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I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the f

I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics (or for the even worse real life living rooms with crappy sound system and acoustics), but instead he mixes to sound perfect in his perfect lab. He is doing it wrong, optimizing for the wrong metrics, but he can't fathom being wrong, so he will keep screwing up and people will keep not being able to understand movies. It is the sound engineer version of "You're holding it wrong".

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written. Here's more: > Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades: >> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor. > The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1] > "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'" > When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward: > "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that." There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet. [1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.
- setr 5y ago
  Part of the problem however is the theater’s solution is too naive — ideally they should be defaulting to 7, and then modifying for the exceptional cases, and then returning to default for the next movie. What they’re apparently doing is hitting the exceptional case, changing the volume, and then leaving it there forevermore — so effectively picking the lowest common denominator. So every movie is screwed, except the movie with the most egregious violations
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    Who said "too loud" was the exceptional case? What they should be doing is running their sound through a volume normalizer. A system that might be set at "7" or "4" is the problem. Set the system to the number of decibels you want, not the amount of amplification you want.
    - Lanzaa 5y ago
      Wouldn't a normalizer destroy the dynamic range of the sound throughout the movie? That seems to be the problem mentioned in the "Mixing For Streaming" portion of the article. > Case in point: Mann recently worked on Joe Carnahan's "Boss Level," which was originally meant to be a theatrical release. "For a variety of reasons, it ended up at Hulu, and when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ... there are only a couple different ways of measuring these things these days, and I can only imagine that it's somebody just not understanding the reason why it should be this and not that."
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > Wouldn't a normalizer destroy the dynamic range of the sound throughout the movie? Not in itself; the question of "how loud is the soundtrack overall?" is not the same as the question of "what's the difference between the soundtrack at its loudest and the soundtrack at its quietest?". (That second question is about "compression".) The normalizer will ensure that if you were trying to have explosions that are too loud, what happens instead is that your dialogue will be too quiet. But that's a good thing. Mann thinks that volume should be set at a level appropriate for the dialogue, even if that means suffering hearing loss from exposure to non-dialogue parts of the soundtrack, and Mann is wrong about that. Hulu is doing the correct thing.
jbigelow76 5y ago
I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. I'd be really surprised if sound engineers working in film never bother to listen to a cut of the movie in a theater. But then again the number of times I've seen "you didn't try compiling before committing did you?" crop up in chat while discussing a broken build that maybe they don't :)
- lmilcin 5y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised. I stopped watching movies because it seems new movies are missing any interesting plot in them. It is like people making these movies and paying for these movies focused all on special effects and forgot that without an actual interesting plot these are just completely hollow. So if your job is to "make a movie" and you forgot on a point on the TODO list that says "make the plot interesting" then I am not surprised sound engineers can forget "make it work in end user setting".
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    Honestly, most of the new good stuff is series; not movies. With the way television and streaming allows series with decent budgets, it's easier to craft a compelling story over 9 hours. Movies are more akin to "novellas" since they are time limited. How many people really read that many novellas or short stories?
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      I like SF and I read a lot of short stories, regularly. But I admit I prefer longer books or even series because if something is interesting I don't like it to end too quickly and I like the feeling of being embedded within the world. If you had no previous exposure to Star Trek and watched any single episode of Star Trek DS9 it might not be very compelling. What makes it compelling is the attachment to the characters and the knowledge of the backstory the episode is embedded in.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
I agree with the sentiment re: "mix it for the real world", but aren't theaters required to adhere to some degree of compliance with presentation standards as part of their licensing agreements with film distributors? I know that the "THX" mark carries specific requirements, as do "IMAX" and "OMNIMAX".
vondur 5y ago
Going off topic a bit, when I was in a hardcore band back in the early 90s, and we went into the studio to record, the engineer would give us rough mix downs of the music to go play in our car stereo as a quick check on it. In the recording studio with those high end studio monitors, it can make things sound far different then the more average sound system most people have access to.
- notjulianjaynes 5y ago
  What was the name of your band?
  - jefurii 5y ago
    It's standard practice - every producer or engineer worth his/her salt will some some version of this. Many engineers keep cheap boomboxes or crappy speakers in the control room for exactly this purpose.
  - vondur 5y ago
    Ha. We were called One Step Ahead. Sounded cool to a 17 year old me.
    - notjulianjaynes 5y ago
      Sounds like a cool youth crew band name to a 2x17 year old me. This you? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fx4kmM0tqpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fx4kmM0tqpQ I'm into it. Sounds a bit like Silent Majority (Long Island band), who I believe would have been your contemporaries although this is all before my time so I'm speculating.
- gompertz 5y ago
  I believe I read in an interview ages back that Trent Reznor did this as well!
djbusby 5y ago
I've a friend who's done sound for some of those grunge bands in Seattle back in the day, mixing down from those 2inch tape. Had a killer sound lab setup. And also a few sets of real-shit amps and speakers - to check the sound on more common equipment.
radicality 5y ago
Did you read the full article? It sounds like you are misrepresenting the quote. It’s apparently industry standard to have the cinemas set their volume to value 7. The sound engineers then prepare the soundtrack with the expectation it will be set to 7. This particular theatre was set to 5.5 (perhaps to compensate for a previous movie that didn’t follow the standard and was mixed “too loud”), and hence the movie was significantly more quiet than the sound engineer intended.
brokenmachine 5y ago
A movie cinema is calibrated to a certain decibel level and should have a predictable frequency response. So it should sound the same, or very similar to, his sound lab. If the quality of the sound in the cinema is bad, that's the cinema's fault.
Pinus 5y ago
There is a legend that (ABBA) sound engineer Michael B. Tretow used to have a small (and completely illegal) FM transmitter in the studio. When he thought he had the mix right, he'd patch the sound out to that and then go down to the car park to listen to the song on his car stereo. If it still sounded good, fine, else, it was back to the draw... er, mixing board.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thaumasiotes 5y ago

> I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written. Here's more: > Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades: >> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor. > The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1] > "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'" > When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward: > "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that." There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet. [1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.

setr 5y ago
Part of the problem however is the theater’s solution is too naive — ideally they should be defaulting to 7, and then modifying for the exceptional cases, and then returning to default for the next movie. What they’re apparently doing is hitting the exceptional case, changing the volume, and then leaving it there forevermore — so effectively picking the lowest common denominator. So every movie is screwed, except the movie with the most egregious violations
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  Who said "too loud" was the exceptional case? What they should be doing is running their sound through a volume normalizer. A system that might be set at "7" or "4" is the problem. Set the system to the number of decibels you want, not the amount of amplification you want.
  - Lanzaa 5y ago
    Wouldn't a normalizer destroy the dynamic range of the sound throughout the movie? That seems to be the problem mentioned in the "Mixing For Streaming" portion of the article. > Case in point: Mann recently worked on Joe Carnahan's "Boss Level," which was originally meant to be a theatrical release. "For a variety of reasons, it ended up at Hulu, and when we got a look at that spec, they require it to be based on the overall [volume] of the film, not on the dialogue level of the film. Consequently, that's a big action movie with shooting and cars and big music, and the result of that is that you have a much more squashed up, un-impactful mix ... there are only a couple different ways of measuring these things these days, and I can only imagine that it's somebody just not understanding the reason why it should be this and not that."
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      > Wouldn't a normalizer destroy the dynamic range of the sound throughout the movie? Not in itself; the question of "how loud is the soundtrack overall?" is not the same as the question of "what's the difference between the soundtrack at its loudest and the soundtrack at its quietest?". (That second question is about "compression".) The normalizer will ensure that if you were trying to have explosions that are too loud, what happens instead is that your dialogue will be too quiet. But that's a good thing. Mann thinks that volume should be set at a level appropriate for the dialogue, even if that means suffering hearing loss from exposure to non-dialogue parts of the soundtrack, and Mann is wrong about that. Hulu is doing the correct thing.

jbigelow76 5y ago

I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. I'd be really surprised if sound engineers working in film never bother to listen to a cut of the movie in a theater. But then again the number of times I've seen "you didn't try compiling before committing did you?" crop up in chat while discussing a broken build that maybe they don't :)

lmilcin 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised. I stopped watching movies because it seems new movies are missing any interesting plot in them. It is like people making these movies and paying for these movies focused all on special effects and forgot that without an actual interesting plot these are just completely hollow. So if your job is to "make a movie" and you forgot on a point on the TODO list that says "make the plot interesting" then I am not surprised sound engineers can forget "make it work in end user setting".
- pnutjam 5y ago
  Honestly, most of the new good stuff is series; not movies. With the way television and streaming allows series with decent budgets, it's easier to craft a compelling story over 9 hours. Movies are more akin to "novellas" since they are time limited. How many people really read that many novellas or short stories?
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    I like SF and I read a lot of short stories, regularly. But I admit I prefer longer books or even series because if something is interesting I don't like it to end too quickly and I like the feeling of being embedded within the world. If you had no previous exposure to Star Trek and watched any single episode of Star Trek DS9 it might not be very compelling. What makes it compelling is the attachment to the characters and the knowledge of the backstory the episode is embedded in.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

I agree with the sentiment re: "mix it for the real world", but aren't theaters required to adhere to some degree of compliance with presentation standards as part of their licensing agreements with film distributors? I know that the "THX" mark carries specific requirements, as do "IMAX" and "OMNIMAX".

vondur 5y ago

Going off topic a bit, when I was in a hardcore band back in the early 90s, and we went into the studio to record, the engineer would give us rough mix downs of the music to go play in our car stereo as a quick check on it. In the recording studio with those high end studio monitors, it can make things sound far different then the more average sound system most people have access to.

notjulianjaynes 5y ago
What was the name of your band?
- jefurii 5y ago
  It's standard practice - every producer or engineer worth his/her salt will some some version of this. Many engineers keep cheap boomboxes or crappy speakers in the control room for exactly this purpose.
- vondur 5y ago
  Ha. We were called One Step Ahead. Sounded cool to a 17 year old me.
  - notjulianjaynes 5y ago
    Sounds like a cool youth crew band name to a 2x17 year old me. This you? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fx4kmM0tqpQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fx4kmM0tqpQ I'm into it. Sounds a bit like Silent Majority (Long Island band), who I believe would have been your contemporaries although this is all before my time so I'm speculating.
gompertz 5y ago
I believe I read in an interview ages back that Trent Reznor did this as well!

djbusby 5y ago

I've a friend who's done sound for some of those grunge bands in Seattle back in the day, mixing down from those 2inch tape. Had a killer sound lab setup. And also a few sets of real-shit amps and speakers - to check the sound on more common equipment.

radicality 5y ago

Did you read the full article? It sounds like you are misrepresenting the quote. It’s apparently industry standard to have the cinemas set their volume to value 7. The sound engineers then prepare the soundtrack with the expectation it will be set to 7. This particular theatre was set to 5.5 (perhaps to compensate for a previous movie that didn’t follow the standard and was mixed “too loud”), and hence the movie was significantly more quiet than the sound engineer intended.

brokenmachine 5y ago

A movie cinema is calibrated to a certain decibel level and should have a predictable frequency response. So it should sound the same, or very similar to, his sound lab. If the quality of the sound in the cinema is bad, that's the cinema's fault.

Pinus 5y ago

There is a legend that (ABBA) sound engineer Michael B. Tretow used to have a small (and completely illegal) FM transmitter in the studio. When he thought he had the mix right, he'd patch the sound out to that and then go down to the car park to listen to the song on his car stereo. If it still sounded good, fine, else, it was back to the draw... er, mixing board.