Haas Effect or screwy encode?

[Starcrash]

I was at a screening last night for a film that I worked on. It's a low-budget poiltical drama that was mixed in a small to medium-sized stage and was printmastered with a Dolby license for 5.1 surround. It was edited and mixed quick and dirty but sounds pretty decent considering the circumstances.

So there we are at the screening at Industrial Light & Magic's new theater in the Presidio. Beautiful room, by the way. Here's where my political drama turns into a horror show. Me and my crew are sitting in the center about eight aisles from the front. The film starts... From my seat, the FX stem seems to be coming out of the left speaker only. Music and dialog are fine. Afterward, I ask my fellow sound geeks and their response is very surprising. Frank, who was one seat to my right heard perfect balance. David, who was one row back, had the same experience as me (FX heavy to the left). Miik, who was one row ahead and two seats to my right, heard all of the FX coming out of the RIGHT speaker only!! Very bizarre. I'm assuming that the theater is acoustically correct, so I'm guessing that it might be something on our end. I spoke with the director/editor and it turns out that he didn't use the Dolby printmaster but instead took the stems and encoded them himself using Compressor (HUH ). Unfortunately, what happens after we deliver the printmaster is beyond my control so I don't really have any explanation. David mentioned the Haas Effect and I was able to find a little bit of information on the web, but I was wondering if you folks have had any experience with this phenomenon. Or, could it perhaps have been a phase issue during the director's suspicious encode instead?

[Craig F]

stupid, ignorant director

is the Dolby logo used in the credits? if so I believe they will want to talk to him

[D_Whiz]

Once you have created the Dolby or DTS Printmaster from you 5.1 or 6.1 final there cannot be a change or deviation from the way you heard the Final Mix unless ofcourse the Dolby or DTS mastering engineer makes a change.

I headed the DTS mastering division out here in Bombay for 8 years and there is no other way the mix can change.

And no HAAS effect cannot come into and not in a superb preview theatre like the Presidio unless ofcourse their entire alignment is way out, in which case the observation of all your fellow mates should have be close if not similar.

[bigbadhenchman]

Stupid director?
No, my guess is that the facility who did the layback don't know what they're doing, and used an improper track assignment for layback, because they probably didn't know how to deal with the encoded file.
I woudl reserach that, and if that's the case, guess who's paying for a new transfer.

[Starcrash]

As I wrote in my original post, the director didn't use the Dolby magneto-optical for the screening, but rather created his own using software bundled with Final Cut Pro. His reasoning was that he didn't know how to combine the three reels for playback with the digital HD. I was months out of the loop and working on another show by this point. Honestly though, I'll admit that I am a little bit ignorant about the process between printmaster and screening so I wouldn't have been much help to him anyway. I'm never usually involved at that point and I especially don't know a whole lot about HD formats. Maybe someone here could give me some advice that I could pass on to the director. I'm not working for him anymore, of course, but my name and Dolby's logo is on the credits. And, he's a nice enough guy.

[David Sandwisch]

Hi Pascal!

Here is a link to the article that I read by Randy Thom in which he mentions the "Haas Effect." He was referring to how music sounds in a 5.1 mix but the same principles could be applied to sfx according to his article. http://www.filmsound.org/randythom/finalmix.htm

I just re-read the article and everything he says makes perfect sense to me and appears to be a possible explaination for our experience. The question I have is, were some of the body hits actually sent to the center speaker or just the left and right equally?

Also did the director try to encode the audio to 2 channels for layback onto the HD master or did they lock up a multi-track playback device with the video deck for our screening?

[bigbadhenchman]

I huess if you were sending mono SFX bussed to L/R thus using a phantom center this could happen.
Are you sure you bussed the mono FX to the Center channel, and not just equally L/R?

[Starcrash]

I wasn't the mixer, I was the supervising sound editor so I can't say with certainty how things were bussed. I know that the body impacts to which David is referrring were covered in FX rather than from foley. The mono FX did sound like they were coming out of the left channel at the screening so it must be that they were bussed L/R equally which would also explain why they sounded detached from the PFX. In restrospect, I reckon that they should have been mixed as foley and output to an LCR premix rather than mono (L/R equal w/ phantom center). But hey, I'm no mixer. Nevertheless, the BG's were coming out left only which is very weird. Of course, everything sounded good on the stage. I still think that something is goofy with the encode and that there is some phasing issue. Thanks David for the link.

[David Sandwisch]

I thought that the things that were Foley did sound like they came from the center. Other SFX like the doors sounded fine from a spatial standpoint. If it was an encoding problem caused by the director trying to re-encode a 2 channel mixdown of all 6 original channels, then I would expect more audio to sound funny. The director would have affected everything equally. I understand what you are saying about the backgrounds. I thought they were left heavy but I could hear the right side as well and got somewhat a stereo effect.

So if some things sounded correct and some sounded wrong, I would think that would be more of a mix issue. If every thing sounded funny then I would think the director did something after the printmaster.

Try playing the DVD on your home system and turn off all the speakers except the center channel and see what SFX are in it. I am guessing the director made the DVD so it might have the same problem but it might give some more clues to the puzzle.

[RenderBot]

*Frank in the Center here*

I was surprised to hear from the director before the screening that we were unfortunately not going get a chance to listen to the actual Dolby encoded version of the film and I'm guessing that if there was indeed something wrong, it had to have been due to the directors decision to re-encode the final himself. I'd like to know from him exactly what he did in A Pack (which is what I assumed he used). I'd also like to know what stems he used. Dolby's encode is only on the printmaster I'm assuming? If so, what did he build his final with?

As Pascal pointed out, our involvement ceased before Dolby ever got involved, so all my ideas are mere assumptions as to what really happened. I'd love to find out exactly what was done with create the final version that was screened that night as it would be a good thing to know what not to do.

Though I don't believe this has anything to do with what was I was in the very dead center of that room. I can confirm this because my girlfriend and I were sitting at an inward angle and there was a gap between our two chairs rather than sharing the same arm rest. Could the room have been that perfect? I doubt it. Even if it were the most advanced LEDE room, the sweet spots would have been larger than that.