@french_fries
I hear your frustration and the films you gave as examples are action films. When we are mixing these films for Theatrical release we strive for dynamic range on purpose. We monitor the mixes in carefully calibrated dub stages with EQ and volume settings that are used industry wide.
You are one of the people who appears to not like dynamic range in your movie/TV viewing experience. I get that. But there are a LOT of people that do enjoy the power that sound can deliver to the movie going experience.
We actually do what is called a "near field mix" for home viewing with is a compressed version of this very thing. We use small near field speakers and monitor the mix at "lower" to "much lower" reference level depending on the studio, director, etc... What happens with a lower reference level is that the quieter scenes end up getting raised while the louder scenes stay the same. We are compressing the dynamic range from the bottom up in this case.
I am one who advocates for this as LONG as a version of the uncompressed version of the track is kept in tact. After all... There are those of us who want a Theatrical experience at home.
Certain studios and/or directors demand that the track stay in tact which means no compressed home version.
If the compressed version is still not to your liking most DVD/Bluray players as well as surround processors have built in compression algorithms that might help you with your situation.
You indicate that all that matters to you is dialogue, which I would agree that dialogue is king in the mix, but is not all that matters by a LARGE degree than I might also suggest raising your center channel by 3 to 4 dB or to your liking.
We as a filmmaking society actually work very hard to NOT make a mix painful and to not play everything too loud. Sure it happens, but more time and effort is put into delivering the director's vision of his/her film than you may be aware of during the editing and mixing of the soundtrack.
Dynamic range is not something new and in fact is something I look for in a speaker as I not only enjoy female vocalists, jazz, blues, etc... but films, classical music, rock, country, and the list goes on.
Classical music composers have utilized the power of dynamic range to convey emotion for hundreds of years!
I love classical music. I have played violin since I was in First grade and I am quite a bit older than that now.
As a musician I can also tell you that playing music at a lower level that what is intended will also change the emotion of said piece.
"There's no way I would subject a good pair of speakers designed to reveal separate instruments in an ensemble or do justice to a folksinger plus guitars, banjo, string bass, and so on." No offense, but this in a nutshell expresses my frustration over the many years of listening to loudspeakers. Why not have a speaker that can deliver everything? Every single speaker that I have heard in the past that supposedly were intended to deliver the nuance of an ensemble, etc... well they couldn't even play at a level that remotely came close to what an orchestra can reproduce in those moments I wanted to listen to them, let alone playback rock, country and forget about film.
So this comes down to the personal preference of the buyer, viewer and my personal choice is not to buy a speaker that limits what I can play on it.
The Wisdom Audio speakers I have auditioned EXCEL at detail and nuance. Remember that what you are talking about is transient response time of a driver. The planar magnetic speakers deliver this in spades! A violin sounds like a violin without any harshness that one can get from so many domes, horns, etc... At least in my experience.
My first requirement was how does the speaker play music. Then I would proceed to films. When I finally found one that could do both at the peak of the game was I satisfied.
I've owned DYNAMIC speakers that could bang out rock, but I never liked them as HiFi.
Thank you for your input and I hope my response is taken in the spirit in which it is given.
Thank you!
I hear your frustration and the films you gave as examples are action films. When we are mixing these films for Theatrical release we strive for dynamic range on purpose. We monitor the mixes in carefully calibrated dub stages with EQ and volume settings that are used industry wide.
You are one of the people who appears to not like dynamic range in your movie/TV viewing experience. I get that. But there are a LOT of people that do enjoy the power that sound can deliver to the movie going experience.
We actually do what is called a "near field mix" for home viewing with is a compressed version of this very thing. We use small near field speakers and monitor the mix at "lower" to "much lower" reference level depending on the studio, director, etc... What happens with a lower reference level is that the quieter scenes end up getting raised while the louder scenes stay the same. We are compressing the dynamic range from the bottom up in this case.
I am one who advocates for this as LONG as a version of the uncompressed version of the track is kept in tact. After all... There are those of us who want a Theatrical experience at home.
Certain studios and/or directors demand that the track stay in tact which means no compressed home version.
If the compressed version is still not to your liking most DVD/Bluray players as well as surround processors have built in compression algorithms that might help you with your situation.
You indicate that all that matters to you is dialogue, which I would agree that dialogue is king in the mix, but is not all that matters by a LARGE degree than I might also suggest raising your center channel by 3 to 4 dB or to your liking.
We as a filmmaking society actually work very hard to NOT make a mix painful and to not play everything too loud. Sure it happens, but more time and effort is put into delivering the director's vision of his/her film than you may be aware of during the editing and mixing of the soundtrack.
Dynamic range is not something new and in fact is something I look for in a speaker as I not only enjoy female vocalists, jazz, blues, etc... but films, classical music, rock, country, and the list goes on.
Classical music composers have utilized the power of dynamic range to convey emotion for hundreds of years!
I love classical music. I have played violin since I was in First grade and I am quite a bit older than that now.
As a musician I can also tell you that playing music at a lower level that what is intended will also change the emotion of said piece.
"There's no way I would subject a good pair of speakers designed to reveal separate instruments in an ensemble or do justice to a folksinger plus guitars, banjo, string bass, and so on." No offense, but this in a nutshell expresses my frustration over the many years of listening to loudspeakers. Why not have a speaker that can deliver everything? Every single speaker that I have heard in the past that supposedly were intended to deliver the nuance of an ensemble, etc... well they couldn't even play at a level that remotely came close to what an orchestra can reproduce in those moments I wanted to listen to them, let alone playback rock, country and forget about film.
So this comes down to the personal preference of the buyer, viewer and my personal choice is not to buy a speaker that limits what I can play on it.
The Wisdom Audio speakers I have auditioned EXCEL at detail and nuance. Remember that what you are talking about is transient response time of a driver. The planar magnetic speakers deliver this in spades! A violin sounds like a violin without any harshness that one can get from so many domes, horns, etc... At least in my experience.
My first requirement was how does the speaker play music. Then I would proceed to films. When I finally found one that could do both at the peak of the game was I satisfied.
I've owned DYNAMIC speakers that could bang out rock, but I never liked them as HiFi.
Thank you for your input and I hope my response is taken in the spirit in which it is given.
Thank you!