points at username
‘Being born on the wrong planet’ is a common analogy to explain how people like me (asperger or high-functioning autism as it’s called now) experience the world. We live on a planet with people who look like us, but who behave in strange, illogical, irrational and often creepy ways. It’s like living among a bunch of aliens. You people are seriously weird.
You misunderstand me. My principal point is that any 2.0/2.1 (i.e., stereo) setup will always be better than the surround sound system of equal price.
Define better? Better depends on what your application is. They won’t be better at playing object-based surround sound. Both kinds of systems are set up for a different purpose. For example, in my home theater I want a subwoofer that makes me feel explosions in my gut. That’s not what I look for in the low-end of my 2.x system.
As for my comment on spending money on speakers I would only use for movies: surround sound only has a real advantage for movies,
Of course, but we were talking about sound systems for use with your TV for watching movies.
for other activities stereo speakers of the same price will undisputedly be better.
That’s why you have both kinds of systems.
I would hate to spend 3k on a surround system, when I’ll use my 3k stereo system for most of my listening anyway (this is an example).
I use both regularly, but at different times of the day and for different purposes. I use my HT system when watching a movie or series in the evening. I use my 2.0 system during the day while I’m working or relaxing on the weekend.
The long leaf pine has a grass phase where it just looks like grass
Trees are weird, because phylogenetically there is no such thing as trees. As in: there is no single branch of the evolutionary tree where trees split off from other plants and there’s just an entire branch of different trees. Instead, different plants in separate parts of the evolutionary tree evolved into trees, and sometimes back into non-tree plants, and sometime even back into trees again. So a tree that spends part of its lifecycle as grass is par for the course.
You’re like the audiophile’s evil twin (I’m kidding). The audiophile insists on purism, only 2.0, and you are waaaay on the side of the spectrum.
No, actually I’m not. I have a nice 2.0 system as well for listening to music. The 5.1.4 system is in my living room with my TV. The 2.0 system is in my bedroom where I can chill out on my bed while listening. I also have a nice set of headphones with a separate DAC for listening to music.
That is a big part of mixing, because I want as many people to enjoy my music and the music I mix for other people as possible.
Sure, but that’s a completely different use-case. Movies are mixed for theaters, people don’t need to spend a fortune on equipment to enjoy that mix, they just need to buy a movie ticket.
Movies, however, are frequently available past their premieres. Maybe this is greed on the part of the artist, that they sell the movies, even though they know that it is impossible to truly enjoy the movie without the very specific audio setup it was created with?
Not the artist, the publishers. They want to wring every dollar out of it they can. The people actually creating movies don’t care about people watching the movie on TV at all.
A good example of this attitude: your movie can’t even be nominated for an Oscar unless it has been in theaters. I.e. a movie that’s not made for theatrical release isn’t even worth considering.
You don’t need subtitles, you need a decent surround sound system.
I had a great experience, in part because I love more about the movie than just the visual and auditory delivery. I like the story and philosophy as well.
A chain is a strong as its weakest link. You want to tick all boxes, not just half of them.
You can, of course, build you own surround sound system for more than a few thousand, but that is a radically different price range, which I don’t think is really relevant to this conversation
It doesn’t have to be expensive at all. You can get a 5.1 setup with a decent amp, floor-standing fronts, bookshelf surrounds, a center and a subwoofer for as little as €3000, and that will blow any sound bar in the same price range out of the water. Add a nice 77” OLED, pick last year’s model for a good deal and you can have a home theater setup that will be good enough for 99,9% of people for less than €5k.
(I certainly don’t have that kind of money to spend on a speaker that I’m only using when watching movies).
Why do you think I would use it only for movies? I have never even heard the speakers in my TV because disabling them was the first thing I did after unboxing. I use my 5.1.4 set all the time. Why wouldn’t you?
I think it is borderline poor-shaming (or really just not-rich-shaming) to say that movies can only have audible dialogue at $10,000 surround sound systems. Before that, 2.0 or 2.1 will almost always be a better investment.
No one says you need to spend that amount of money, it can be much, much cheaper. €3k can get you a pretty nice set, but you can build a passable one for half that.
This is what I can’t stand about you humans. This tendency to be okay with mediocrity.
Doesn’t it bother you immensely that you’re getting a subpar experience? Even if you enjoy it, doesn’t just knowing it could be so much better suck all the enjoyment out of it?
By that measure, most movie theaters also shouldn’t be showing movies – very few of them have the precise setup a given movie was mastered for.
That’s what calibration is for. You master using a reference display and whatever you use in the theater should be calibrated to the same specs.
Or theaters with Atmos sound systems if the movie was made with DTS-X in mind.
Why would that be a problem? DTS:X is more flexible with speaker layout than Atmos. If you have a theater with a speaker layout for Atmos it should be no issue to use them with a DTS:X processor.
Or, you know, you release it for multiple projection and sound setups and accept that there is a close enough level of fidelity for a given use case. Which leads us back to actually properly mixing it for the home release
How do you go from “Atmos and DTS:X in a theater are close enough to give a similar experience” to “we should mix it for a bunch of crappy 2.0 TV speakers” ?
If you mix it for such an inferior setup, nothing is left of the original movie. Sounds i a huge part of the movie experience. Try watching a scary movie with the sound muted, it’s not scary at all. If you mix it for a TV’s built in speakers, nothing of value is left. What is even the point of watching a movie like that?
Please don’t provide alternate stream for censored cursing.
Not censored, just nerd-humor that went over your head.
You heard it here guys, enjoying a movie on a normal TV or an iPad is simply wrong
It’s simply pointless. Like listening to music with your ears plugged. Why even bother watching a movie like that?
They already include multiple audio streams for language selection. In fact, watching a movie in a different language than it was originally produced in doesn’t perfectly “reproduce the experience” either. Jokes get cut, names and acronyms change, and cultural references are either altered or become too foreign for the culture of the new audience to instantly recognize.
Don’t me started on that one… it’s a fscking disgrace.
As well, some people don’t want to experience super loud explosions. They’re content not having that aspect of “the experience” for a variety of reasons.
But then you don’t want to watch that movie, you want to watch a different movie, one they didn’t make. Movies are art, you don’t go changing art to fit your taste, you experience it as it was meant to be experienced. Imagine if we did that with other art forms.
If you don’t want loud explosions, pick a different movie.
Sound bars are not worth the money, you can get a better setup for what you pay for a half decent one. They only exist because they have a high WAF.
I expect an A/V receiver with at least 5 speakers and a subwoofer. With the left/right front speakers being 2 full-range floor-standing speakers.
Ideally, you want a 7.1.4 setup.
However, there’s no excuse for studios to not provide a more compressed TV mix
I think this depends on how you see movies. Do you see them as art or just a form of entertainment?
For me, it’s about how the movie makes me feel. I think movies are art, and art is meant to make you feel things. If I watch a movie I want to be overwhelmed by the action, I want to be moved by the music swelling at that emotional moment, I want to be creeped out by that scary scene in the spooky house with the wind howling all around me.
You don’t get that if you watch in a bright room with a 2.0 sound track with no dynamic range. To me there is no point in even watching a movie if it can’t immerse me in the movie and make me feel all those things.
I’m not sure why you get so much down voted while you are right. It’s similar how people want to play a 4k movie on a 1080p screen…
People underestimate how big of a difference it makes.
If you ever get the chance to do this on a decent home theater: grab a blu-ray copy of the LoTR trilogy. 1080p, 5.1 audio. Should be pretty good right? Watch it for a couple of minutes. Then switch to the UHD blu-ray (4k HDR, Dolby Atmos). It’s a night and day difference. The 1080p version is fine, but the UHD version just draws you in. It’s almost addictive, once you turn it on you can’t look away. Before you know it you’ve watched the entire trilogy.
It’s shocking how much better the experience is, it’s like a completely different movie.
Do you also want to add different video streams for smaller TV’s ?
What you want is a made-for-TV adaptation of the same story, but that wouldn’t be the same movie. Watching a movie is an experience, and you simply cannot reproduce experience that on a small TV with 2.0 audio. Even if they did a 2.0 mix, you won’t get the same sense of awe that you get when you watch it in a theater. What is even the point of watching it if it cannot make you feel that?
In other words, movies are not intended to be played back at devices that aren’t connected to theater-grade audio hardware.
Not just audio hardware, also a big screen, darkened room, etc.
Of course this requires the question of why movies are even released on Blu-Ray, DVD, or streaming services at all instead of just using the existing distribution system for movie theaters.
Because there is a demand for them and they like making money?
If you’re ever in the Netherlands, go visit the Rijksmuseum and see De Nachtwacht by Rembrandt van Rijn. It’s absolutely enormous (363 by 437cm). Just look at it for a while, marvel at the details. Then go visit the gift shop and buy the 50x70cm poster.
Go home, stick the poster on your wall. Do you get the same sense of awe as you did from the full size painting? Can you even make out all the intricate details that make it so compelling? No, you can’t. It doesn’t work in that small format in your living room.
Is this Rembrandt’s fault? No, of course not. He painted it at the size it meant to be viewed at. He didn’t take into account that people would be making small posters off it almost 400 years later. Worse, if he had made the painting so that it would look good on a small poster, would that painting also have had the same impact in its full size? I’d say it wouldn’t have.
Rembrandt also made much smaller paintings, if you want a Rembrandt in your living room you’d be better off getting a reproduction of those. Does this mean that the gift shop shouldn’t be selling small posters of ‘De Nachtwacht’? There clearly is a demand for them.
Same goes for movies. They didn’t set out to make a movie to view at home, they set out to make a movie to be viewed in the theater. Could they have made on that worked at home. Sure, but then it wouldn’t have worked in the theater. Should they not sell them on BluRay when there is clearly a demand for them? There are plenty of people who do have a nice setup at home that does the movie justice.
Everyone who doesn’t run an IMAX setup at home is too poor to watch movies.
No, you can go to the theater or watch made-for-TV movies. The fact that blockbuster movies are made for the theater doesn’t prevent anyone from making TV movies, and they do make them. Just not that particular movie.
The problem is that you didn’t actually want to see that movie, you wanted a similar but different movie, one that would have worked on a regular living room TV. But that’s not the movie they decided to make. You bought the small Rembrandt poster and now you’re complaining that you can’t see the details and the painting kind of sucks because of it.
You have a setup that’s not suitable for watching movies and you’re trying to blame it on the movie. How is that reasonable? The content you’re trying to watch simply was never meant to be watched in that way. I’m not sure what you expect here.
Even if they did a different mix, that still wouldn’t give the intended experience of the movie, it would be at best a watered down version. You simply cannot optimize for two very different things. If they wanted it to be viewed on a TV they would have made a very different movie to begin with. There are plenty of made-for-TV movies that do exactly that.
You expect that something that was made to be shown on a huge screen, in a dark room with a high end sound system somehow magically would work on your living room TV with stereo sound. I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation.
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