[KingTor]

All good questions, and I'm starting to rethink the whole thing. I started mixing without filtering the sub through a combination of laziness and system limitations (mixing a full feature in the box--one Pro Tools HD Accel 2 rig), and would filter it while mastering. In the process I developed a taste for the effect at times (not always by any means). I would never do it or recommend it on an ac3 master (BluRay / DVD) because ac3"s Lfe track isn't truly discrete and it was against Discovery's spec which was where most of my 5.1 broadcast mixes were going. You're right about Dolby Digital and I've never mastered my own film-based master anyway, so I've always left it to the mastering facility to take good care of my mix. I was under the (apparently mistaken?) impression that the DCP spec did not put a limit on the Lfe track (I'll re-read it).

It's possible I was mistaken about Thor, but sitting in that theater reminded me of the effect I got on our mix stage by saturating all 6 channels with a wide array of frequencies. I wasn't a huge fan of that mix, and least not in the theater we watched it in (too harsh on the ears), so I don't want to imply I was imitating them so much as reminded of things I had done.

I'm rethinking all of this now, and will be rereading the DCP spec and asking questions of QC houses before mastering. I guess the moral I still stand by is you can use the Lfe more aggressively in theaters than you may want to in a mixdown but that you don't necessarily have to mute the Lfe track in Downmixer to accomplish that.

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