Importance of music in content

techsamurai

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It's interesting when talking about movies that surround effects and LFE seem to be the top things we envision but after owning 2 surround systems for 20 years and using them for a million hours, I'm beginning to feel that music is much more important than people realize and might be the #1 thing. After all, music makes an emotional connection with us in a way that bass or a surround effect doesn't and it's the reason that movies go out of their way to create a superb soundtrack.

For instance, let's take a show like The Crown before we head into movies. The intro by Hans Zimmer sets the tone for the whole show. In another episode, they were playing Mozart's Lacrimosa and it was just sublime (I don't even like classical music but we were just mesmerized). The same goes for Westworld and Game of Thrones. Disney's Moon Knight was a musical tour-de-force. The Mandalorian also had some amazing closing credit songs.

When it comes to movies, music is even more important because they are as important as the dialogue, sometimes even more important.

Recently, we watched the intro to No Time to Die and my teenage daughter said to me "that was amazing" and I was equally stunned listening to it.

That's when it struck me that I've never been moved by music this way at a theater as I'm at home with my musical system. Case in point - No Time To Die, if I'd heard that at a superb theater with a multi million dollar sound system like my IMAX theater, I'd be "meh! it sounds good, dynamic, loud but it's missing the musicality."

The same goes for games where nowadays the music is used to great effect to immerse the player.

I'm just curious to see if others share the same conclusion.
 
Completely and utterly agree. The "sound placement", e.g. surprises from behind or in one of the Annabelle's where the there were noises upstairs and I really did think there were noises upstairs (in our house) - not joking. The LFE. They all do what I'd call amaze us. An amazing experience that is thrilling. Sometimes the system can make me 5h1t myself. Not just horror films but a surprise in any film as the impact is so immense.

But all that joy aside... the real EMOTION comes from the music. The goosebumps. And, yes I'm man enough to admit it, the tears.

I'm not joking, I can really enjoy the music watching 2 channel old Midsomer Murders on Britbox... let alone what I can hear from more modern/advanced soundtracks.

The musical ability of the system is the backbone. If you can't switch your system into just stereo and still enjoy it nearly as much then it's not doing the right job 🤣

(All my opinion of course).
 
If you don't like listening to stereo music in the home cinema then it doesn't gel together.

Listening to music now it's it's great as good as the hifi upstairs. Also have option to run pure 2ch full range mains and bass managed. stereo + sub that's pretty useful. So for music in movies/concerts it sounds fantastic
 
I agree, music scores can move you like nothing else and I think musical performance is the ultimate critical test of accurate sound reproduction. It's also why I'll probably always favour large HiFi speakers for L/R mains spread >45° apart. IMO dinky speakers using high crossovers just cannot reproduce music well no matter what subs you have.

I've also never really understood comments levied at some AVRs like "it's great for movies but terrible for music". I just don't see how anything that's terrible with music can be good with movies.
 
I agree, music scores can move you like nothing else and I think musical performance is the ultimate critical test of accurate sound reproduction. It's also why I'll probably always favour large HiFi speakers for L/R mains spread >45° apart. IMO dinky speakers using high crossovers just cannot reproduce music well no matter what subs you have.

Agree. Although I rough it with 39° :)

I've also never really understood comments levied at some AVRs like "it's great for movies but terrible for music". I just don't see how anything that's terrible with music can be good with movies.

Interesting point. If we're this emotionally moved by the soundtrack now, would an Arcam invoke a full nervous breakdown? I don't think so.

It would be interesting to hear what people are talking about here though, perhaps I just don't understand.
 
There are some films I adore mainly because of their soundtrack, but I oddly do not find the composers' Music that compelling, except perhaps when it was Toto on Dune (1984).
I honestly hate Dune (2021) for the bOOminess that it utterly distracting.

Two films I can think of with contemporary songs that make the movie heaps better:
Jawbreaker (McGowan, Gayheart)
Valentine (Boreanaz, Denise Richards)

Let's not forget about Almost Famous, a film about Music.
They actually did a real live concert & used the footage in the film.
Peter Frampton & Nancy Wilson taught them how to play.

Cameron Crowe has another film called Singles that gets touted as having a great soundtrack.

There's a crappy old '80s film called Nightmares with Emilio Estevez, it's redeeming factor for me was that Lee Ving was in the film & his band Fear played on the soundtrack.

Pet Sematary anyone?
The Ramones

Stephen King also had AC/DC do the soundtrack to Maximum Overdrive, which almost redeemed that clunker.
 
I agree, music scores can move you like nothing else and I think musical performance is the ultimate critical test of accurate sound reproduction. It's also why I'll probably always favour large HiFi speakers for L/R mains spread >45° apart. IMO dinky speakers using high crossovers just cannot reproduce music well no matter what subs you have.

I've also never really understood comments levied at some AVRs like "it's great for movies but terrible for music". I just don't see how anything that's terrible with music can be good with movies.

Totally agree about the LR being large speakers and ideally great speakers - subs are just that substitutes and not perfect ones - they are more sups in the sense that they supplement the system by extending the LFE into the lower octaves.

Same with AVRs - if the AVR isn't musical, it's not great for movies. unless you don't care about sound quality.
 
I honestly hate Dune (2021) for the bOOminess that it utterly distracting.
I watched Dune on HBO Max - I got the 3d version and I can't wait to watch it. I'm curious to see about the boominess.

We watched Top Gun 3d over the weekend and that sounded better at my house than Top Gun Maverick did at the IMAX theater with its million dollar THX sound system. A lot of it came down to music as it's such a big part of the movie.

If Maverick at the IMAX was a 10, this was a 11 between the 3d and the music.
 
Absolutely agree.

The movie “First Man” is a case in point.

Justin Hurwitz’ score uses a simple mournful theme using little instrumentation other than a harp when dealing with the aftermath of the death of Armstrong’s daughter.

But later in the film Hurwitz uses that same theme with full orchestra on song for Armstrong’s greatest triumph: holding his nerve in the lunar lander with 20 seconds of fuel left as they cruise painfully slowly over a crater they could never land on.

And that tragic loss to the epic high is masterfully achieved in the track “The Landing”.

When you’re taken on the journey with Armstrong, then yes, the music is what makes the journey so much more emotionally engaging.
 
I only dislike (wrong word) when it overpowers necessary vocabulary, not the musicians fault obviously.
 
Unfortunately not many are spreading the Music around on the new Atmos or DTS:X soundstage, in my experience.
I'm not sure what they did with Animal House, but it does sound better than ever in DTS:X, & the newish Cinderella with Camila Cabello sounds fantastic in Atmos, but in a general way I don't hear them taking advantage of it with the Music.

Toto kept it quite simple with the soundtrack of Lynch's Dune, on that main theme I think there are only 4 chords, but it's just powerful.
There is a mini-documentary about their process on the bonus disc of the UHD limited edition set.
 
Something interesting that I wanted to share regarding music in content.

Over the last year or so, I have repeatedly noticed that (particularly on Netflix streaming series) a lot of the music is coming from the surround speakers. I started to attribute this to Netflix falsely boosting surround channels and, in some cases, this was what was happening. However, in many cases and particularly more recent series I've observed that sound affects and speech etc in the surround channels are not at an elevated volume.

In other words, it has taken me until a couple of months ago to realise that what is happening is that music is being deliberately biased or sometimes now placed entirely into the surrounds! This is the Netflix content. So, for example, going to stream a normal film on Netflix (e.g. Saturday we watched The 5th Wave) it doesn't do it.

Question 1, do I like this? I'm still not sure. I've watched so many series that I'm starting to get used to it. But, in my opinion, what it is doing for many of us is making the quality of our surround speakers more important.

What pushed me to share these comments with the few people that may read it is that we started (actually not Netflix) The Rookie Series 1 on Sky last week. We're up to about Episode 11. Virtually all of the music is in the surround speakers! And obviously on purpose too. The action-type music when something is going on is more fronts (as normal). But, when some real music plays, it is surrounds.

Has anyone else noticed this? I'd strongly suggest you try a couple of episodes of The Rookie if you can as it is quite an interesting experience.
 
Just to update on this, I believe it is definitely becoming more fashionable.

The most recent series of Outer Banks and The Equalizer are more examples. And these show where older series changed the mix of sound to rear for newer series.
 

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