Monsters Inc.... bass at end of chapter 13. (1 Viewer)

[Johnny Mac]

What the heck was that?! Sounded like the end of the world to me. Yet I played it over and over and over until my wife made me stop.
Anyone else play this scene at reference level?
Also saw "I am Sam" this weekend. Pretty good flick with a very dynamic music mix. Mostly Beatles covers so even better. The figety camera was a little annoying though.

 

[Felipe S]

What scene was that? (don't have the disc with me...)

 

[Wayne McRae]

I'm assuming that's the scene where they quarintine the sock from the human side. This was the first scene ever to bottom out my SVS.

 

[Mike Sloan]

I think the best bass in Monsters Inc. is where they have the little girl in their apartment and Mike falls into the trash can...swallowing the books and the girl laughs for the first time...amazing bassssss!

 

[Johnny Mac]

It's the first scene where the lights go dim. Mike and Sulley are in Sulley's apartment and trying to figure out what to do with the little girl (Boo). Right after Mike falls in the trash can, the lights dim and a wave of bass hits. Made my backside tingle.

 

[CoreyH]

Yup, first time I bottomed my 20-39 CS+ as well.

Now that is a terrible sound.

Wonder if it causes any long term damage to the driver?

 

[ColinM]

You guys who are bottoming the SVS's - do you run an EQ?

I like the sock explosion the best so far....

 

[Johnny Mac]

The sock explosion rocked as well.

No bottoming here. 25-31pci set 6db hot.

 

[Kevin P]

No bottoming on my SVS, 20-39CS. But then my room is small and has a huge hump which I EQed out with a BFD, so my sub basically coasts 90% of the time.

I agree, blowing up the sock produced a "THOOMP" like no other I've heard. But the loudest bass was later on in the movie, during the power surge scenes at the factory. Some of those rumbles were Titan A.E.-like.

KJP

 

[Keir H]

I was too impressed with the level of bass in this movie and in that scene in particular with my 22-31. I was playing around -12 or so and heard the sock explosion and it took me by surprise. I wonder if SVS will add this to the list of movies with low bass...anyone know the freq fo that? Oh and the laughing that Boo does also goes pretty low and intense, made me smile and my girlfriend say, "Wow, better than at the movies"! gotta love that.

 

[James Bergeron]

Haha, last night my parents were over. My mom was watching Monsters inc in the basement on my system, I was 2 floors up helping my Dad with his computer. When the power surge scene hit the floor on my second story moved it was crazy!

 

[SVS-Ron]

With "Blade 2", Monsters Inc., Lord of the Rings, and soon Band of Brothers sure to continue to push the LFE envelope, I figure it might be worth adding a bit from the equipment side.

First, anyone bottoming a CS-Plus (a VERY hard thing to do, but hey it just means you are a "Subhuman" at heart!) might want to consider a bit more tame calibration (obviously, but still...) and/or the addition of a subsonic filter as you find on just about any decent equalizer or a dedicated unit like our SVS01 Bass Interface Box. This is going to be interactive with the use of a port plug on any sub so equipped. Changing the tune of a sub gains capacity in one spectrum but causes a slight compromise either higher or lower (depending on if you raised or lowered the tune).

The bottom line is that this nearly always happens when BOTH a hot calibration and reference levels of bass (well below a given sub's tuning point) are present without a subsonic filter in place. As folks have noted, 99.99% of the time you won't have both issues cropping up at one time. As is again probably obvious, if you are boosting the low end with an equalizer and/or running all your speakers as "Small" it challenges a sub even more. Running all your bass to the sub is actually our recommendation in most cases but it raises the load on the sub considerably.

Naturally, adding a sub is always another option, just keep in mind that almost always you will achieve maximum effect if you add the same sort of sub in a collocated position with the first sub. Phase cancellation, integration and calibration are child's play when you do. Any other arrangement is workable but significantly more difficult to exploit.

Suffice it to say with sufficiently high SPL's, even if the bass isn't exceptionally low, you can still bottom a sub but this is relatively rare. Keep in mind that typical subwoofers (as we often hear) "have no problem with this scene" for one simple reason. They don't even try to reproduce the deep bass. When a disk like Blade 2 has near reference level bass at 10Hz, and you lash up a sub that rolls off hard at 35Hz (which is pretty common) simple math tells you that about a 25Hz swath of program material (that can be hear and/or felt if the sub is up to it) is just lopped off, dumped into "bit bucket" if you will. Of course if sub is NOT capable this sort of "bass-ectomy" is understandable, and necessary. Given even we recommend subsonic filters (when/if you are looking to get the Nth degree of performance from a sub) clearly we too know that when judiciously employed a filter like this can help.

Since it was asked, it's nearly impossible to cause permanent damage to a decent quality sub with a single incident of bottoming. Only repeated abuse over a period of time will do it. I don't think Tom's going to have any time to measure these scenes till PC-Plus pre-orders are caught up but if someone wants to list out time and chapter stops for the most interesting/impressive bass passages it would save some time.

Just some food for thought as more and more examples of LFE like this hit the street. DVD's which challenge your previous settings seem to be increasingly common. The fixes are not that difficult though.

It generally comes down to the old standby's:

Patient: "Doc it hurts when I do this".

Doctor: "Don't do that."

Or, the corollary...

"Just send money till it stops"

Ron

 

[Brian Burgoyne]

Is there such a thing as a Hz meter that we can ogle at while we're watching movies? That way we could tell how low some of these scenes are.

 

[DanaA]

I think my Hsu sub might have bottomed out too. I run my Hsu at 3 dbs to the hot side. I was running the film at only one click below reference. I'm truly amazed at the soundtract for Monster's Inc. It is superb. It is exciting. It knocked my off my feet. I'm glad Ron explained that infrequent bottoming out probably won't damage the sub.

 

[Keir H]

I put in BLade II just last night to see what all the commotion was about and, I was truly impressed..in fact just the beginning 8 mins or so had me in surround and bass heaven more so than any movie I can think of before...I guess it's because of dts-ES...even if I dont have the back ch. Awesome...we gotta praise companies like New Line for doing it right.. Monsters Inc. is another sonic marvel. May scare some kids if played at reference level dont you guys think? Any parents out there??

 

[Wayne McRae]

Thanks for the post Ron. I'm not worried about my SVS bottoming out once in the last 2 years,averaging about 2 movies/week. I run a bit hot and after listening to it once I skipped back a bit and cranked the volume on my Denon just to see what it would sound like. I will now refrain from doing that

 

[Manny_S]

I'm surprised no one mentioned the scene where the gigantic monster is standing next to Sulley and Mike at the crosswalk. The first step that giant takes off the curb pounds nicely. I believe it's Chapter 5, at the 9 minute mark.

 

[Mike Sloan]

I agree the gigantic monster and crosswalk scene is really good. Maybe even lower freq. than the above mentioned spots...it's just that the apartment scene is so dramatic and unexpected.

 

[Mike Sloan]

What does bottoming of the VTF-3 sound like

 

[Matt Lopp]

The blizzard scene ain't bad either.

However, I loved the destruction of the sock.