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Have we confirmed that Spidey 3 has DN? Sony had stated they weren't going to use it?
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With Dolby's codecs, there is
always dialnorm. The default setting for dialnorm on Dolby encoders is -27 dBfs, which attenuates the audio 4 dB at the decoder. One can change the setting on the encoder to whatever one deems appropriate. In Sony's case, to appease the Blu-ray fanboys that don't know any better, but still make a lot of noise on the Internet, TrueHD encodes on Sony BDs are using a dailnorm setting of -31 dBfs, which has no attenuation at the decoder.
What I find most interesting about this is not that Sony is somehow being more responsive to their customers, though I suppose one could look at it that way, but that Sony is willing to compromise their product to score points with Blu-ray supporters. Dialnorm serves a very specific purpose and is a tool that Dolby provides to users of its encoder to solve specific problems, that being, inconsistent audio levels on film and video material. In the past, on DVD, Sony was in fact one of the very few companies that actually used dialnorm as it was intended. Most studio/post houses simply leave the encoder on the default position without taking the time to determine what the appropriate setting should be on the material being encoded. Sony did take the time to check levels and use dailnorm to either boost low levels or attenuate soundtracks that may have been mixed too "hot".
Now, Sony is not using this otherwise useful feature of audio post production in order to promote their format among a very small, but very vocal minority that simply don't understand the technology. There's a word for that, and it is called "pandering".
