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Vinyl sounding better than movies

Minio

Minio

Kind of Sort of Not really...
I'm talking 1970s here.
Some movies just have awful sound from start to finish.
For example - Games that Lovers Play starring Joanna Lumley (1974) on Talking Pictures Channel. The sound is vague and distant, unlike modern reality TV for example.
And not like my LPs from that time.

How is that?
 
I think it's deliberate in many cases in order to impart a 'dark and mysterious' air to the film.
It's a real pain to someone like me with impaired hearing - if I turn up the sound to hear the dialogue properly the sound effects totally drown it.
American films seem to be the worst.
Horror TV channel has the worst sound of all - Watching Star Trek the sound is not only bad, but the sound level goes up and down apparently randomly.
HD TV channels have better sound than SD, as you might expect (even if you don't use surround sound).
 
Not just movies. TV programmes like Special Branch from the early 70s have poor sound.
Considering these are studio productions if you compare to modern reality TV, which must be much more challenging to sound engineers having to record on spec au naturelle as it were, then I don't see how it was such a struggle.
Unless it's to do with the storage of analogue material.
Funny that, because my Steely Dan LP I bought in 1972 still sounds fresh as new.
Even though I've played it to death.
 
Perhaps the original analogue material has suffered or deteriorated in storage or perhaps the conversion to digital has been poorly executed?
About 10 years ago I worked on a job for the BFI, building a large storage facility for film, the compartments in which the film is kept were to be vacuum sealed at a sub zero temperature, they had large blast doors in case the nitrate film exploded. The films had been stored on site for some time in large subterranean compartments originally designed for the storage of nuclear weapons, it was an ex MOD site with no postcode.
Obviously the building was designed to preserve the old films, perhaps such care has not always been taken in the past.
 
Darren L said:
to preserve the old films, perhaps such care has not always been taken in the past.
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Quite possibly that.
Some films dating back to the thirties are much better, both in sound and picture, perhaps due to more careful storage and time consuming restoration.
And it's easy to forget that today's sound engineers are able to use wireless close miking and more advanced digital technology.
 
A lot of UK film making was very low-budget, any stuff made for TV especially so given typical sets had nothing more than a mono 6” elliptical speaker. Add to that huge anounts of stuff being lost along the way and the only surviving print being a multi-generation copy. The visual quality is often very poor too. TV and cinema quality has improved exponentially over the past 50 years, when two channel audio hasn’t really, it was already more than fit for purpose at the higher price end of the market (classic Neumann mics, valve mixers, 15IPS tape, valve amps, monitor speakers such as Quad, Tannoy Altec etc).
 
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All of the above, and on many other things but what springs to mind are the following:
  • Quality of the print the telecine was done from. If it was from a multi generation release print then you're likely listening to the optical soundtrack that's been through a few copies and some of the dynamic range and frequency extremes may have been lost. How badly was the film scratched? What colour are they? A lot of white scratches indicate it's a nasty release print.
  • Bad storage and losses of the original magnetic soundtrack if that was used in the transfer.
  • No-one bothering to use Dolby-A noise reduction, or worse still, applying it to a print that didn't use it in the first place. I've seen this on old betacam transfers when someone's had the switch in the wrong position. It can sound muffled and just 'wrong'.
  • Bad mastering. Seen this as well. Someone hasn't normalised audio for transmission or messed up surround or stereo information. Very naughty - see also:
  • Playout problems on air. The settings for playing that programme on air got muddled and the wrong audio information is sent out. It happens on the cheap channels a lot because you get what you pay for.
  • The soundtrack was a stereo pair but somehow got out of phase (see mastering, and optical soundtrack above) then when played out on air in a mono mix you get horrendous phasing problems and lack of coherent speech. Yep, seen this one too, though it was a one-off.
I may think of others but this is based on a few years of technical support, film production knowledge, TV post production, and broadcast QC. I often get to see the Ofcom complaints and programmes that these issues produced.
 
MJS said:
No-one bothering...
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Interesting first hand knowledge there mjs and Tony.
The archive material that suffers now is mostly of niche historical interest and obviously not considered as prime time. What you see er.. get is what you see (hear) I suppose!?
 
Minio said:
Interesting first hand knowledge there mjs and Tony.
The archive material that suffers now is mostly of niche historical interest and obviously not considered as prime time. What you see er.. get is what you see (hear) I suppose!?
Click to expand...
But we should also remember that improvements are possible, sometimes in astounding ways - recreating a colour Dr Who episode from a monochrome recording for instance?
http://www.impossiblethings.net/restorationteam/aboutus.htm
Perhaps there is more in older recordings than we realise.. something to hope for!
 
Yes, archiving and restoration done properly is very rewarding and very, very time consuming and expensive. Mind you, Blackmagic design will now sell you a real-time 4k film scanner for probably one twentieth of the cost it would have been 20 years ago. Getting an old film onto one of a hundred standard-definition TV channels requires the absolute minimum amount of effort possible.
One more I forgot, this has nothing to do with the soundtrack but I've seen (and would have rejected) films that had been pulled up from 24 frames per second to NTSC (30-ish) then standards converted back to PAL at 25 fps. They are truly awful.
 
Yes. It is quite bazaar watching a Joanna Lumley movie in historic condition. The lovely lady is still alive and kicking and absolutely fabulous.
Then there are many much older films, where the stars are no longer with us, but the films look and sound in much better nick.
 
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