What DVD do you use as a reference when testing your system?

Knucklehead

Title says it all, I usually use Star Wars - attack of the Clones.

comfortablycurt

Lately I've been using a few different movies. Iron Man, The Dark Knight and the Incredible Hulk have been my recent reference points whenever I upgrade/tweak my surround setup.

The Star War's movies are all great too.

wingnut4772

Ironman, Hulk, Incredibles, Fast and Furous 2, Kung Fu Panda.....

Sherardp

wingnut4772 wrote: »

Ironman, Hulk, Incredibles, Fast and Furous 2, Kung Fu Panda.....

About the same as Wing mentioned to include, Pod Race scene from Star Wars, Master in Commander the BD soundtrack is intense, and War of the Worlds.

Knucklehead

Keiko wrote: »

These should keep you busy.

http://www.spannerworks.net/reference/10_6a.asp

EDIT: U-571...The depth charge scene in this movie will rock the foundation of your home.

Thanks for the link, i was looking for something like that!

TNRabbit

Without doubt, the best soundtrack I've ever heard was from a film called "House of Flying Daggers"....the scene where the blind woman is surround by drums & the guy is throwing beans (maybe small stones, I don't recall) at them is astounding!

Pan's Labyrinth is good, too.

cnh

What about Transformers....guys--at least for LFEs, action, etc. It thumps.

I also use Ironman

cnh

BlueFox

All good selections. I like Terminator 3. There are a few areas in the movie that shine for audio.

For example, when John Conner drops the beer bottle into the stream, and it bounces off the underwater rock the sound should be a clear, precise, beer bottle bounce. When the Terminatrix arrives, steps barefoot onto the sidewalk, and walks away her footsteps should be clear. Then there is the chase scene with John Conner driving the Tundra and being chased by robot cars and by the Teminatrix. There are lots of great sound effects throughout the chase. Finally, the birds tweeting in the graveyard shootout should be clear and present.

comfortablycurt

BlueFox wrote: »

All good selections. I like Terminator 3. There are a few areas in the movie that shine for audio.

For example, when John Conner drops the beer bottle into the stream, and it bounces off the underwater rock the sound should be a clear, precise, beer bottle bounce. When the Terminatrix arrives, steps barefoot onto the sidewalk, and walks away her footsteps should be clear. Then there is the chase scene with John Conner driving the Tundra and being chased by robot cars and by the Teminatrix. There are lots of great sound effects throughout the chase. Finally, the birds tweeting in the graveyard shootout should be clear and present.

I've had that movie for a few months now and haven't gotten around to watching it yet for some reason. Maybe I'll check it out later on.

BlueFox

comfortablycurt wrote: »

I've had that movie for a few months now and haven't gotten around to watching it yet for some reason. Maybe I'll check it out later on.

For whatever reason, I went through a T3 marathon for a few months. Once I realized that Arnold is a minor player in the movie, and it really is about Claire Danes I watched it from a differant perspective.

comfortablycurt

BlueFox wrote: »

For whatever reason, I went through a T3 marathon for a few months. Once I realized that Arnold is a minor player in the movie, and it really is about Claire Danes I watched it from a differant perspective.

I just got done watching T3! Like I said earlier, I've had this movie for a few months, and never got around to watching it. After finally seeing it, I don't know how I could have went so long without watching it!

This movie was awesome.:eek: The action scenes in it are out of this world...especially the big chase scene with the grapple truck, fire truck and all the squad cars! That scene was fricken amazing!!! The soundtrack in it was badass too, the surround effects were phenomenal, the LFE track was particularly badass with all of the explosions...I loved it. I'll definitely be giving this one a watch again sometime soon.

I think we've got another reference quality soundtrack here for HT testing. I recommend it very highly.:D

mantis

Keiko wrote: »

Try a Superbit DVD. The Fifth Element, Underworld, Spiderman 1 & 2, and Air Force 1 are good choices. Apollo 13, and any Lord of the Rings DVD's are good also. I just snagged a copy of Blade II Special Edition. The DTS on this disc is fantastic. The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over DVD/DTS is excellent. I could give you an extensive list of SD DVD-DTS titles. These are just a few that come to mind and are quite good for showing off & using as a reference for your system.

I use the above disc's as well but I have a few others.

Star Wars EP1 Darth Maul and Obi one Battle.
Matrix - Lobby scene
Gladiator - Maximus vs Un beaten

I could go on and on but these are my favorites.

Dan

george daniel

Pulp Fiction

Knucklehead

My wife bought me The Patriot on Blu Ray, awesome movie, i love movies in that time period, maybe its because I live so close to the Yorktown battlefield and Williamsburg. killer sound.

Getting Better:

Pioneer VSX D411 Reciever
Cerwin Vega VE 5C center channel
PolkAudio R50's- Front
PolkAudio R150's- Rear
PolkAudio PSW10 Sub
Maganavox NB500MG9 Blu-Ray
Siemens 500 gig dvr
Monster HDP1800 power management
Panasonic 42" plasma
Xbox 360 Elite
Wii

Knucklehead

Me too, i guess a new receiver will be the next major purchase for me, still not sure if there are enough HD Audio DVD's out there yet to justify the purchase.

wingnut4772

I popped in U-571 on Blu Ray last night. What a killer sounding Blu Ray - The DVD ain't so bad either.

comfortablycurt

Keiko wrote: »

Music is where it's at for me. I dunno, the cost of blu-rays compared to SD DVD. New releases, if it's something I want can be bought for next to nothing, used a couple weeks later. Compare a 5.00 used disc to a 25.00 - 35.00 blu-ray title. Forget it. A good up-converting DVD player and my current rig works well enough for my HT needs.

x2 Mike. I can't justify spending the money on Blu-ray at this point. Music/audio quality is MUCH more important to me. I'll probably make the jump to Blu-ray in another 2-3 years or so. I'm not in a hurry.

Gaara

For Testing? A few:

War of the Worlds: The lightning scene, pod emergence scene, and the scene where they start shooting. The lightning scene I use to set my shakers, to much gain and it feels unrealistic and draws attention to itself. The pod emergence is my double check, and when they start shooting is the triple check.

Master and Commander: First naval battle, for immersion and for the surrounds. I like
the part where it sounds like guys are walking above you, if the surrounds are not calibrated correctly it sounds "off".

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Trailer, similar to above, bass at the end and panning. The part where the screen goes dark and you only hear footsteps. If setup correctly the sound should seamlessly move, and if you close your eyes you can hear where they go.

Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence: The parade scene especially, and the attack on the house by the ship. The parade especially if the bass is setup correctly the drums really hit you, and the fire at the end sounds real, you can feel the rumble. This is especially good for setting up bass shakers.

Willow

I use a DVD which had clips of lots of THX movies, done in both DD and DTS. The same disk has all the DD intros as well as all the DTS ones.

leroyjr1

The hulk, transformers, king kong, iron man.

lumpy

polar express- the scene where the train first comes down the street. the very low rumble of the train, the rattle of the hubcap on the radiator and the marbles spilling on the floor.

i-robot - the scene in the tunnel with all of the robots attacking the car; the scene at the storage site for the old robots when they are saying "human in danger" all around you; and at the end when they are at the top of th etower in the office and the voice ont he intercom is saying "all ns5's" as the perspective changes from person to person - the intercom voice goes from front to back (the tone and volume should remain the same)

the beggining of Saving private ryan pretty much covers the full audio range

Barefoot

LOTR: The Two Towers/Helms Deep/"Ladders!"/ Horn section.

rdb2001

Blu Rays - The Hulk, Iron Man, Dark Knight, and the scene in Transformers when Iron hide blows the ground and flys over that girl is a must scene for testing.

Curt - just quick question, no slight intended but if you goal is audio quality as well as music, why dont you want loseless audio. Thats the best quality I enjoy about blu ray (besides the of course the pic). Audio is what brings the movie to life, why not want the best audio for the movie. Just curious

comfortablycurt

rdb2001 wrote: »

Blu Rays - The Hulk, Iron Man, Dark Knight, and the scene in Transformers when Iron hide blows the ground and flys over that girl is a must scene for testing.

Curt - just quick question, no slight intended but if you goal is audio quality as well as music, why dont you want loseless audio. Thats the best quality I enjoy about blu ray (besides the of course the pic). Audio is what brings the movie to life, why not want the best audio for the movie. Just curious

I'm just not in a hurry to run out and spend 500 bucks on a Blu-ray player for a negligible(IMO) improvement. I've watched plenty of Blu-rays, and sure, both picture and audio quality are better, but not so much that I'm running out and buying one. I'm not that completely blown away by either 1080p, or the lossless audio formats. Honestly, I didn't find the lossless formats to be that much better than DD or DTS Digital. Sure, they were better...but not so much better that I was completely blown away by them.

I'm going to get a bigger improvement in my sound quality by upgrading my audio equipment than I would by upgrading to Blu-ray. I'm still perfectly happy with the Dolby/DTS Digital, and the picture quality from DVD's. I'll upgrade to Blu-ray in another 2-3 years when I can get a really nice Blu-ray player for a couple hundred bucks, and the blu-ray discs can be had for 10 dollars, and 20-25 at the most for new releases.

Music is really where it's at for me anyway. It's probably about 75/25 between music and movies for me, so being able to listen to my music on better equipment is more important than having lossless audio for movies. Like I said...it's not worth 500 bucks to me at this point. Sure I could get a BR player for less than that, but I'm not going to go out and get the cheapest junkiest Blu-ray player on the market, just for the sake of having a Blu-ray player.

leroyjr1

Curt

blu ray is a big step up from regular dvds and your vhs collection.:p

PSOVLSK

Not specifically answering your question, but this list has cost me a few bucks. I've probably bought 10 movies on the list that I otherwise wouldn't have even considered purchasing. Scroll down about 1/2 the page to get to the list. Since this list was compiled by SVS, it's obviously about good sub demos...not much here specific to surrounds, etc.

http://www.svsound.com/questions-faqs.cfm#moviedemos

The scene referenced from Minority Report is pretty sweet.

Conradicles

TNRabbit wrote: »

Without doubt, the best soundtrack I've ever heard was from a film called "House of Flying Daggers"....the scene where the blind woman is surround by drums & the guy is throwing beans (maybe small stones, I don't recall) at them is astounding!

This get's my vote as well! Killer movie that I just put in my Netflix cue to see how it looks and sounds on Blue Ray.:cool:

ViperZ

Star Wars Episode 1 for video quality, especially the pod race.

Try 'Finding Nemo' if you want to hear the really low notes.

GEBBY44

I second the U-571 and especially Blade II w/DTS. That Blade disc is an incredible dynamic hodgepodge. It's got sword-clanging, techno music, deep Wesley Snipes voice (good for testing tonal accuracy for center), and plenty of gunshots.

cnh

TNRabbit wrote: »

Without doubt, the best soundtrack I've ever heard was from a film called "House of Flying Daggers"....the scene where the blind woman is surround by drums & the guy is throwing beans (maybe small stones, I don't recall) at them is astounding!

Pan's Labyrinth is good, too.

That's interesting, I remember my CC had that part of the film, I think, running on a loop on a Denon AVR989 with an all Polk M-series with M70s and even in the store it sounded phenomenal. I can't imagine what it would be like on a higher end system because it was already so good on that.

cnh

grif32

comfortablycurt wrote: »

I'm just not in a hurry to run out and spend 500 bucks on a Blu-ray player for a negligible(IMO) improvement. I've watched plenty of Blu-rays, and sure, both picture and audio quality are better, but not so much that I'm running out and buying one. I'm not that completely blown away by either 1080p, or the lossless audio formats. Honestly, I didn't find the lossless formats to be that much better than DD or DTS Digital. Sure, they were better...but not so much better that I was completely blown away by them.

I'm going to get a bigger improvement in my sound quality by upgrading my audio equipment than I would by upgrading to Blu-ray. I'm still perfectly happy with the Dolby/DTS Digital, and the picture quality from DVD's. I'll upgrade to Blu-ray in another 2-3 years when I can get a really nice Blu-ray player for a couple hundred bucks, and the blu-ray discs can be had for 10 dollars, and 20-25 at the most for new releases.

Music is really where it's at for me anyway. It's probably about 75/25 between music and movies for me, so being able to listen to my music on better equipment is more important than having lossless audio for movies. Like I said...it's not worth 500 bucks to me at this point. Sure I could get a BR player for less than that, but I'm not going to go out and get the cheapest junkiest Blu-ray player on the market, just for the sake of having a Blu-ray player.

I dont know where you buy your BD's but new Releases can be had for $20 - $25 and others $10.00 amazon and walmart. I remember grabbing, Iron Man, Indian Jones and Kung fu panda all for $19.95 ea at target a week or two after they came out.

I thought the samething about lossless until I heard it for the first time and to me it was a very big jump in audio. I was blown away by it. I also paid $250 for my brand new PS3 60 gig when Sony had a deal going. There are deals out there and some really really nice BD players under $500.00 out there today

Pop in Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2 BD and compare it DVD and to me its a huge difference.

30 Days of night is a great BD disc to show off your system as well.

To me BD is about the Audio so much more then the PQ anymore.