Opeth - Pale Communion 5.1 (Blu-ray)

[DuncanS]

I'm curious to hear this after reading about the issues, my Denon Universal player is set to give PCM out, and I have full range speakers all round, with no sub, but as my BD-A disc has not arrived yet :howl it seems that ordering direct hasn't worked in this case!

 

[Wildman]

I wish you were here and compare it yourself.
It is a huge difference for this disc here.

I had the same experience on my system.

 

[Thonolan]

Ok...I have moved to my new flat....and now I noticed that the speaker set-up had changed on my receiver.
I turned all speakers to "large" again and.....tadaaaaah....the mix is full of bass.
Oh yeah...now it sounds perfect....

Weird, but I just did the same here and... oh yes! Now it's got that bass/drums punch from the stereo mix! And all the discrete sounds from a typical SW surround mix in all its glory (well, this was already there). So, it sounded very good already on my system, and now it's terrific!

 

[fredblue]

How odd.. @: can one of the resident QQ technobods explain this apparent lack of bass in the 5.1 unless you set your speakers to Large?

I'm gonna be all over this disc tomorrow and will carefully flick back and forth between Large and Small on every track!

 

[Thonolan]

How odd.. @: can one of the resident QQ technobods explain this apparent lack of bass in the 5.1 unless you set your speakers to Large?

I'm gonna be all over this disc tomorrow and will carefully flick back and forth between Large and Small on every track!

On my Yamaha AV receiver, when you set the speakers to large, both the front speakers and subwoofer produce the front channel low-frequency components. If not, only the subwoofer does it. I'm getting now a fuller drum and bass sound from the front speakers and it sounds really well balanced to me.

It's still weird that I only need to do this for this disc, but damn it sounds great.

 

[Thonolan]

How odd.. @: can one of the resident QQ technobods explain this apparent lack of bass in the 5.1 unless you set your speakers to Large?

I'm gonna be all over this disc tomorrow and will carefully flick back and forth between Large and Small on every track!

On my Yamaha AV receiver, when you set the front speakers to large, both the front speakers and subwoofer produce the front channel low-frequency components. If not, only the subwoofer does it.

It's still weird that I need to do this only for this album, but it sounds great.

 

[Cheezmo]

excellent stuff! ta muchly

I had to abandon Audyssey for what I suspect are different technical reasons but similar sonic end results.. I guess I'm sensitive to all this compression/limiting jazzapalooza..?!

I went a long time before I realized the terrible effects of Audysey's Dynamic Equalization which was turning up the surround channels as the volume was turned down and doing some other crazy stuff. I'm fine with Audyssey, but Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ must be turned off. Any setting on any A/V gear with "dynamic" in its name is going to do something horrible.

 

[HomerJAU]

Ok...I have moved to my new flat....and now I noticed that the speaker set-up had changed on my receiver.
I turned all speakers to "large" again and.....tadaaaaah....the mix is full of bass.
Oh yeah...now it sounds perfect....

I wonder if your new neighbours are as happy as you?

 

[paligap]

I went a long time before I realized the terrible effects of Audysey's Dynamic Equalization which was turning up the surround channels as the volume was turned down and doing some other crazy stuff. I'm fine with Audyssey, but Dynamic Volume and Dynamic EQ must be turned off. Any setting on any A/V gear with "dynamic" in its name is going to do something horrible.

+1

Audyssey Flat with the Dynamic stuff off is divine.

 

[PK]

I wonder if your new neighbours are as happy as you?

AFAIK, "Large" typically just sends the total frequency range of the recording to the speaker. Doesn't affect the volume. I run all my speakers set at "Large" and run 2 subs..."Boom, Boom, Boom, out go the lights..."

 

[Robert van Diggele]

The xover is set to 80hz for my sub for all speakers.

I could be wrong, but when you set your speakers to large, your system does not do anything with the cross over setting. When set to large, only the LFE is directed to the sub. When set to small, LFE and anything below your cross over point is directed to the sub.

My speakers are set to large as well, although in theory they only go down to around 40hz. When I have the time this weekend I will set them to small and compare the differences.

 

[wavelength]

I could be wrong, but when you set your speakers to large, your system does not do anything with the cross over setting. When set to large, only the LFE is directed to the sub. When set to small, LFE and anything below your cross over point is directed to the sub.

You are right.

 

[Wildman]

When I first noticed the bass issue, I thought I had gone crazy. Now I feel a little more sane with more people hearing it.

The thing that I remembered during all this is that there is no "making of" documentary on this album like there has been on the other Opeth disks. There may have been a part where SW comments about not liking us using a sub and he would use this disk to force us to go 5.0.... :yikes or maybe not. Now we'll never know. :howl

That's OK though, 'cause you can take the sub out of the mix but you can't take the mix out of my sub! :banana:

 

[IMachine]

I wonder if your new neighbours are as happy as you?

It is too loud. I can' hear the door bell.

 

[IMachine]

I could be wrong, but when you set your speakers to large, your system does not do anything with the cross over setting. When set to large, only the LFE is directed to the sub. When set to small, LFE and anything below your cross over point is directed to the sub.

My speakers are set to large as well, although in theory they only go down to around 40hz. When I have the time this weekend I will set them to small and compare the differences.

I think you are right here. But why should I take signals to my sub when my rear and center speakers can play them?

 

[Nimbatus]

If a disc is mixed and authored properly, it shouldn't even matter if you're using bass management or not. Both ways should be fine either way.

 

[fredblue]

Hmm.. I'm not getting any DialNorm flag in the Dolby True 5.1 stream showing up on my AVR..

 

[fredblue]

Only 5 mins in but bass is rich and full.. sounds fantastic!

X-over @80hz (I can adjust the crossover for each individual channel on this Yammy but I've set them all to 80hz) sounds terrific!

 

[Simon_LDT]

Listening again just now. Have tried setting my player to LPCM and switched back and forth from bitstream and it sounds identical to me. I've got all the DRC and all processing turned off on the amp so I can only assume the DolbyTrueHD is being decoded properly.

It's still bass light to me, especially compared to the stereo mix (which is also DolbyTrueHD so it can't be the container that's a problem). All my speakers are set to large (no sub currently).

Those with full range or larger rear speakers, is there mid/low bass coming from them? My rears are quite tiny, no sure exactly on how low they go but they are very small surround bookshelf speakers and that could be my problem. However, I'm still confused as to why the stereo has real grunt on my system (and my fronts only go down to around 52hz) yet on the surround the bass is there but has lost all power and depth. It's like a ghost of it's former self.

It still sounds great, just wish it had a bit more bite in the lower end. I shall have to revisit it once I upgrade my rears and/or get a sub. I assume if the LFE is quite low mixed, those with active subs can up the volume a tad to compensate?

 

[Wildman]

Listening again just now. Have tried setting my player to LPCM and switched back and forth from bitstream and it sounds identical to me. I've got all the DRC and all processing turned off on the amp so I can only assume the DolbyTrueHD is being decoded properly.

It's still bass light to me, especially compared to the stereo mix (which is also DolbyTrueHD so it can't be the container that's a problem). All my speakers are set to large (no sub currently).

Those with full range or larger rear speakers, is there mid/low bass coming from them? My rears are quite tiny, no sure exactly on how low they go but they are very small surround bookshelf speakers and that could be my problem. However, I'm still confused as to why the stereo has real grunt on my system (and my fronts only go down to around 52hz) yet on the surround the bass is there but has lost all power and depth. It's like a ghost of it's former self.

It still sounds great, just wish it had a bit more bite in the lower end. I shall have to revisit it once I upgrade my rears and/or get a sub. I assume if the LFE is quite low mixed, those with active subs can up the volume a tad to compensate?

Try setting your LFE/Bass out to front. That's what did it for me.