Apple TV @lemmy.world garretble @lemmy.world 1y ago

Foundation Opening Credits

This might be kind of a weird post, but I want to see if anyone experiences the same thing as I do.

First of all, I think the Foundation opening credits are awesome. Maybe some of my favorites ever, really. Really visually stunning and the score is excellent.

But it’s the mix of the score that I want to talk about. Does anyone else feel like the opening music is…”flat?” At no point in this epic audio does my sub kick in to fill out the brass or percussion. When the final logo slams onto the screen, there is technically a big hit in the score, but, just, nothing from the low end of the spectrum. I feel like I should feel that hit in my bones, and there’s nothing.

The show itself sounds great. Full sound stage; the ships rumble my room and explosions or gunfire are punchy.

But, yeah, just curious if anyone else has ever thought about this. It just makes me sad because the credits are SO COOL only to feel like the music is kept in this narrow band of sound.

5 comments

I agree although I think the chord progression (?) isn't the most exciting. Anyway I tried to make a kind of unscientific experiment by measuring the score and some reference scores. The final result doesn't tell the full story (peak values only) and I would say it overall is pretty flat (what I think you are referring to).
- Oh that’s pretty interesting. On that graph it does seem to be a little flatter than those others.
  
  It’s just odd to me that it seems like there are no LFE. As if they just bracketed out the lower frequencies and nothing hits my sub.
  
  I agree with your observation. I have small bookshelf speakers so the LFE channel is having to do some work but my impression is that there is not much under say 40hz. Wish there was a better way to illustrate it.
I really love the opening score. In fact, Foundation is the one show I usually watch with my AirPods Pro in just so I can enjoy it more thoroughly.

Did you try with headphones? It might be a good way to test if the “flat sound” your experiencing is from the stream or perhaps the audio setup. My hearing is not really good enough to pick up on stuff like this. I’m also streaming through an Apple TV 4K, but I don’t know if that should make a difference.