You dropped the money. You bought a 1080p LCD flat-screen big enough to play air hockey on if you laid it down (and had the right paddles). You have the Blu-ray Disc player. And, you have the kind of surround sound system powerful enough to propel Delaware into a geo-synchronous orbit.
Problem with that big audio dynamite, though, is that while you watch the special deluxe edition of the extended version of the directors cut of the Jan Michael Vincent epic Damnation Alley, the booming subsonics from your high-end speakers dislodge the fur off the Alsatian in the apartment downstairs.
Don't get us wrong: Turbo-charged audio is a beautiful thing. And if you've got an isolated home theater, or at least a household whose members don't mind the occasional plaster-cracking movie explosion (assuming no one has coronary health issues), you're golden — as is this age of Blu-ray audio, with new lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (both bit-for-bit identical to the studio master).
The problem is the incredible high dynamic range of the sound on today's DVDs and Blu-rays. On the one hand, high dynamic range offers incredible performance: It allows for the playback of sounds as soft as a rustling leaf to as loud as the thunk of that asteroid that will one day crash upon Kazakhstan (or wherever). But it also presents a dilemma. Turn up the volume loud enough so you can actually hear the dialogue, and you're suddenly blasted by the deafening sound of a gunshot; turn down the sound so as not to piss off the neighbors, and you can't hear a damn thing the characters say.
Sudden explosive sound can be a real bitch for those whose sound systems reside in dwellings sharing walls with other dwellings — apartment buildings, for instance (the editor of this site actually got a noise complaint from a neighbor during a Sunday afternoon screening of the Blu-ray, Ratatouille.). Or for those who do live in their own homes, but watch movies after the kiddies' bedtime. Or even for those who watch a movie in one room and don't want to disturb the rest of the house.
The good news: There are ways to enjoy your home surround system without punishing those around you. Sound & Vision columnist Ken Pohlmann (also a professor, author, and top consultant in the field of digital audio technology) recommends keeping surround sound setups simple.
First, he focuses on what you really must be able to hear when watching a film in your home theater: what the folks in the TV are saying. "Virtually all movie dialogue comes from the center channel," says Pohlmann. "The common complaint is that viewers can't understand dialogue. You can avoid overall too-loud levels by raising the center channel volume only. And, doing this in the receiver is usually easy."
And there's another big sound adjustment you can make: "Bass travels distances and through partitions much more easily than higher frequencies," notes Pohlmann. "The lower the frequency, usually the easier the transmission. Most noise-intrusion complaints deal with bass, and can be solved by turning down the subwoofer often via the preset sound setting included in most surround sound receivers. Also, a subsonic filter that cuts very low bass would be helpful."
Some good news: You may not have to do all that knob-turning yourself every time you pop in the latest Batman movie. Assuming you have a modern A/V receiver, advanced home theater remotes (such as those in the Logitech Harmony series) can be programmed to raise the center-channel volume and lower the subwoofer levels whenver a DVD or Blu-ray player comes online (then, of course, revert them to the original levels at shutdown).
Many THX Certified AVRs also allow you to make channel adjustments without knocking your system out of calibration, incorporating "Temporary Trim" rules for making on-the-fly tweaks to channel levels — meaning you can adjust the surround and subwoofer levels up and down using your remote. Here too, when the system is powered down, it resets to the original settings.
Blu-ray players themselves can help you out: Sony's, for instance, offer Dynamic Range Compression in the audio menu. You can go anywhere from minimal to maximum compression.
Pohlmann, meanwhile, points out that booming movie sound isn't always Quentin Tarantino's fault. "Intelligibility is greatly affected by ambient noise," says Pohlmann. "If you're watching a movie, and the dishwasher is on, and there's a fan blowing, and the kids are playing video games, you'll crank up the movie sound level to compensate. By lowering ambient room noise, you can more easily listen to softer playback levels."
This is a much easier solution than ham-fisted attempts at soundproofing. When it comes to apartment or condo setups, Pohlmann warns, "Treating a room with absorption materials like rugs, drapes, etc., will not significantly acoustically isolate a room. That's not a good solution." Instead, Pohlmann urges consumers to examine the layout of their pad and figure where they're least likely to have direct audio contact with their neighbors.
"Speakers attached to a common wall, or placed hard against them will more easily transmit sound to your neighbor," says Pohlmann. "Detaching or moving speakers away helps. To isolate a room from other rooms, the room ideally should have solid walls and doors and windows with airtight seals. Common air-paths such as AC ducts easily convey air, and hence sound, to other rooms, so distance is your friend. The farther away a source room, such as the home theater, is from a receiving room, like a bedroom, the better. Finally, isolating the subwoofer from the floor helps. Use rubber feet, a carpet or a pad as buffers."
According to Graham McKenna, a senior manager with THX, one challenge in reducing volume levels for neighbor-friendly viewing is that movie soundtracks are mixed specifically for playback in really large movie theaters with perfect acoustics. But THX is compensating for this problem.
"When you play 5.1 or 6.1 movies in your living room, at a more comfortable level, they just don't sound the same. What usually happens is the ambient effects drop below the hearing threshold, causing the sound image to collapse forward to the front and center of the room. To correct this, THX has created its Loudness Plus technology to help improve low-level listening. It automatically adjusts the front-to-back speaker level, frequency balance, and subwoofer intensity as the volume is lowered. This lets you experience the details of a movie and game soundtrack without driving your neighbors or wife crazy." (THX Loudness Plus is currently available on the new THX flagship Yamaha RX-Z11 AVR and the Pioneer SC-09TX AVR, and will, later this year, be incorporated into all THX Certified Onkyo AVRs and Pioneer AVRs.)
Regardless of your individual domicile setup, one common sound-reduction feature familiar to many an A/V receiver is Dynamic Range Control (commonly known as "Night Listening Mode"). "With DRC, the dynamic range is reduced about 20 or 30 dB, so loud stuff is not as loud relative to soft stuff," Pohlmann notes. "These DRC modes typically shrink the dynamic range so everything evens out," adds McKenna. "What these features essentially do is raise the lower volume elements and lower the high volume elements to more closely match the level of the dialogue. The upside is you probably won't irritate your neighbors so much. The downside is that some parts of the soundtrack and dialogue may seem muffled or unnatural."
Dolby recently got ahead of this fluctuating, booming sound problem with its newest technology, Dolby Volume. By Dolby's own description, the algorithm constantly monitors all channel and levels of audio for Blu-Ray, standard DVD, music, video games, etc. While systems using night-listening techniques rely generally on audio compression, Dolby Volume controls the different EQ levels and adjusts them on the fly according to audio content.
Alan Seefeldt, the senior engineer who developed Dolby Volume, says Dolby considers the system to be "the world's best dynamic range control for all content. Music, movies, television — basically anything — works with the system. It preserves the sound of the audio control at the different levels — dynamically adjusting the different content. So, you can turn your audio system way down and still get the surround sound system effect. An advanced leveling-amount algorithm tells the system how consistent it wants to make the loudness. And, a cognitive engine is always looking to pick out the elements a human ear would find appropriate"
Seefeldt is confident that Dolby Volume does a better job than night-mode listening —and will replace the older technology completely. And, Dolby's new system will make the movie and TV studios' mixing jobs easier. Pohlmann and Seefeldt confirm that the studios mix their Blu-ray releases to function with optimum audio levels of surround sound formats. Different discs can pack different audio level extremes — forcing apartment or condo dwellers to adjust their volume and EQ levels. Dolby Volume will make those adjustments unnecessary, working with any DVD or Blu-ray.
The first TVs to feature Dolby Volume are now available in Japan — the Toshiba Regza ZH500 and ZV500 series LCD HDTVs. The same models should be available in the U.S. soon with a steady stream of up-to-date new audio equipment.
Until Dolby Volume lands here, there's another way to go: the all-in-one surround speaker. Sony, for one, offers the HT-CT100 Sound Bar Home Theater System, an entry-level buy at about $300. Its S-Force PRO Front Surround Sound technology generates high resolution surround sound without the need for rear speakers. And since it relies on fewer speakers and projects more simulated surround sound via a central channel Sound Bar, it compacts and controls noise. Keep in mind, though, that Sony's hardly the only manufacturer with a worthy soundbar: Check out 7 Soundbars; Simple to Luxe.
Of course, the easiest, no-brainer way to spare your friends, relatives, or neighbors from the roar of jet fighters and proton torpedo blasts is to pump that sound directly into your ears. For surround sound systems, Sony offers the S-Air wireless audio transmission system, which includes a headphone connection — enabling the viewer to keep his phones near the couch or bed for convenient listening. "S-Air lets you plug in the headphones, shut down the speakers, and listen while our system simulates surround sound in your headphones," explains Levine. The S-Air technology is included in Sony's various Bravia Theatre Systems.
And if you don't mind the wired life, you can go with a different system: Any brand of headphone connected to a source with Dolby Headphone Technology. The beauty here is that you'll get a 5.1 surround-sound simulation through those two cans on your ears.
So, whether you choose to rearrange your sound system to spare the sanity of your more sensitive neighbors, or if you take the truly altruistic course and turn to the self-contained universe of headphones, the audio experts, designers, and manufacturers are way ahead of your, "Turn that down, for #&$%'s sake!" needs.