I've seen too many cases of timid front heavy mixes. They are what they are. Turn up the rears and now it's that same mix but with the rears awkwardly up - it sounds wrong in that way is what I mean. First listen to the lossless rip and it really sounded like one of those. Some decent fidelity in general I suppose as far as that goes.
Yeah, that's enough.
Holy hell they really butchered this release! You don't accidentally hit music with 6db of limiting. But what you DO accidentally do is inadvertently miss applying your hatchet job to the lossy dd copy and it escapes unmolested! If there's a bit of a veil over the dd copy it pales next to the damage in the lossless copy. It looks like the L R C & Lfe channels were limited and boosted 6db. Enough to make noticeable distortion. (Anything past 4db IMHO) Probable done as 2 stereo pairs because the Lfe is riding along with that boost. So we're left with the rears 6db low and distortion. The presence and depth are just gone no matter what you do trying to message the levels. The dd copy is a cleaner copy of the 5.1 master here. For whatever decoding or other reason the dd copy is overall 1db lower than the corrected (rear channels as is) lossless copy. A/B it with all that normalized and you find a really nice and properly balanced discrete surround mix in the dd copy vs that mix run through a meat grinder in the lossless copy.
This is embarrassing from a couple different angles.
The lossless 7.1 program is about 1.5db less boosted than the 5.1 but messed up in the same way overall. The L/R rears are also boosted here but not as much as the 1st 4 channels. The sides (5/6) appear not boosted.
The lossless stereo mix is full on volume war hash.
Ripping the bluray disc with MakeMKV, I am not able to see the Atmos copy. 2.0, 5.1, & 7.1 I don't think ffmpeg would have the codec even if I could rip it though. This may still be restricted to secret codecs in select hardware decoders at present.
Getting well done 5.1 mixes like this even in dolby dd is still hits high marks! You don't hear this every day and it deserves celebration. Jaw dropping for all the above though. I wonder what shape the Atmos mix is in?
Edit: OK, there isn't supposed to be an intentional 7.1 mix. This is the Dolby TrueHD core of the Atmos mix and it's the only part MakeMKV can see per the design of the system and MakeMKV not being updated with the Atmos codec. (Possibly with the height and object mix elements folded in. They're supposed to be in this scenario but not everything is up to speed with all this yet.) As mentioned, this 7.1 mix is clearly destroyed just like the dts 5.1 and lpcm stereo. Atmos listeners are screwed with this release.
