So the ideal filters to reverse their changes may vary between mixes. Instead, they 'turn various knobs' and listen until they are satisfied with the result. Mixers don't necessarily attempt to defeat the X-curve alterations in any systematic way. Unfortunately, the required correction varies between track for both of the above reasons. Dialog is both much easier to understand and much more enjoyable to listen to when it's presented neutrally. low, but with the mid-range being relatively depressed, intelligibility often still suffers. Sometimes, the dialog seems relatively balance, in terms of high vs. For example, some cinema mixes, the dialog comes across very bright. Sometimes only one of the excess highs or the excess lows is audible in the unaltered track because the boost dominates. I find it easiest to hear the problems in the dialog. The resulting mixes, in addition to translating unreliably between theaters, sound less than optimal when played back on a home system. As a consequence of the altered tonal-balance, most mixes are likely altered to sound good in the dub-stage during the re-recording mix process in which highs and lows are boosted to compensate. The effect of X-curve calibration is to attenuate both high frequencies, via the -3 dB/octave slope in power response, and the low frequencies, which arises from forcing a flat power-averaged response even though virtually all speakers have a significant drop in directivity for low frequencies and what absorption is present in typical dub-stage / cinema rooms is also less effective at low frequencies. However, much legacy content as well as lesser quality home-remixes do not feature any re-EQ and retain the inverse-X-curve signature. the new 'Star Wars' and much recent Pixar and Marvel stuff). This is true for most recent Disney releases these days (including, e.g. Inconsistent calibration between different dub-stages and cinemas.Īs I also noted, many UHDBR/BD/DVD releases these days have high quality home remixes that fix most of these tonal balance problems.

Tonal balance that deviates substantially from neutral and from what is typical used (informally) for music production and what sounds good on a home system that is optimized for music.

In the future, I may post this somewhere on AVSForum, but for now I want to keep it to a limited audience.Īs I've mentioned in the main LF Content thread, the X-curve calibration standard in cinema causes two major problems: This thread is more about full-range content than bass, but it is content related, so I think it works best here.

Default audyssey curve