By Dave Pedigo, COO, Trinnov Audio
It’s that time of year again. The holiday season? No! It’s “showing off your (or your client’s) system” season. Your client has spent good (or great) money on their theater, and now it’s time to light it up like Martha Mae Whovier in a Christmas house decorating contest. However, much like the Grinch trying to decide what to wear to the Holiday Whobilation, what clips are best suited to cause the most profound envy pangs from the neighbors?
I reached out to people within and outside of Trinnov to develop excellent audio demos, including music and movies. Each clip was chosen to make a particular aspect of your system sparkle. Please note: this list of clips isn’t intended for calibration, but to make a lasting impression.
Let’s start with music. At high-end tradeshows, you almost never hear music demonstrated on its own; it’s usually heard alongside concert footage. After all, exhibitors have limited time to wow attendees: We’ve got to use visuals to catch your eye. However, it’s a different story when you’ve got a captive audience in a setting outside the bustle of a tradeshow. Then, you can lower the lights and use music alone to excite the audience’s senses. This kind of immersive auditory experience can be incredibly effective.
Music
Staircase – Steven Wilson (The Harmony Codex)
This song is the consensus pick among the participating Trinnov staff. It is a spectacular song, combining synth, deep, punchy kick bass, and excellent vocals: It’s the perfect track to show off the full range of the system.
Rainy Night in Tallinn – Ludwig Göransson (Tenet Original Motion Picture)
It’s hard to explain this track other than to say it is representative of a Christopher Nolan soundtrack. It is a wild sound with great bass, meant to confuse the listener with constant violin notes, yet the sound is somehow beautiful. On well-balanced, accurately calibrated systems, you can hear the track’s clarity through the din and discern the story told within. It’s another track that demonstrates a system’s full capabilities—or limitations.
Queen Mary – Francine Thirteen (Queen Mary)
This track has deep bass (a consistent theme throughout this list). More notably, it has great lateral movement between the left and right speakers and, even more spectacularly, in the surrounds and overheads. Queen Mary is a great track with which to evaluate speaker quality. It is a favorite track for many within the Hi-Fi community, which speaks volumes since they are very hard to please.
Birds – Dominique Fils-Aimé
This is a terrific song for stereo summing (when correctly done). The upright bass and vocals showcase proper stereo calibration. When the system is not calibrated or incorrectly calibrated, the stereo summing falls apart and sounds hideous. Birds is a slow-tempo song, but for music lovers, it’s a great clip that most have yet to hear.
Levitating – Dua Lipa (Future Nostalgia)
This song is a fun, upbeat track with good bass and properly balanced low frequencies. This modern hit will likely strike home with many guests, particularly younger adults and kids. Despite deep, repetitive bass, a nice system makes it easy to listen without ear fatigue. On said excellent system, it’s also easier to understand her singing with an English accent toward the song’s end.
Les Dieux – Trinnov/Benoit Munoz
Our marketing manager, Benoit, produced a trailer with intense bass and low-end extension, with numerous objects moving overhead. This trailer is excellent for those with multiple subs, WaveForming, and/or infrasonic-capable subs. It’s like a punch in the gut while also having great, creepy sounds moving overhead with the many embedded objects. The visuals are stunning too, if you’re incorporating video into your demo. I am not trying to make this a Trinnov-focused article, but Benoit’s terrific trailers can demonstrate the capabilities of any system, and more are on the way. Trinnov trailers are free to download at hub.trinnov.com/trailers.
Dark Side of the Moon 50th Anniversary – Pink Floyd
A colleague of mine almost talked me out of including this album because it’s fixed at 7.1.4 without moving objects. However, according to quick Google searches, Dark Side of the Moon is the fourth best-selling album of all time and is the greatest, in my opinion. So, my article, my list: it stays. Listening to music in Atmos is a wonderful experience because it’s like you are listening to the music for the first time again. So, for DSOTM, it’s more about listening and hearing things you’ve never heard before than showing off the system.
Star Wars: A New Hope – John Williams (Live in Vienna)
John Williams is the undisputed GOAT of movie composers. Some prefer others, such as Basile Poledouris, Howard Shore, Akab Silvestri, Hans Zimmer, Jerry Goldsmith, or Michael Kamen, but they’re wrong. If you wish to demonstrate classical music without putting the neighbor’s kids to sleep, Live in Vienna is a great option. The concert is captured in Atmos, but there are no moving objects; while it gives a great sense of spaciousness, there is no movement. However, there isn’t a huge need for objects for this track; it is perfect as is, at least for this Star Wars nerd.
Movie Clips
A Quiet Place – Red Light Emergency
Funnily enough, this scene is best if the room is quiet. If the room isn’t isolated, watching this clip with outside noises, such as a holiday party, reduces the ability to startle the daylights out of viewers. There is solid immersive audio playing; it is subtle but gives a sense of foreboding to the floor above. It’s an incredible scene with sublime acting (shocking that Emily Blunt did not get nominated for an Oscar). This clip is a great way to show off your system’s dynamic range, particularly with the concussive deep bass of the monster walking upstairs. The ticking of the egg timer is just icing on the cake.
Oppenheimer – I Am Become Death
Speaking of dynamic range, the atomic blast from Oppenheimer is perhaps the greatest clip I have watched with respect to an instantaneous quiet-to-loud transition. While the clip does not have the suspense of A Quiet Place, it enables systems to demonstrate deep, tactile bass. The initial impact should feel concussive for properly designed systems, with multiple shock waves following the initial blast.
The combination of the subs and violins creates incredible dramatic tension. If you are playing at reference level, the music is playing at roughly 85dBc. As the light of the atomic bomb flashes, the SPL level drops about 30 decibels, which is 8 times quieter than the music. Then, after what seems like an incredible amount of time and many low-volume breaths from the actors, the shockwave hits at approximately 115dBc. This variance from the actors’ breathing to the shockwave is 60dB; this means the blast is 64 times louder than the moment before. It’s as close as one can safely get to a nuclear explosion. It’ll blow the listeners away (pun intended).
Gravity – The Mission Hit by Debris
While this movie came out in 2013 (shocking how fast time flies), it is still the gold standard in demonstrating an Atmos mix. There are quite a few very active objects, all of which give an accurate sense of being in the vast openness of space (I assume, as I haven’t been to space yet–but it is on my bucket list). With high-channel-count immersive systems, the clip should create a sense of vast spaciousness and incredible movement, particularly when Sandra Bullock is whipping around connected to the mechanical arm. The clip should give a sense of panic as Sandra Bullock hits 10 G’s and thrashes around like a rag doll in an aggressive dog’s mouth.
Interstellar – Entering the Wormhole
Sticking with the deep bass theme, Interstellar has a fantastic low-frequency scene. Unfortunately, the movie is mixed in 5.1 track, so it is limited in its surround sound playback; this is truly just for bass, particularly infrasonic. That said, using a high-quality upmixer can resolve the lack of surround channels.
This scene is mostly about the shaking and vibrations one would hear and feel going through a wormhole (again, I haven’t been in space, but a wormhole is also on my bucket list). With subwoofers that can take the demanding track at high SPL levels, you should feel your body, and perhaps many things around you, shake. The demo should be tactile, like you have butt kickers under your couch or chair, even though you don’t. For example, when we were calibrating our system in Connecticut before the Trinnov Audio U.S. headquarters grand opening in May, many of us listened to the clip so loud that the skin on my face began to vibrate. Peter Aylett of Officina Acustica said, “To be fair, that’s a lot of skin.” He was right; we all laughed pretty hard, but regardless, we realized we experienced the most lifelike playback of a sci-fi scene of our lives.
John Wick Parabellum – Assault on the Continental
This scene has been a staple for Trinnov to show WaveForming, because the clip is so good at repeating punchy bass. This clip begins with Keanu Reeves and Lance Riddick (rest in peace) loading shotguns, which are some of the most accurate sounds of a gun I have heard on a track. The pumping sound of the shotgun is dead-on for experienced gun owners. Speaking of dead, the next few minutes are a constant barrage of grizzly shotgun blasts: not for the squeamish. However, the continued blasts should have a very lifelike feel, where you’re repeatedly punched in the chest. Properly executed, it should be a very tactile demo where the guests feel as much as they hear.
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi – Mortar Scene
This is an intense clip with great bass impact (by now, you are seeing a theme: we love bass. It’s the quickest and best way to impress people, in my opinion). In the clip, there is a very impressive thump (perhaps the best sound of the clip) signaling the launch of a mortar. The projectile goes up in the air, comes down, and has an immediate loud and lifelike blast. There are also nice high-frequency sounds as the bullets whizz by your ears. Ultimately, this is a great clip for both bass impact and bass articulation.
Other Recommendations
With an opinionated staff and a wealth of great audio, no list could ever feel complete. However, I can’t in good conscience conclude without a few honorable mentions, alongside their best features as demo tracks:
- Edge of Tomorrow – “Introduction” – low-end extension (when playback is DTS:X Master Audio)
- Blade Runner 2049 – “Introduction” – low-end extension
- The Greatest Showman – “Introduction” – low-end extension
- The Greatest Showman – “Never Enough” – vocals
- A Star is Born – “Always Remember Us This Way” – vocals and subtle bass
- Return to Forever Drum Solo – Returns – Live at Montreux – spatialization and integration
- (Note: When listened to at the proper volume, your eyes must instinctively close themselves when the snare drum is hit.)
- 6 Lack – “East Atlanta Love Letter” – deep bass and a good mix of high and low frequencies
Do you want your clients’ hearts (and maybe also audio component budgets) to grow three sizes? Then, just like in The Grinch, you’ve got to give them an opportunity to listen to something inspiring. Find out what’s on their wish list—concussive bass, breathtaking dynamics, immersive movement, or all of the above—and pick the tracks that show off what your system can do. And if I missed your favorite, let me know on X (@davepedigo): I’m always looking to add a few more tracks to my stash.
