Scary Movie 3 Audio problem (1 Viewer)

[Aaron Cohen]

Did anyone else pick up this dvd this week? I blind bought it just for the heck of it as I was in the mood for a comedy, and was actually pleasantly surprised by it. There were more than a few instances where I laughed quite loud. However, the audio, specifically the 5.1 audio track, sounded HORRIBLE to me at times. It appears to suffer from the same audio problem that plagued several of Columbia/Tristar's titles from a bit ago, examples of which being Identity and Anger Management. I never got an answer about this, but several people on the forum agreed with me about these titles so I know that it was not just my discs. On both of those titles, the reviews I found online ALL gave the audio glowing reviews, leading me to believe that either the reviewers did not pay attention at all to the audio track, or the discs they were given had a completely different audio track than mine.

The problem being, that when higher pitched tones are hit in the audio soundtrack, sometimes when somebody is screaming or when a higher note in a song being played or sung is hit, the sound gets very scratchy and distorted almost to the point of hurting my ears. With the Scary Movie 3 disc, it did not occur nonstop like with for instance, Anger Management, where the problem was downright hair-pulling frustrating as Nicholson's voice had just the right inflection to trigger this problem. However, the distortion problem was throughout and sounded TERRIBLE. I have around 600 dvd's and though I have heard this problem once or twice in a few of them, these are the only discs that actually do it repeatedly and throughout. Though I wanted to play the movie loud on my setup (Axiom M60ti's, VP150, and QS8's, and HSU Research VTF-2), I had to keep the volume low so I didn't go insane. Right after watching, just to ensure again, that it was not my sound system having problems, I watched Kieslowski's Rouge, one of my favorite films, in its entirety, with the sound up VERY loud and absolutely no distortion at all was present at any point in the film.

What's going on???

 

[Aaron Cohen]

Noone else with the capability to play the 5.1 soundtrack of this dvd purchased it??

 

[Jerry Thomas]

Hi Aaron: Yeah I was one of the people who agreed with you on the Anger Management dvd, and in fact have the same speakers you do in my family room. I haven't watched Scary Movie yet, but I'll give it a rent, and see if it does the same thing on my Axiom set up, and then try it in my theater (M&K S-150P's) to see if there is any difference. Doubt there will be since there wasn't with the Anger Management disc, but I'll give it a try.

 

[Zachary Cohen]

Aaron: I had the same problem. Even with the volume very low it was very displeasing to my ears. Several times I attempted to play it very loud like I do with most movies and I couldn't bear it.

 

[Marty Christion]

I was thinking of picking this up. Are there some specific scenes that are especially noticeable?

 

[George_W_K]

That's weird. I rented this tonight and I didn't have any problems with the audio. The movie wasn't bad either. Way better than part 2, IMO.

 

[Tino]

Watched it last night with NO audio problems.

 

[Jerry Thomas]

Aaron: A friend of mine rented it yesterday so we watched it in his theater without notice of any spitting coming from the center speaker. However I must point out that his theater consists of a complete Def-Tech set up, and we all know how revealing Def-Tech speakers are.

As funny as the movie is I had no desire to see it again in the same day, but we decided to try it in my more "revealing" theater (M&K S-150P's/ balanced), and noticed just a tad bit of spitting here & there from the center. Nowhere near as bad as Anger Management, but equal to Tears of the Sun.

Again, we watched it on the Axiom set up (M60, VP150, QS8) in the family room, and noticed the same amount of spitting as we did on the M&K theater.

So don't worry, it's not just your theater. It's pretty clear the more revealing your system is the more likely your going to notice this problem.

 

[Andrew Radke]

I purchased this on Wednesday. Watched it Thursday and noticed no audio problems, aside from a split-second dropout which I'm assuming was the result of the layer change. But otherwise, A-OK on this end.

 

[Zachary Cohen]

Thanks for the update Jerry. I'm interested to know if the same held true for Anger Management in playing it in the three settings you played Scary Movie 3 in... It's unfortunate that the quality of these audio tracks is being exposed on higher end equipment if that is in fact the case here...it's simply unacceptable. There had to have been some problem in the mastering of the audio track, and in the case of Anger Management, perhaps it was never listened to at all by the people that authored it!

In the case of Anger Management, Aaron Bejerle and Mike Long of DVDtalk.com both reviewed it and both said that the audio quality, particularly the dialogue, was clear with NO DISTORTION. I certainly hope that's what they heard when watching the dvd and didn't just watch the first 30 seconds or so and assume the audio track was fine...if they did their punishment should be having to listen to the entire movie! If they did in fact watch the dvd and found the audio fine, then it may be akin to what is possibly the problem with the Scary Movie 3 audio track, the better audio equipment, the more noticeable the problem is.

My brother Zachary Cohen, who also posted in this thread, has an all in one 400 dollar sony home theater dvd player and speakers system, so it's not high end, but he had the problem. Also, his dvd was purchased in Raleigh, NC while mine was bought in Charlotte, NC where I go to school. Shannon Nutt of DVDtalk.com said there was no distortion in her review of Scary Movie 3, though in the case of this it appears that it may depend on the quality of the speakers that the track is being played through.

Thanks again for the update!

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

My family and I watched Scary Movie 3 in our home theater. Only clear sound heard, i.e. No distortion noticed. Left, right & center speakers are M&K S-150's (front three channels), M&K S-250 tripoles for L&R sides and L&R rears. All 7 speakers are driven by 7 individual Bryston 250 monoblock amplifiers. Sound processor used is a Lexicon MC12-B, using balanced cables.
Very confusing.

Paul

 

[Aaron Cohen]

Thanks for posting Paul. Perhaps there is a bad batch of discs?