ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
So far I have found (in no particular order) The Smurfs, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Ice Age 3 and Godzilla to be among the best... but there must be others? Gozilla is really great for bass particularly but I find The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug the best all rounder in terms of voice, sound effects, explosions and a bit of bass towards the end.
Please post your recommendations, thanks!
B&O products are V1-32, BS2, H95, E8 and an Essence remote.11-46 now replaced with Sony A90J 65”, Sony HT-A9, Sony UBP-X800M2 and Sony SRS-NS7.
Beosound Stage, Beovision 8-40, Beolit 20, Beosound Explore.
Unrelated, but I had to mention Upstream Color as having amazing sound in general. Gritty and enveloping, surround or not.
Chris Townsend:Sorry didn't see trailer but at the end of your title.
That's OK Chris, if its good in the trailer I might go on to buy the movie anyway! I tried the Pacific Rim trailer through Apple TV but didn't think it was that great. Too much noise and loudness for me. I'll give Prometheus a go though, thanks...
Sal: Unrelated, but I had to mention Upstream Color as having amazing sound in general. Gritty and enveloping, surround or not.
Cheers Sal, will check out.
Apropos another thread on BeoLab 4s I connected them up today in surround sound mode and checked out those trailers listed here - this is my evaluation from least effective to most effective i.e. a simple ranking not necessarily 8X better !
I also would add the following trailers based on my recollections (Avatar was disappointing because it had been overlaid with an iTunes Extra's narrated advert!):
6.4 Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (mainly bangs & explosions in the rear, although the firing of the missile's rocket engine on the left rear moving into centre stage was neat)
6.5 Star Trek: Into Darkness
6.6 A Good Day to Die Hard (orchestral track is in the rear speakers)
7.4 Skyfall (sound track builds up from open scene on the rear speakers, and the echo of THE shot)
7.5 Les Miserable - 2012 (music is great on the rears while voices are from the centre stage, chorus some times from rear - ranges from subtle to full on)
And also the recent Dolby Atmos post of those films using that encoding technique in the hope they might be special (one was Pacific Rim already rated above):
6.8 Brave (music in the rears)
6.9 Noah (music and weather on rears)
7.6 Gravity (because less BANGS and more subtle sounds including Sandra speaking from behind you - or small breakages around you)
I also listened to a bunch of trailers for yet to be released movies i.e. a random selection - but none stood out:
"Fury", "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes", "Dracula Untold", "Into the Storm", "Transformers: Age of Extinction"
Finally I tried some current top rated TV shows ...
Fargo trailer (nada)
Game of Thrones (s1e1 "Winter is Coming" opening of the gate is great - all the sounds of gears etc, and the icy wind in the wood, horse's whinny in the distance, the hunt through the wood - sadly the title track sequence does not exploit surround sound - later seasons however do it better)
Game of Thrones s1e1 "trailer" - rear sounds were too subtle in the cellar/crypt scene
House of Cards trailer s2e14 - not enough in "trailer" - actual start has some subtle renditions in the scene in the park near the start and prior to the title track sequence which does make better use of the rear speakers than GoT s1e1
Conclusion very very few of the above TV series or movies have subtle use of surround sound - it is either explosions, or sound tracks, or some which truly paint a sound picture ....
BeoNut since '75
I liked Pearl Harbor, Master and Commander, Mission Impossible.
I'm missing a good movie
- on the road from Cooktown, the first place that Captain Cook landed in Australia
Barry Santini:Any late Jason Stratham movie. Check it out!
He is certainly prolific
However the trailers (i.e. this topic) don't come across well ... they just have some music scores on the rear channels.
elephant:Ice Age 3 (continental drift)
Seems I made a mistake. I tested Ice Age 4 and rated that trailer down.
Ice Age 3 (the original recommendation) has a much better trailer.
It's a bit like the GoT s1e1 introduction - you can hear the blizzard all around you good for a cold, wet and windy down under.
All of this investigation was to test the BL4s in surround sound mode (see the BL14 versus BL4 thread).
So in testing Ice Age 3 I tried a range of [SPEAKER] settings, including the second pair of BL4s daisy-chained from the BL11 and positioned the speakers as follows (I am centre of the clock dial and looking to the BV8 at 12 o'clock):
12 o'clock = BV8 centre speaker & BL11
11 & 1 o'clocks = BL3
10 & 2 o'clocks = daisy chained BL4s ie a subset of the sound as routed and filtered through the BL11
7 & 5 o'clocks = BL4s
Surprisingly this pseudo 7.1 setup was actually an enriching experience,
and running in pseudo 6.1 mode was good too !
At 56 seconds into the trailer some ice falls off the eyes of the squirrel ... and the sound of the tinkling ice is clear and is relocated in 6.1 mode !
You can really hear the addition or subtraction of the audio in the daisy chained BL4s as I switch back and forth from [SPEAKER] 4 to 5
Beste Grüße / Best regards
Schlaumeier
Setup Livingroom: BeoVision 10-40 and 10-32, BeoLab 6000 front, BeoLab 4000 rear, BeoLab 11, Ouverture, Apple TV 2 & 4, Airport Express, 6 x LC2.
Other Rooms: 3 x BeoSound 8, BeoVision 8-26, MX 4002, 2 x Keyring, 2 x Beolit 15, A1, Airport Express, 4 x Beo4, 2 x Beocom 5
Schlaumeier:Yes yes yes! Beste Grüße / Best regards Schlaumeier Setup Livingroom: BeoVision 10-40, BeoLab 6000 front, BeoLab 4000 rear, BeoLab 11, Ouverture, Apple TV, Airport Express, 5 x LC2. Other Rooms: 3 x BeoSound 8, BeoVision 8-26, MX 8000, 2 x MX 4002, 2 x Keyring, Airport Express
Hi Elephant... many thanks for your very detailed reviews. I will go through them all over the next few days if I have some time in the evenings. I watched Batman: Arkham Knight (game trailer) on YouTube via Apple TV and the sound through the BL9s was absolutely superb! Propelling that experience to the No.1 position! Here is a link to it... See how it sounds on yours!
How do you get 'surround sound' on your tv from that trailer???
MM
There is a tv - and there is a BV
Millemissen: How do you get 'surround sound' on your tv from that trailer??? MM
@BeonicMan
I was wondering the same thing .... and thinking I would have to try 3 variations to see which worked as a surround sound:
elephant:Hey Michael - how's the car going ?
Car going great. 15024 KM now on the clock, back in Melbourne for a bit.
Thanks for the note :-)
I didn't watch the engineer set up the TV but with a Mark 1 BV9 I assume the Apple TV is connected via DVI/HDMI. All I know is that on Speaker 3, the sound is absolutely incredible! I'll look later when I am home what speaker settings are being used in the menu and edit post again this evening. I have a a pair of BL9s as fronts and the TV, that's it!
beolion:B&O use Tron for demo. The fight in the dome. Sounds very good. And I think it is in the trailer also.
They're not trailers, but for tuning / checking, I often use:
- Tron Legacy: Light Cycle scene (This is good because there was a description in Widescreen Review of the loudspeaker configuration they used when they did the mix - it's the same configuration I used when creating/tuning the True Image upmixer.) Listen to the three layers (Front/Surround/Rear) in the echoes of the announcer's voice, for example.
- Iron Man 3: The scene where they destroy the house in the helicopter attack is a good demo
- Avatar: The "love scene" where they're on a date, running around the forest, ending with the guy not being able to wake up in spite of bulldozers nearby
- Gravity: Starting with the George Clooney story about New Orleans and ending with the Canadarm getting separated from the shuttle. It's a good demo for how well your speakers hang together, since the dialogue is panned all over the place
- Brave: Opening scenes. Not much surround going on here, but there are lots of little details
Apart from that, I mostly use multichannel music from SACD & DVD-Audio. Dark Side of the Moon is always a good choice - as is Steely Dan's "Everything Must Go"
Cheers
-geoff
Geoff Martin: Cheers -geoff
Thanks Geoff for this and the email. I have not replied to say "thank you" on account of email server issues and being particularly time poor these past 48 hours ..... sorry