THX Cinema mode to the rescue (1 Viewer)

[PaulDA]

I had a somewhat strange experience a few nights ago. I rented Amazing Grace (a solid, if somewhat hagiographic, film about William Wilberforce's efforts to get legislation banning the slave trade within the British Empire through Parliament--a nearly 30 year effort). The DD mix was awful. The rears were louder than the fronts, dialogue was coming from the surrounds instead of the centre speaker (I checked all my levels and none of my settings had been disturbed). After ten minutes of the film I was ready to abandon it. Then I engaged THX Cinema mode on my receiver. I normally use that for bombastic action/adventure/sci-fi movies, not talky period pieces, but, I figured, it can't hurt to try it. MAJOR IMPROVEMENT. The sound quality was still rather poor (in addition to what I mentioned above, the sound was muffled and generally bad) but now the surrounds were not overbearing and the dialogue was properly centred. I was able to finish the film without further issues.

I have to say I'm very impressed that THX Cinema worked this magic, though I was surprised. I thought that mode largely served to tame high intensity audio tracks, not be so active in steering sound to various channels (of course, I'm no expert on the inner secrets of DSP and post-processing). In any event, this certainly makes me more likely to seek out a THX receiver/pre-pro as an eventual replacement for my current one.

Side note: I searched for several reviews of the DVD (specifically audio) and it is universally praised in that department. I'm therefore at a loss at explaining why the audio was so bad on my rental disc (the video was quite good, FWIW). I've never encountered this kind of audio issue.

 

[LanceJ]

This may sound like heretical advice on an HT forum, but why not listen to such a crummy soundtrack in stereo? Especially since it's not an adventure movie with directional effects.

I've had to do this with some TV shows broadcast in stereo, sounding much like you described i.e. dialog came from the surround channels and there was an overall sound-everywhere/floaty effect going on. This makes me think someone in the studio hit the wrong button on their Dolby Surround encoder or plugged something in backwards, causing an out-of-phase signal condition.

 

[JohnRice]

Paul, I don't know what was wrong with your system, but something was wrong. the THX cinema mode may have just covered it up, which is actually a bad sign to me. I watched Amazing Grace the same way I do all movies, with plain old surround, no processing, and it was fine.

 

[PaulDA]

I don't think it is my system as I've watched several things since then with no audio issues at all. It was a rental, so I may never reproduce the problem to see if it is the disc (there are about 9 copies of the film at the rental store and I don't feel like testing each one).

LanceJ, I've noticed what you describe with some TV shows as well (almost always on NBC, for some reason, notably Law and Order (each of the variations) and a few others).