Dialogue Clipping - A New Hope

T

timmay8612

Audioholic
Hi all,

It's been a while since I've posted. I had the opportunity to watch the recent BD version of Star Wars - A New Hope with my kids (first time!) this morning. I noticed many sections throughout the movie where there was dialogue clipping, and very occasional sound FX clipping, from my center channel. I went back later and replayed a scene for trouble shooting. I swapped out another speak in the center channel amp position and duplicated the clipping, suggesting to me that it is either the receiver, the gain staging, the source material, or some factor I'm not considering, but NOT the speaker. The reference scene is the trash compactor scene, right after Han attempts to blast the door down upon entering. Luke yells (distorted) "Will you forget it I already tried it..."

There is some goofy stuff going on with the sound of the dialogue in this scene anyway, with some sounding "clearer" to me - I'm not sure if some of it was taken from different tracks or was mastered differently. Wondering if this is a source issue. I don't remember hearing clipping on other source discs, but I'm not watching that many movies any more. I checked my settings and the calibration software had the channel set at +2, so I bumped every channel back -2 db and the same problem occurred. For whatever it's worth, I was listening/viewing at master volume -24.
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
If you rewind and hear the same thing in the same spot, since you already checked turning it down, then it is probably an artifact in the audio track. There was chatter way back when those discs came out that there were a lot of voice issues on A New Hope in particular. I saw one blurb that said that most of the dialog in that one is dubbed due to noise in the on site/scene recordings.
 
lovinthehd

lovinthehd

Audioholic Jedi
Haven't got the BD myself but this review calls the audio perfect....but maybe I'll pull out a dvd and see if it's similar to your experience....
 
j_garcia

j_garcia

Audioholic Jedi
I have the BD set and I watched the original trilogy all shortly after Carrie Fisher passed. I'll check out the scene mentioned.
 
T

timmay8612

Audioholic
Thanks for the feedback folks. It reminds me quite a bit of my live sound days, when somebody sings loudly or shouts into a hot mic that isn't gain staged properly for that input signal level and clips the mic. Could of course be the audio track... But I'd be shocked if the engineers let that get past, it's really noticeable when there is shouting in the vocal track. That's why it was my impulse to try re-gain staging my receiver (lower the pre-amp? level for the center channel from +2 to 0 to try and compensate for the clipping). I'm not sure if this actually translates to receivers the way it does in FOH console/amp though.
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
Thanks for the feedback folks. It reminds me quite a bit of my live sound days, when somebody sings loudly or shouts into a hot mic that isn't gain staged properly for that input signal level and clips the mic. Could of course be the audio track... But I'd be shocked if the engineers let that get past, it's really noticeable when there is shouting in the vocal track. That's why it was my impulse to try re-gain staging my receiver (lower the pre-amp? level for the center channel from +2 to 0 to try and compensate for the clipping). I'm not sure if this actually translates to receivers the way it does in FOH console/amp though.
If you experiment by lowering the level that's a good troubleshooting step, but you are going to be less sensitive to distortions too at lower spl. I would suggest you take the time to enter the necessary data properly in the peak spl calculator linked below, let us know the results and go from there. We already know the potential clipping point of your Pioneer so the calculator can help us rule out if power output vs spl is the issue. If not, then either there is something wrong with your BD player, the AVR or the source.

It is unlikely, but you may be super sensitive to vocal distortions. To find out about that one, listen to any recent Adele CDs, BD live concerts etc., and tell me if you hear distortions when she ramps up, typically at the end of a verse. I reported what I heard on AH several times, and so far it appears that I am the only one who heard such distortions/or clipping.

http://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html
 

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