re: Chris Gore - Film Threat - gives out of theater react to The Odyssey. Non spoiler comments

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Chris Gore

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Imagine being such a dumbass as to not know who Chris Gore is.
Film Threat was around before the internet.

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If I ever need to know who the YouTuber I need to watch for the best negative reviews is

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Snarky Jay. She dresses nice.
Drinker overuses this gif in every video.

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Nolan's soundtracks are actually amazing. The issue people have is the tracks have huge dynamic range. It sounds crappy on low-quality systems like 99% of people have in their homes, and even theaters with extremely good audio they tend to compress it on purpose because the general audience isn't comfortable with the full dynamic range that HAS to be played at or very near reference levels for a lot of the dialog to be intelligible. He caters to himself and the 1% of HT geeks like myself who have extremely capable systems and listen at reference levels. This is something that makes me very happy but turns off a huge portion of the audience.

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No offense, but I think you are absolutely full of shite with that. Your argument is that he's fricking up the sound so that it sounds bad to 99% of the people who watch it? Even if we assume that is true, that is more than stupid and a bad business decision. Secondly, it's hilarious that you are saying that he's catering to home theater systems and not movie theaters, and also that your home theater system is so much better than actual movie theaters built and designed for that.

So on its face, I think you're lying. But even if what you say is remotely true, it's just stupid and proves my point that Nolan's movies having fricked up sound is a thing and very (very) dumb.

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No offense, but I think you are absolutely full of shite with that. Your argument is that he's fricking up the sound so that it sounds bad to 99% of the people who watch it? Even if we assume that is true, that is more than stupid and a bad business decision.

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It is accurate. I never said it was a good business decision; I clearly implied it wasn't. He refuses to compromise on the soundtrack which is stellar when reproduced as intended but it is rarely reproduced correctly.

I will give you a corollary in the recording industry you have almost certainly heard of. In that case they went the other direction to please the most people. Most music is mixing engineers knew that people did not have the equipment (especially in cars and with earphones) to reproduce their music like the engineer could through their high-end studio monitors. So they did two things: one they reduced the dynamic range (Google "loudness wars") and they would proof their tracks on a pair of Yamaha NS10s. The NS10s though not a bad speaker it approximated the forward midrange most inexpensive speakers and the joke was if it sounds good on the NS10 it will sound good on anything. They made a smart business decision but it angered audio/musicphiles around the world.

A couple of examples and after this you will always be able to see the NS10 in pro studios, they are the small speakers with the white woofer surrond.







Again, this is an example where they made the opposite business decision: to compromise the art because it let more people enjoy it.

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Secondly, it's hilarious that you are saying that he's catering to home theater systems and not movie theaters, and also that your home theater system is so much better than actual movie theaters built and designed for that.

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I didn't say he was catering to the home experience. His audio tracks are designed to be played at what is called reference level. It is a series of requirements for a system to be able to match and a volume level it is crafted to be reproduced at. If you go into a store and look at even lower mid-quality HT receivers or pre-amps the volume scale is in dB. It will go from some large negative dB to postive 5 or so dB. If the system is properly calibrated, then 0 dB is reference level. Most people and home and MOST movie theaters play movies below reference level. The general audience finds loud explosions, etc to be uncomfortable at reference level. It is just like the audio engineers for music: the theater adjusts the sound for the majority of their viewers, not the small percentage. That works for most movies because the sound engineers have taken this into account when mixing the track.

This is all simple, easy to understand, and factual. His choices are bad business but faithful to the way he and his sound engineers want you to experience the movie. When theaters lower the master volume and don't include enough compression you get dialog that gets lost in the ambient sounds.

Just for reference my HT was planned and built ground up to be an HT. It is built, unlike every other room in the house from much different materials and construction. If you don't believe people go to these links just spend some time on the AVS forum, especially in the ultra-high-end gear and DIY sub-forums. The thing most people don't understand is commercial theaters live with a long list of compromises that an HT does not have. The average commercial theater has to get sound over 100-200 seats. That produces huge compromises. How do you get the center front channel sound distributed evenly to all those seats, the simple answer is you can't, therefore huge compromises are made. Most HTs are designed, built and calibrated to cater to a MLP (main listening position). Every bit of the construction, seat placement, placement of the individual subs, speakers, sound absorption, and diffraction are designed and calibrated to make that seat the best it can be. Commercial theaters can't do that. They have to wrangle decent sound across a huge area, this compromises every seat. Getting a more capable sound system in a HT is easier than in a commercial theater due to the difference in scale; getting a single small area calibrated for superior sound is possible in a HT or commercial theater, it would just ruin the experience for the majority of the seats in a commercial theater, due to much smaller space the compromises for the secondary seats is much lower in an HT.