Bosso:

From your description of LOTR on your system, I can only imagine that you have your LFE cranked far beyond what was intended. I played this film in my room several weeks ago (in DTS) and while the bass was up front and constant, it was not out of the oridinary or "extreme" by any means. I know the calibration of my room since I have to transfer projects from here to dubbing stages with no surprises in levels, bass or otherwise. I normally play back films with a 6db boost on the subs over what the film was mixed at - I like bass as much as the next guy. When I mix, I return them to flat.

If you were to visit an actual dubbing stage where films like this are mixed and listen to the frequency balances, I am quite sure you would shocked at how "mild" the LFE bass really is in the mix of the same films you listen to at home. The engineers will never sacrifice the intelligibility of the dialog in order to get more "boom" from the soundtrack. There is only 20db of headroom above the nominal 85db level of dialogue to work with before the master recorders reach clipping. Loading them down with too much low bass leaves no room for more important things like the music, dialogue and the other sound effects. The purpose of the LFE track is to reproduce this bass so that the main speakers don't have to deal with this power and headroom-robbing signal.

If your clipping lights are flashing constantly, I really think you have the LFE track boosted too high. You might like it like this, and I can understand that, but you also are probably not hearing the film's bass as it was intended.


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited April 06, 2003).]