentation.

I can't speak for all such festival/premiere venues. But you are correct, often there is a combination of influences making such odd-balls perform better at a premiere than they would otherwise in your average room. It is often a combination of in-house best-practices, having rooms/projectors tuned directly ahead of the event, and having festival techs, studio techs or hired-gun techs out to give the film-makers piece of mind.

Here we don't tend to allow too many "accommodations" acoustically other than letting the filmmakers set whatever god-awful volume they want. On the rare occasion we've been asked to boost a channel such as LFE etc, and accommodated. I find that festival filmmakers tend to land near 7.2 or 7.3 on average in our house (AP20), planning for lots of people in chairs. For all the seasonal films I play I tend to listen and land between 6.6 and 7.0 for a full house, sometimes less for a small audience.

Where we'll put in extra effort is with picture and masking. But we don't do this simply to make an odd-ball aspect ratio work better. We do it because without custom screen files or masking our projection angle becomes a bigger problem than the unusual aspect ratio. Unmasked we'd tend to reveal our keystone that is unavoidable in this house, so we put in the effort to give everyone a cropped/masked choice (until we can start using a warping projector). If they don't like the crop, we show them no-crop and pin the side masking to follow the keystone line etc, but they usually accept the cropped version with no commentary. We'll even run a film at a custom gamma if requested.

If we had a better projection angle, we might be less accommodating overall and force creatives to live with more standard masking choices, especially in festival mode where all the preroll is built for only the two choices. But the high angle keystone here is a venue specific issue that we feel compelled to tackle, and often end up masked and corrected to an unusual aspect ratio as a by-product of doing so. We've also had the time to build up quite a catalog of ready to go screen files for most things that can be thrown at us, so it's less of a chore over time.

What is really amusing is TV directors putting out F200 content and "expecting" to see the letter boxing. Sometimes you have to throw up a framing chart to prove to them they are seeing their intended ratio, just with professional masking in a theatrical setting. lol.