7.1 dts HD MA and Hellboy II

I rented Hellboy II from Netflix was stunned how amazing the soundtrack was. After reading the review of the audio by Dean Winkelspecht,

Quote:
The English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix is equally impressive. I believe this is the first title that uses all seven channels provided by DTS-HD and "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army" is aggressive and engaging throughout the entire running length of the film.

I decided to grab my 2 BOSE bookshelf speakers that I don't use and put them in the front and take my front speakers that match the rears and use them for the surrounds.

After calibrating useing the mic for my ONKYO I was blown away at how much extra the 7.1 brought out. I will be buying HB II and it will be my new audio reference material.

Since I'm new to this 7.1 experience are there any 7.1 movies dts or PCM that anyone could recommend?

---

[Post edited by tony1569 on Jan 19, 2009 - CST 4:36 PM]

this is not the first title using 7.1 DTS-HD master. Pan's Labyrinth, The Orphanage, and Shoot Em Up all use 7.1 channels.

Thanks rpruthee,

Dean had said something is his review that I had heard before. That some motion picture soundtracks are not recorded in 7.1 but are releasedin 7.1 is this actually the case?

---

[Post edited by tony1569 on Jan 19, 2009 - CST 5:58 PM]

Quote:
Dean had said something is his review that I had heard before. That some motion picture soundtracks are not recorded in 7.1 but are releasedin 7.1 is this actually the case?

The vast majority of film soundtracks are not recorded in 5.1 or 7.1. There is the occasional case where something like a concert will be recorded with a true 5.1 or 7.1 microphone setup, and some Hollywood films have used similar setups to record ambient sound effects. But in the vast majority of cases dialog and other elements are recorded in mono and then 'placed' within a sound-field during post production to create a 5.1 or 7.1 mix.

In the case of older films that are re-released with a 5.1 mix the new soundtrack has usually been made from the separate sound elements that were used to mix the films original mono or stereo soundtrack. Sometimes when these elements are not available they will make a cheapo 5.1 mix by placing the available stereo or mono mix into a 5.1 sound-field and adding some delay to make the sound feel like it surounds you, but this doesn't offer the separation between different sounds within the mix that one made from the original elements would.

Usually separate dialog, effects and music mixes are fairly easy to come by because these are created for purposes such as dubbing the film in other languages. So they can say place the dialog on the center channel and place the effects within the 5.1 sound-field but weight it toward the front more so than the music which might be more evenly distributed across the space. Obviously this doesn't work quite as well as remixing the individual elements but it does produce a noticeably more spacial mix than the original soundtrack in mono or stereo.

Now in the case of remixing something from 5.1 to 7.1 you could use a similar 'cheapo' technique to convert the 5.1 mix into a 7.1 mix. I think this is likely what was meant when it was said that some films are recorded in 5.1 not 7.1. Most 7.1 systems would do almost as good a job at spreading the sound into the 7.1 channels from a 5.1 mix on the disc, so this kind of cheapo up-sampling wouldn't provide much of a benefit to those with 7.1 systems. Then again it makes a good sales gimmick to be able to list a 7.1 mix on the packaging. I woulden't put it past the studios, after all what was the point in releasing 28 Days Later (a film shot on standard definition DV) on Blu-ray?

There is however an advantage to remixing what was once a 5.1 mix into 7.1. This is relatively easy for more recent films that were originally mixed in 5.1 because not only are the individual sound elements still available but they are usually all packaged into a nice convenient ProTools session complete with their placement within the sound-field. Making a true 7.1 mix could be as simple as rendering out the audio to 7.1 instead of 5.1. However usually you would 'tweak' the mix to sound it's best on a 7.1 system, but this is a very small fraction of the work compared to remixing the elements from scratch.

So to sum up all my technobabble, basically if a disc has a 7.1 mix on it it was likely either mixed in 7.1 originally or the ProTools session/elements were available to make a true 7.1 mix at a later point. There exists the possibility that it is a cheapo 5.1 to 7.1 up-conversion but I have never actually heard of that being done (mono or stereo to 5.1 is common though). For a film made from the 90s on making a true 7.1 mix would not be that much harder than up-converting really, so it's likely that if 5.1 to 7.1 up-conversions exist they are rare. But just because a film was not released as or intended to be 7.1 originally does not mean that the 7.1 mix that exists now is not true 7.1.

---

[Post edited by the_dvd_chef on Jan 20, 2009 - CST 12:23 AM]

Thanks chef, that was helpful.

Tony, thanks for the heads up on this. I will hopefully be getting a new receiver this weekend so I'll be trying these out soon.

Chef, as always thanks for sharing the indepth knowledge. Very educational.

Whew! Thanks Chef. Now I am really anxious to get that 7.1 receiver!

I just found a site that list Blu-ray movies and their audio format from 7.1 to 2.0.
http://price-adjustment.com/BLURAY-audio

It's 1 am and I'm watching Hellboy II again. Man, even at low levels 7.1 is still impressive.

---

[Post edited by tony1569 on Jan 20, 2009 - CST 11:56 PM]

Even when (in my case), it is downcoverted to regular DTS...