"Near-Field Mixes" on blu-ray movies. Is it real, and how?

[IONLYlisten]

I came across this and this video about blu-ray discs sounding inferior to... 30+ years old LaserDiscs, the kind of stuff you've long forgotten. My initial reaction to this was "That's absurd. Why would anyone do that?" since obviously the author compared various release in the same room, so "signal chain" and indoor sound treatment are not the problem here.

As a complete outsider, I'd expect film studios to finish one product and call it a day, as I believe no one would be happy managing 10 variants of the same .txt, and you play the same stuff on big speakers vs. headphones. But what I see here is, they rarely sound the same over the years, from Cinema to DVD and Blu-rays.

What is a Near-field mix? Is it an afterthought like new remasters on CD? What exactly in the mix made them sound "near-field"? Is it some reduced dynamic range, bass levels or other unexplained audio magic? If there is really such mix, why does a film sound track played in large theaters (far-field speakers) have to be made different from near-field speakers?

 

[Andysu]

star trek generations 1994 , Dolby AC-3 makes the dvd blu 4k not worth buying if want to show off that saucer crash landing , those dvd blu uhd are tampered with by mix engineers and a few of them lucking around on this site would use all the poorest of excuses , this mess started by disney 1998 ( generally people complained the mixes was too loud ) and spread to other studios and has been ongoing ( and now the market for these smaller disc formats is a sounding mess ) on ripping off and lying to the public , lossless audio ? what a scam , then you use test gear and monitor the soundtracks frequency response only to find that , laserdiscs have the superior audio ( maybe a little tiny shabby on picture but we all seen some worse uhd picture quality haven't we ? )

tested alien resurrection 1997 Dolby AC-3 THX up against that bs dtshdma , nyou know the one hollywood would say its studio master quality in your home ? then how comes the AC-3 has better bass slam punch , yeah it figures blu dtshdma are tampered mixes , i'll stick with the AC-3

strange how laserdisc used theatrical mixes up to when its peak 1990's when THX home audio program came in , but the marketing of those smaller speakers with subs , come on now really , you need the same JBL professional cinema , now those speakers 2nd used if can find them on ebay , you'll be surprised how much bass level is used on those screen speakers , LFE.1 is an only as and now used to add extra support effect to the mix within few +- dB it should never be allowed to overwhelm the LCRS , merely only support , what more smoothness just add more subs and Eq filter adjust them so they'll perform with the rest of the screen speakers

software there are lots of them some gotta buy some are free , spectrum lab is magnificent software program to compare
REW RTA can be used but , better with spectrum lab

DL4YHF's Audio Spectrum Analyser

Spectrum Laboratory for Soundcard with Waterfall and FFT.

www.qsl.net

everyone is well aware of the cd loudness war affair ? same that crept in for home movie soundtrack market , oh what a sounding mess , i just can't trust it ?

 

[TK_IIVI]

I came across this and this video about blu-ray discs sounding inferior to... 30+ years old LaserDiscs, the kind of stuff you've long forgotten. My initial reaction to this was "That's absurd. Why would anyone do that?" since obviously the author compared various release in the same room, so "signal chain" and indoor sound treatment are not the problem here.

Caveat: I'm mainly in television / streaming, non-fiction, not theatrical.

As a complete outsider, I'd expect film studios to finish one product and call it a day, as I believe no one would be happy managing 10 variants of the same .txt, and you play the same stuff on big speakers vs. headphones. But what I see here is, they rarely sound the same over the years, from Cinema to DVD and Blu-rays.

As far as changes over time goes I think that's just the nature of the beast. We have technological advancements which may have been somewhat unpredictable. For example, as our recording technology got "objectively" better, we also got iPod's and 128kbps mp3s. Wired and wireless infrastructure got better with broadband also on mobile and all of a sudden we're able to stream at much better quality at least on the client side of things. Ok great, how about immersive? Now that you have more bandwidth you need to cram more information into it. Do you compromise? So in general I think this is just how it's been for quite some time. The question is if studios should adapt their catalogs to new developments in the market, or not.

What is a Near-field mix? Is it an afterthought like new remasters on CD? What exactly in the mix made them sound "near-field"? Is it some reduced dynamic range, bass levels or other unexplained audio magic? If there is really such mix, why does a film sound track played in large theaters (far-field speakers) have to be made different from near-field speakers?

A proper mix stage is calibrated specifically for the certified standard you're mixing to. If it's Dolby, and it probably is, then their standards are followed when the mix stage is built and tuned. If you then go to a movie theater certified for a matching standard it should technically sound the same as it did on the mix stage (though these days many theater screw around with levels).

BluRay and other format however aren't meant for theaters, it's more a consumer format. Therefore the consumer's situation has to be taken into account, and most don't have a nice home theater setup with high max output, tons of headroom, all the subs and no neighbors. The situation is fundamentally different. There is also the acoustics. There's an EQ curve applied to a theater (and thus the mix stage) for theatrical releases. That curve is not assumed to exist in the home. So you have to consider that the mixes just sound and feel different in your average home, even with 5.1, and a theater.

I think a "near-field mix" is probably more of a mid-field mix if what the people you heard say that are saying what I think they are. In my field the normal reference loudness level at the mix position is lower than for a mix stage for a theater. So a movie that is mixed for the theater - if it gets a "near-field" mix - gets adapted in a smaller room with different acoustics and reference levels. Netflix for example has a best practices page that states that for a near field mix "The most common monitoring levels for near field are 79db or 82db", and they also specify that "If a 85db reference theatrical mix is created, two complete sets of deliverables are required. One for theatrical, one for near field."

Technically what happens if you mix purely by ear is that as the playback level in the room goes down your instinct and taste compensates for it by raising the level of the actual mix. So if dialog sounds "right" on a mix stage, at 85dB reference, and you're mixing in a smaller studio at 79dB reference, your dialog in the actual mix file is going to be 6dB louder to compensate. As you raise this level the headroom between it and the absolute ceiling (0dB) shrinks, which means that overall dynamic range shrinks. Obviously, if the mix is specifically for streaming or television there is the standard to consider, but the point is that even if that's not the case you're pretty much guaranteed to end up creating an objectively less dynamic mix.

In general, my understanding is that the standard has been to finish the sort of glorified master on a mix stage, for cinema, and then other mixes follow from that. They're not done from scratch, they're based on the first mix (I've done this myself).

Also remember that this has to happen also for things like airplane playback, so it's been a thing for quite some time actually.

As for the question of why they'd choose to maybe release only one version on BluRay, and how they decide which one and so on, beats me!...

Anyway, "near-field" mixing is a thing, it's been around for decades, and it's for good reasons.

 

[TK_IIVI]

total bs ! i worked done cinemas from large mid to small , most have or running 35mm in the home in rooms far smaller , this is bs , near field sucks ! they belong in the cat litter !

Not only do I have absolutely no idea what you're disagreeing with, I think you probably don't even know yourself. Judging from other posts I've seen by you your comprehension matches your ability to express yourself in a coherent manner.

If you're going to respond to me then please pick one point I made and refute it, preferably without the condescending tone.

But I'll give an example of how you clearly can't understand what you read even when words are in italics to highlight their importance and with parentheses provided for context:

soundmixers director never win if they boost for unsafe dB levels a sensible projectionist is going to turn that 7 down to 6 or even 4.5 on the fader so soundmixer director never do win ,

And? Did I say that they win? What I said was, and I'm quoting myself now: "a movie theater certified for a matching standard it should technically sound the same as it did on the mix stage (though these days many theater screw around with levels)."

Did you notice how I made "should" italics? Did you notice how in parenthesis I acknowledge that they adjust levels? Doesn't seem like you did. Or you didn't get it.

most have home theatres don't even have their fader/vol settings at 0dB due to they don't know how to set it up ? fader set 0db then adjust the gain levels , do the Eq check again gain levels so reaching 85dB on proper speakers not those useless home theatre speakers that don't have the proper badnwidth , its no wonder most home theatres can't hear dialog passages , because its not the same motion picture commercial industrial speakers doing the reduction , some crave the real thing , while others oh please don't have the space

I barely understand the above and I certainly have no idea what that has to do with anything I wrote. It's like there is an army of independent ants and cats in your head doing the writing... each ant and cat writes a few words each... look, almost a sentence now when strung together!

 

[audio2920]

I'd expect film studios to finish one product and call it a day, as I believe no one would be happy managing 10 variants of the same .txt, and you play the same stuff on big speakers vs. headphones

This is certainly a limitation. But there's generally two .txt files these days, for modern productions (loving the analogy and running with it )

- Theatrical_Atmos.txt
- Nearfield_Atmos.txt

That's it. No separate mix deliverables for stereo vs Atmos or anything like that.

I say "that's it", but that's a bit of a lie for over simplification... There are then usually another one or two more for cinema DCP, as, unlike the nearfield, these two playback formats aren't folded down from Atmos in the servers/decoder:
- Theatrical_5.1.txt
- Theatrical_7.1.txt
But these days it's highly likely these will be very quick playout passes, rendering out from the Theatrical Atmos mix, with a only few minutes spent optimizing surround levels/overhead injection/bass management etc by ear during spot checks, using static settings.

The cinema mix only needs to work in a big room. The nearfield mix needs to work for everyone and everything else. Hence, the latter is usually simultaneously too dynamically compressed for some people (my brother) and too dynamic for others (my wife). If I've annoyed both equally; it's a job well done. Of course, the same annoyances will be reported by cinema goers hearing the Theatrical mix too; but the difference is, the cinema version will nearly always need greater dynamics than the nearfield, in order to hit the sweet spot of annoying everyone at each end of the "preference-for-dynamics scale" equally.

 

[Andysu]

^ tampering is tampering

 

[TK_IIVI]

^ ignorance is ignorance

 

[audio2920]

^ tampering is tampering

IMHO it's not really tampering, if it's your own mix. It's just more mixing. Tampering, to me, would be something like if I sent my mix to a blu-ray authoring department and they just decided it wasn't loud enough, so boosted it up then stuck a global compressor on it (or whatever) without telling me.

I do wish there was a way of putting the theatrical mix out on consumer formats for people who want it (e.g. on a non-default language track on the disc - "English 2 - Dynamic" for example maybe? No idea if that's viable.) But it's not something I have control over.