Just finished watching this movie and it is definitely reference quality. The DTS-HD master audio soundtrack has very good overall clarity, dialogue was intelligible and non-sibilant. The surround presentation was pretty good. I do like the refined nature of Kung Fu Pandas surround presentation better (sound effects, spatial cues). What sticks out the most for this Blu-ray disk is the extreme dynamic range and can u say bass? The bass reproduction and extension is intense all throughout the movie.

A worthy addition to any Blu-ray collection.

Yeah - it's sitting at home right now waiting to be watched. How was the flick, though? Any good?

I enjoyed it. On par with the first one. Sam Rockwell I thought did an excellent job with his character Justin Hammer. His performance stood out in my mind.

I liked it as well. The eD sub got a good work out, loud and low.

Sweet, just added it to my netflix cue. Iron Man 1 on bluray sounded excellent so I'm looking forward to this one for sure.

It's the next on my netflix list too. The first one shook my house, hope this one will as well.

Well I'm certainly glad to hear that it's not only a well mixed disc with plenty of boom but also a decent movie ... icing on the cake!

I watched it the other night, while i enjoyed Iron Man more both movies excelled in the audio department. I almost wanted to hook up my old onkyo sub from a HTIB to see if it would get destroyed.

It probably doesn't have enough power to be destroyed, just enough to be humiliated.

"Is your sub turned on ? The other sub made all kinds of rumbling at this point..."
"Sure, if you listen carefully you can hear it rattling"

This movie will make a lot of subwoofers to flap, rattle or fart.

Here are some waterfalls I came across at the AVS forum.

http://72.9.159.100/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=19264012&postcount=42

I bet those sound pretty.

Wow! I watched Iron Man 2 last night. Move over War of The Worlds there's a new bass boss in town. The skydive at the opening, Rhodie's fly-by/landing at the air base, Whiplash whipping it up on the race track....

Yeah, this is why I have a sub people confuse for a water heater.

I'm having a friend over to watch this for movie night tomorrow. He has a "Home Theater" too. Bose. Need I say more?

Yes.

Post more after he visits, to let us know his impressions!

So Ironman 2 is a good reference for listening to movies..good to know ..thx

I don't know... I found IM2 to be over done in the Bass department. Definelty good at showing what your sub can do, but I felt it was over done.

SPOILER ALERT
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The scene where Whiplash is menacing Tony on the race track was ridiculous and when Iron Man flies into the Stark Expo just before the drone fight the bass was way overdone. You can feel Iron Man's rockets before you see him.

Of course I've never heard electric whips on asphalt or been a mile from 2 jets capable of putting an armoured suit into supersonic speeds... so maybe I'm off here. It just didn't mesh with my sense of reality.
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It was as if Bose made a movie... Lets add extra bass *here* so people *think* its impressive.



snazzed

I've got electric whiplash from my electric wheel chair, and it hurts.

Oh without a doubt. Totally over the top. Still fun however.

Yeah, the bass is mixed a bit hot on some scenes. "Totally over the top" is a good way to describe it. I like it, a lot.

I just purchased the "Thin Red Line" criterion release. The best Blu disc on the market for both picture and sound. Amazing.

Gonna add this to netflix queue also, cant wait to hear the sound. Didn't know Sam Rockwell was in this. Anyone seen Moon? I love that movie, it came out of nowhere to be one of my favorite all time moves. Perfect blu ray and amazing score by Clint Mansell

Sam's pretty good in this. He had different ideas about his character (that he should have a horrible, fake tan), that Marvel disagreed with. So his orange hands disappear after the first time we see him.

Of course, nothing tops his performance in Safe Men.

I watched this movie again yesterday and looked out for the orange hands. There is one scene where Justin Hammer is eating ice cream and the inside of his hands/palms look discoloured. That scene in particular is one of my favorites between Mickey and Sam, and even then if you didn't point that out I wouldn't have noticed. That must have been one of the first scenes that was shot because I didn't notice it during the senate hearing.

This weekend, I was by myself for I couple of hours so I decided to watch the first Ironman at loud volume. Something is bothering me. During the scene where Ironman is about to go to Afghanistan to rescue the villagers and he enters sonic speed, one of the woofers on the M80s made a strange noise (I don't have a sub). It sounded like if there was a hole on the driver, or maybe similar to what I would imagine being port noise on a sub even though I never heard what a port noise sounds like. I repeated this scene a couple of times getting the same effect. If I lower the volume, I don't hear it no more. The only other time that I experienced that was when I watched Percy Jackson and the Olympians during the first scene where Poseidon gets out of the water and steps on the ground (again, at loud volume). Worried that one of my woofers would be damaged, I played some music with heavy bass loud but everything sounds fine. Do you think one of my woofers could be damaged? Could this be that my receiver only has 100 wpc and at this particular moment it requires more? Could it also be that these scenes have very low frequencies and the M80s are trying to play them but can't? Both times, it seemed to come from my bottom right woofer. Any ideas?

I haven't watched Iron Man 1 in a while. It has some strong LFE in some scenes well below 25hz IIRC. At very loud volumes with the M80's set to large the LFE might be too much for the M80's at the volumes you are listening to. Without a more specific description, those noises could be also caused by the amplifier clipping during those dynamic peaks in the movie. The LFE content in Iron Man 1 can be taxing even with subwoofers, possibly causing "flapping", "rattling" and "farting" sounds. There is plenty of dynamic range in the Blu-ray soundtrack which might require power reserves in specific h/t applications and listening requirements.

Thanks Dr, could this damage the woofers?

Yes it could.

It might also be in the soundtrack itself...

Sounds like a similar problem I was having with the EP175. It went away when I upgraded to the EP350.

How would you describe those noises you were getting from the EP175 CatBrat?

I think I was overdriving the speaker. The noise is hard to describe now by memory, but it was a distorted mess of a sound is all I can remember. Sort of a farting noise, I guess.

Edit: In your case, it sounds like it's isolated to one driver. I would try and isolate which one it is and try to get a replacement for it.

That is some excellent troubleshooting advice CatBrat. If the OP can isolate it to a specific driver(s) they very well could have been damaged during those scenes. With the system turned off, you can do a quick check by gently and carefully pressing the cone in and if you feel any resistance and/or hear "scraping" like sounds, that driver would need to be replaced.

Iron man 1 was a great workout for my ep500 so I assume it would put an m80 to the test

I would try to isolate the noise down to exactly which driver in the M80, if it is only one driver and not all of them. If it is all of them, it could be you are hearing distortion due to underpowering the speakers. That scene in Iron Man is very demanding and at loud volume levels an avr could easily be driven to distortion.

I once played Dark Night without my sub (M80's full range) and even my A1400 was experiencing difficulties. LFE channels without subs are getting increasingly problematic.

I’m not sure how it could happen but I was getting distortion from the 5.25” driver on one of my M2s at higher volumes on certain material. By troubleshooting I was able to narrow it down to the crossover. Axiom sent me a new crossover and problem solved.

Thanks. I will try pushing in the drivers tonight to see if I hear something. However, if the driver would be defective, wouldn't I hear this more often in music or movies rather than just these 2 specific scenes?

Not necessarily. I had a loose dust cap on an M22 driver that only rattled on specific notes on one song. The bad crossover I mentioned above only happened at reference level SPLs during specific music being played in Mass Effect. In both cased replacing the defective part solved the problem.

Ok, so I tried pushing in the drivers and didn't notice nothing unusual. This weekend I will try to listen to this scene again putting my ear to each of the woofers to see if I can determine which one it comes from. Is it correct to say that if it comes from all drivers, it is my AVR that is not powerful enough, if it come from only one driver, there is a problem with one of the components? Is there something else I can try?
Dean, how did you determine it was the crossover and not the driver?

First I swapped the speakers between the L/H and R/H channels to rule out the receiver and the problem stayed with the speaker. Then I swapped both the tweeter and midrange drivers (couldn’t be sure where exactly the sound was coming from) between the speakers and the problem stayed with the cabinet and didn’t follow the drivers. I checked for anything loose in/on the cabinet and found nothing so I emailed Axiom with the results of my troubleshooting.

Got a quick reply the it was probably a bad crossover and they would ship me a new one. Since I installed the new crossover there have been no problems.

What is the starting and ending time on the scene?

Once I had a problem with my m80's where a wicked vibration would occur at certain frequencies. I swapped speakers and it stayed with the speaker (not the L/R channel) so I thought the problem was the speaker. However, after swapping grills I noticed the problem followed the grill. After closer examination the grill appear to have some wear on one of the grill posts that was not "snapping" in and leading to vibration of the grill against the m80.

Axiom sent me a new grill and I haven't had any problems since.

Dean, very good approach, I will try the same.
Dr, I will let you know tonight the exact time of the scene.
Thanks guys.

I was just going through my BD copy of Iron Man and I think I know which scene you are talking about now. It occurs at approx 1:16. There is defintely some demanding low frequency content present in that scene and the one right after with the explosion. If you can isolate the noise to just the bottom two drivers which handle the bass reproduction on the M80's, the drivers are probably having a hard time reproducing those scenes without distortion.

If you can isolate the sounds to the entire speaker, the amp clipping the signal is more likely. I suspect it is the former and not the latter.

When you say bottom 2 drivers, you mean the 2 woofers on one speaker or the bottom woofer on both the L and R speakers?
I will need to recheck but it seamed the noise was only coming from the right channel. If it's a problem of the M80s not being able to reproduce these frequencies, shouldn't it come from both speakers? I guess a good way to find out is to swap the L&R channels.

I was referring to the bottom 2 6.5" woofers on the suspect right channel. Since you are not using a sub and are running the M80's full range I am not familiar with how low frequency content is mixed into the mains in these situations.

That particular scene at 1:16 Iron Man pans from the left to right in the sky. Swapping the L and R channels is a good idea.

The LFE channel should never be mixed into the mains when a receiver is set to no subwoofer. That's a decree from Dolby, and from what I understand it is followed by everyone.

That doesn't mean that the main channels can't have their own < 100 Hz content that will still get played. The LFE channel is designed to contain effects, like textured rumbles. While the main channels contain content sensitive information, like the sound of an explosion.

Because of this recommendation bass notes of music, no matter how low, should never be mixed on the LFE channel, because with no sub, the notes would not be heard.

OK, so I had a chance to troubleshoot my problem. I worked only with only channel on the receiver. First I connected the speaker that seemed to have the problem, and the rattling noise was there. Then I connected the other speaker, the woofers were having a hard time reproducing this scene but no rattling. It was hard to hear which woofer was creating this noise but it seemed to be the bottom one so I swapped the bottom woofer from the right to the left and the noise followed the woofer so I contacted Axiom and they're gonna send a replacement.

Now, I would love to leave my M80 set as full range but would it be safer to set them as small with a crossover set at 40Hz so they're not trying to play frequencies that they can't play properly?

The other concern that I have is that I've had these drivers for a few months and only happen to notice this problem by luck (right scene at the right volume) so it makes me wonder if I don't have other problems that I am not aware about. Is there something that I can do to test if all the drivers are working properly including woofers, mids and tweeters? Something that would have shown me this problem on day one? Thanks.

You can try some frequency sweep test tones (Google for that). They should sound smooth and not evoke odd sounds from the speakers themselves (I get odd sounds from different things in my apartment on the low frequency sweeps).

Since you heard the "healthy" speaker being noticeably stressed during those heavy bass scenes and the only problems with the suspect speaker was with those particular scenes, you easily could have blown or had a defective woofer that shows up during that content. You also noted the noise followed with a particular driver. For now, it is probably best to wait for the replacement driver, swap it in and see if it fixes your issue. If it doesn't then looking at the crossover and other variables would be a good idea. I know it will take some patience but try to eliminate one variable at a time.

Good luck.

Thanks. I know It's the driver because when I swapped them between left and right, the problem followed the driver.

Here's a CD of test tones that I have, in case you don't have nor want your computer connected to your AVR.

It's called Rives Audio Test CD 2. Link

Thanks

I have watched this around 4 times now and love it more each time. Can't get enough!

I guess i should really consider buying a bluray player at some point.
Still waiting, if ever, for a 5/6 disc carousel universal player though.

Sony has a 400 disc Blu-ray carousel player.

Watched it for the first time last night.... . I like to run my sub a wee bit hot, but after that opening scene I quickly decided to watch the rest of the movie flat...wow.