Dodgeball - Dialoge distortion ? Or just me ? (1 Viewer)

[Joe Mihok]

Hey all. I just finished watching Dodgeball with the wife last night and thought it was pretty good. However, I couldn't help but be distracted by some distortion in the soundtrack. It really pulled me away from the movie at times. My wife didn't even notice until I pointed it out to her, but it was definatley there. I would post some time stamps, but I'm at work atm. I noticed distortion only from Mr.White's voice in some of the movie (maybe 8 or 9 times). I really noticed it in the bar celebration scene where Mr.White spoils the party with his "crew" (right after Average Joe's beat the girlguides). I thought maybe it was my speakers so I tried headphones, and the same thing happened. Then I went as far as trying my second DVD Player, and you can guess .... same thing. I then tried a second reciever and different digital coax cable, and the SAME THING!. So, is this a defective disc I should return ? or is it the same on all copies ?. Hope you guys can give me some responses. Thanks

P.S. - I also heard this "crackling" distorted dialoge in Jeepers Creepers last month, and tried the same troubleshooting techniques, and couldn't isolate it .... I'm starting to wonder if I'm hearing Dolby Digital compression or just poorly mastered tracks. If they are poorly mastered soundtracks, then how the heck can this get get past everyone involved in the DVDs production ? Don't these people watch their DVD's before releasing them to the public ?

Sorry if my frustration is showing but I just hate the sound of audio distortion, it makes me cringe.

 

[Pat_TL]

Joe,

I have heard dialogue distortion on more than a few discs, as well as non-dialogue portions of a DVD...Crimson Tide is a stand out example in my collection, and a subject I have discussed many times on other sites. There is a part during the first missile attack on Gene Hackman's sub the USS Alabama, where the sub shakes, creaks and the camera gets unsteady to suggest a Russian sub attack; there is a horrible crack/static noise in the left surround channel during this sequence, just as it finishes, and I had other people on another site test it on THEIR systems, and they heard the same thing and just chalked it up to "some junk in the Dolby Digital mix..." While we sometimes think our speakers are blown, I think its more poor mastering, as you mention. Why they dont check these things I will never know; I hate it too. Where is the quality control?

There are many other discs I own that have garbled, distorted and sometimes muted dialogue...I know I get horrible dialogue during the Platoon Special Edition, Predator Collector's Edition, and I have even heard rampant distortion on the DTS track of Hunt For Red October...seems almost as if Paramount was experimenting with DTS for this disc, as I think it was one of their first titles for the format, if not THE first. There is a scene in "The Last Castle" (with James Gandolfini and Robert Redford) in which Gandolfini's voice gets muddy and unclear while he reads the charges Redford's character is in jail for; this I remember, and it was on an otherwise very good DTS mix from DreamWorks Entertainment.