Frequency waterfall charts of a few familiar favourites

Cavalcade THX trailer. LFE down to single digit frequency. Woah.......



T2 THX trailer. This finale sounds different since there isn't the 20hz trail off.

More coming up....... LOTR, SW2 landing sequence, ........ any suggestions?

Black Hawk Down's F'kin Irene is a realt stunner,

Right down to 5hz, this one is one to feel for. Unfortunately, not all will know 5hz bass was even there at all.

Something I never expected where even streaks of bass freq that made towards to sound of the rotors. I suppose its intentional within the movie itself and not a problem with my equip.

Everyone should go thru this scene and see if their sub responses to the 5hz bass. It looks really cool to see the driver move in/out that I wondered when the cone would actually detach from the rubber lining.



I'll do SW2 tomorrow, though I can only remember the first landing sequence having stunning bass.

Thanks guys, ...... with all the thumbs up I'm getting, I'm even more motivated to posts more waterfalls quickly.

I'm getting the waterfalls for SW2 at this moment. Check back soon.

SW2:AOTC Flyby



Not much dialogue in the scene, but lotsa deep end bass. Less upper bass, so this sequence gets the overall deeper bass feel. But thats not all.

Most of the bass is centered around 40hz to give normal subs a good work out. But those with the "more" able subs will not only get to hear, but get to feel the ship too.

Right from the first few bass peaks, bass extends lower than 15hz.

More interestingly, is the sequence from 00:02:39 to 00:02:53. Here, we have low freq sweep from 30hz to just below 20hz. A slow sweep that bears the distinct low freq bass of eyelid batting, ear drums pressuring bass. Rather impressive 14sec of rafters rattling bass. Expect to feel the ship land; if you don't, you won't know the experience you're missing till you've felt it.

Only got time to do this plot today. Will follow up further scenes in SW2 soon.

LOTR: Battle Scene

Most of us knows this scene very well. What we don't know is how low it goes. Here we see at least 2 instances were things limbo lower than 10hz. But its not gonna pull attention to itself since there is just as much (if not more bass) happening else where.

The one thing interesting is the reverse sweep during Sauron's spontaneous combustion. Its an interesting Sound FX to hear. The last instant of the reverse sweep is actually peaks quite loud, although it doesn't seem so during actual hearing.

IMO, this movie really has way overcooked(really loud) and hyperactive (lotsa) bass.

I might try checking the raw plots and verifying against my setup at listening spot.

Next stop is Jurrassic park 3, Telarc's T2 and jurrasic lunch sound tracks.

Jurassic Lunch is a magnificent bass fest. This track is taken from Telarc's "The Great Fantasy Adventure Album". I'm sure subwoofer freaks will want to permanently include this as one of their test track for subs. No subs will render Jurassic lunch in its true glory except for the very few best monster subs around. Why? Lets take a look.



Other than when the dino is roaring, munching and burping, his footsteps (approaching and leaving) all score lower than 30hz. With the lowest at 10hz, its gonna move lotsa air. Port noise aside, becareful of getting yourself sucked into the sub's ports.

Jurassic lunch is horrific; the few tracks that only feature bass lower than 30hz. Less able subs will just reproduce nasty harmonics, if not totally silent. Is this a great litmus test or what?


Just for kicks, I did another waterfall for T2 Theme in the same disc from Telarc's "The great Fantasy Adventure Album"


T2 Theme




Just want to point out the gobs of bass during the "explosive" ending. Right down there at 5hz, do give this a try, since Terminator season is rounding the corner again.

For sure, the explosion will be so darn loud, you'll feel its literally in your head. Don't be frightened if your vision blurs and your heart skips a beat. The infrasonics here verifies that its the sub thats blurring your vision. I can't say the same if your heart really skips a beat, but be warned that may happen if your sub can't handle the extra loud ultra low bass and a scary "clanck" comes from sub.

Don't worry guys. It seems I've overlooked the name of the program amidst all the excitement of posting these plots.

I use Spectrum Lab to help me plot these charts. Get the program from here http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/spectra1.html

Its made by a bunch of Ham radio ppl for analysing audio signals. Its a pretty nifty program.

Just so to ensure I'm measuring stuff correctly, here's how I setup the volume levels so that I don't get false readings associated with overload saturation, harmonic and intermodulation distortion . Use Cooledit to generate single tone to test for harmonic distortion. Saturation test passes only if the single tone does not manifest itself elsewhere other than the fundamental harmonic. Lower recording volume will help. Generate again 2 tones, one at 30hz and the other at 50hz for Intermodulation Distortion or IMD. Test this with Spectrum labs. Test passes only if the 2 tones only show itself at 30 and 50hz. Intermodulation (IM) products will show if there are harmonics at 20hz, 70hz, 90hz and so forth which is not what we want. Generally, adjusting the volume levels in the mixer will tend to be enuf. With these tests, we've already done enough tests to ensure the recording levels are correct and not saturate the analyser/hardware to give false readings.

Note, it isn't gonna be very accurate waterfalls, but its enough to perform these types of plots with enough accuracy.

The tests descriptions are abit brief, but to explain all will require a semester long college lecture on RF engineering. But I hope this is enough to seem logical rnough to the more adventurous.

Anyway, happy analysing. I'll still keep on feeding in waterfall plots now and then when I come across something interesting. Now, where is my JP3 DVD?.......:b