How HDIS Works

Introduction

How Does It Sound (HDIS) rates how movies sound — not whether they're good movies. We're the IMDB / Rotten Tomatoes of audio quality, built for home theater enthusiasts who care about Dolby Atmos mixing, surround envelopment, and bass impact.

Anyone can browse movies, read reviews, and explore lists. To rate, review, or build your own "Best on My System" list, sign in with Google — we don't store passwords. Your audio gear, your room, and your ratings stay tied to your account.

HDIS is also a community. You can post questions and discussions, react to helpful contributions, follow other members, build a watchlist, and earn badges— all tied together by an activity feed. Those features have their own sections below.

This page explains the parts of HDIS that aren't obvious at first glance. If something still doesn't make sense after reading, scroll to the bottom and send us a note.

Rating a movie

Every rating on HDIS is tied to three things together: the movie, the specific audio format you heard it in, and the system profile you watched it on. Same movie + same format on a different system — for example, your living-room 9.2.4 vs. your bedroom 5.1 — counts as a separate rating.

That's on purpose. A TrueHD Atmos mix on a 9-channel rig can sound transcendent; the same mix on a 2.0 setup can sound flat. Folding both into one rating throws away information other users want.

Six sub-ratings, at least one required

The rating form has six 1.0–10.0 sliders, all optional individually:

• Bass / LFE Impact — subwoofer punch and depth
• Surround Envelopment — how much you feel inside the scene
• Height / Overhead Activity — Atmos / DTS:X height channels
• Dialogue Clarity — how clean voices sound in the mix
• Dynamic Range — quiet-to-loud separation
• Sound Design / Creativity — how interesting the mix is

You must rate at least one. The overall 1.0–10.0 score is computed by the server as the average of the sub-ratings you filled in — not entered by you directly.

Don't have height speakers?Leave Height blank. Watching on a soundbar without a sub? Skip Bass. "N/A" is a first-class choice; the average uses only the sliders you actually moved.

Once you've rated, you can attach a written review to that rating. Other members endorse good reviews with the Helpful reaction (this is what used to be called a "helpful vote"). Note that substantially rewriting a review resets its Helpful count — see Reactions for why.

System profiles & venues

A system profile is a description of the gear you watched on: speaker configuration (e.g. 9.2.4), receiver, subwoofer, room details, total budget. You can keep up to 10 home theater profileson your account — useful if you have a main rig and a bedroom setup, or if you've upgraded over the years and want to re-rate old favorites on the new gear.

The Movie Theater profile

The first time you mark a rating as "at a theater," HDIS automatically creates a non-deletable Movie Theaterprofile on your account. You only ever get one of these regardless of how many theater ratings you submit. It doesn't count toward the 10-profile limit, and it's excluded from equipment statistics + the "Best on My System" list dropdown — the gear belongs to the theater, not to you.

Theater venues

Theater ratings can optionally tag a venue— the specific cinema you watched at (e.g. "AMC IMAX Downtown"). You can save up to 20 venues per account and reuse them across ratings. Venues are display metadata only: they show up next to the rating but don't affect uniqueness or score aggregation.

Two ratings of the same movie + same audio format are allowed if one is on a home profile and the other is in your Movie Theater profile — same movie sounds different in your room vs. a 2,000-seat IMAX.

Public or private + sharing

Each home theater profile is either Public or Private. Public profiles get a clean, shareable link at /u/your-username/systems/the-profile and a Share / View systembutton so you can point people straight at your rig. Private profiles are visible only to you — they carry a Private badge on your My Systems page and don't appear on your public profile.

Public profiles are also discoverable: they appear on the Home Theaters browse hub and turn up in search (by system name, gear, or your name). Flipping a profile to Private removes it from both — the public/private toggle is the single control for how visible your rig is.

Marking a profile private does not pull it out of Equipment Stats. Those pages report anonymized, aggregated gear popularity — never "who owns what" — so your gear still counts toward the community totals without exposing your individual setup.

Itemize your system

Beyond the summary fields, you can break a build down piece by piece. Open the collapsible Itemize your system (optional) section in the profile form and add a row for each component. Every row has a category, brand, model, quantity, unit cost, and free-text notes— up to 100 components per profile. You can list the same category more than once (three subwoofer rows, a pair of surrounds — whatever your rig actually has).

Categories are grouped so a build sheet reads top to bottom the way you'd spec it:

• Electronics — AV receiver, processor / pre-amp, amplifier, source (Blu-ray / streamer)
• Speakers — front L/R, front wide, center, surround, surround back, height / Atmos, subwoofer, other
• Video — your display (TV, projector, or screen)
• Room — acoustic treatment, seating, lighting / decor
• Support — power conditioner, cabling, rack / stands, network gear, other

Your display's price lives in the Videocategory, the same way a receiver's price is a component and not a spec — so the build sheet never lists a TV or projector twice.

HDIS adds up the priced rows into an itemized total and shows it on your public build sheet as a progress bar against your headline Total Build Cost. The two numbers are independent: your Total Build Cost stays the authoritative figure even if the itemized rows don't add up to exactly the same amount, so you can itemize gradually without your budget looking "wrong" in the meantime.

Share your rig to the feed

On any public profile you own, the system detail page has a Share to feed button next to Copy link. One click posts a lightweight "updated their system" card to the activity feed so your followers see the setup. It's reputation-neutral and de-duplicated: sharing the same rig again just bumps the existing card back to the top rather than stacking copies. Private and retired profiles can't be shared, and if you flip a shared rig to private its feed card disappears (a re-share is needed to bring it back).

Projects

A projectis a timeline-based build log — the story of a room or rig over time, told in dated updates with photos. Use it to document a new theater build, a treatment overhaul, or a slow equipment upgrade path. Projects live on your profile at /u/your-username/projects, and you can jump to your own from the My Projects link in the top-nav menu.

What a project is

Each project has a title, an optional description, and a timeline of updates. You can optionally link a system profile to it — handy when the build is one of your system profiles — but that link is entirely optional, so you can log a build that isn't tied to any single profile. You can link a retiredsystem profile too (it's labelled — retiredin the picker) — handy for documenting an upgrade to a rig you've since moved on from. Publishing a new project earns +3 reputation (once per project).

Build status

Each project carries a build status you set yourself — Planning, In Progress (the default), On Hold, or Completed— shown as a small badge on the project card and detail header. It's a label you control: it never changes on its own, so a Completed build that later gets a "swapped the sub" update stays Completed until you change it. Pick it when you create a project and change it any time from Edit.

Timeline updates & photos

You build the story one updateat a time — "subwoofer arrived," "first calibration pass," "acoustic panels up." Each update can carry text, up to five photos, or both — a photo-only update is fine, so is a text-only note. Photos run through the same resize-and-strip pipeline as your post images and system-profile photos.

• Editing an update— small fixes are fine, but a major rewrite clears that update's Helpfulreactions (the same rule posts follow, so a well-liked update can't be quietly swapped for something else).
• Hero photo— the first photo of your earliest update with an image becomes the project's cover shot wherever the project is listed.

Privacy & feed sharing

Every project is either Public or Private. A private project is visible only to you — anyone else who guesses the link just gets a "not found" page. On top of that, a publish-to-feedtoggle decides whether the project's updates flow into the activity feed, and each individual update can override that with Always share or Never share(otherwise it follows the project default). Flipping any of these applies retroactively — making a project public adds its past updates to the feed, making it private pulls them back out.

Public projects are also listed on the Builds browse hub and turn up in search — a private project appears in neither.

Comments

Public project updates have a single level of threaded comments, just like posts. You can @mentionsomeone (it resolves for people already in the thread, the update's author, or people you follow), react Helpful, and flag a comment for moderation. The project owner is notified when someone comments on, replies to, or mentions them on their updates — see Notifications.

The project cap

You can keep up to 100 projectsby default — plenty for anyone documenting real builds. If you genuinely need more, a banner on your Projects page lets you request a higher cap: pick a new limit, add a short reason, and a moderator reviews it. If a request is denied there's a 30-day cooldown before you can ask again. Deleting a project frees up a slot immediately.

Audio format lifecycle

When you rate a movie, you pick the audio format you watched in. HDIS keeps a master list of known formats (Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD Atmos, DTS:X, LPCM, and others). New movies start with no audio formats attached— the community fills them in as people rate. When you pick a format a movie doesn't have yet, the rating form lets you know you'll be the first to add it, so double-check the name is right before you submit.

Three lifecycle states

• VERIFIED— when you pick a format from the dropdown that matches the master list, it's added to the movie as VERIFIED automatically. No moderation needed for a known-good format.
• PENDING— when you pick "Other" and type a custom format name (e.g. an obscure regional codec), it's added as PENDING. Pending formats are visible to everyone but flagged for community review.
• REJECTED— if a Trusted Contributor or Admin reviews a format and decides it's wrong (typo, fake, mis-categorized), they reject it with a reason. Rejected formats are hidden from the movie's public listing. The submitter is notified and can edit + resubmit.

Who can verify / reject

Trusted Contributors, Moderators, and Admins can verify or reject pending formats from the Pending Audio Formats queue — or reject a pending format directly from a movie's Available Audio Formats row on its detail page.

Editing a VERIFIED format resets it to PENDING so the next reviewer re-confirms the change. This is intentional: a verified entry is a community endorsement, and any change deserves a fresh look.

Score aggregation

This is the part of HDIS most people find surprising at first. Read it.

A movie's overall HDIS score uses only the highest-tier audio format anyone has rated it on. Lower-tier ratings show up in the per-format breakdown, but they don't drag the headline number down.

The four tiers

A worked example

Suppose Dune: Part Two has been rated:

• Dolby Digital (Tier 1) — 12 raters averaging 6.5
• Dolby TrueHD Atmos (Tier 4) — 8 raters averaging 9.0

The movie's overall score is 9.0, not the blended average. Tier 4 wins; the Tier 1 ratings are still shown in the per-format breakdown but contribute zero to the headline number.

Why this way

An Atmos mix on a proper rig shouldn't be dragged down by someone's Dolby Digital home-stream of the same movie. The lower-tier rating isn't wrong — the codec genuinely is worse — but it's a different listening experience. We surface both, separately. The headline reflects what the movie sounds like at its best.

Lists

HDIS has two kinds of user-curated lists.

Custom lists

Free-form lists with any title and description you want: "Best Tarantino Atmos Mixes," "Movies That Made My Subwoofer Cry," whatever you like. You can pin a custom list to a specific system profile (or leave it profile-agnostic). They default to public; toggle a list private to hide it from search and other users.

Best on My System

The HDIS differentiator. A "Best on My System" list is tied to one specific system profileand ranks your top 10 movies on that exact gear. You can't make one without picking a system profile first — the whole point is that the answer depends on what you watched on.

Drag-and-drop to reorder. Keyboard reorder works too. The list shows up on your public profile, on the system profile detail page, and gets indexed for search.

Browsing other people's lists

Public lists show up on the Lists browse page. Filter by type (all lists, Custom only, or Best on My System only) and sort by Recently updated (the default), Newest, or Most movies. Each card shows the first few posters, the movie count, and who made it — click the author's name or avatar to jump straight to their profile and see the rest of what they've rated.

Adding a movie to a list

Open a list, then use the Add Movie box to search by title and pick a result. New items land at the bottom of the list; drag the handle on the left of each row to reorder.

Browse movies

The Browse Movies page at /moviesis the catalog view — the whole library, with filters for genre and audio format, plus sort options (top-rated, recently rated, recently released). Use this when you want to explore by category rather than searching for a specific title. Audio-format filters only show formats that have at least one rating attached — new formats appear in the dropdown as the community starts using them.

For a specific title, reviewer name, list, or quote from a discussion comment — jump to Search instead.

Browsing home theaters & builds

Beyond the movie catalog, HDIS has dedicated hubs for exploring the community's actual setups — the rigs people rate on and the build logs behind them. You'll find both under the Browse menu in the header (and in the footer): Home Theaters, Builds, Movies, and Lists.

Home theater systems

The Home Theaters hub at /home-theaters lists every public system profile in the community — the gear people actually watch on. Filter down the left rail by budget tier (under $5k, $5k–$15k, $15k–$50k, $50k+) and by speaker configuration(5.x, 7.x, 9.x, and their Atmos variants) — the config checkboxes stack, so you can ask for "7.x or9.x Atmos" at once, and each option shows a live count of how many rigs match.

Sort by Most expensive (the default), Least expensive, Most / Fewest speakers, Recently active(rigs with fresh ratings, edits, or photos float up), or Newest. Each card leads with the rig's hero photo, its top-rated movies on that system, and a rating count — click through to the owner's public build sheet, or click their name to visit their profile.

Builds

A build is a project — a timeline build log with dated updates and photos. The Builds hub at /builds gathers every public project so you can follow rooms as they come together, from first pre-wire to final calibration. Filter by build status (Planning, In Progress, On Hold, Completed) and sort by Recently updated(the default) or Newest. Each card shows the build's cover photo, its status badge, how many updates it has, and who's behind it.

Search

The search bar in the header searches across eight kinds of content at once:

• Movies — by title, overview, or genre
• Posts — by post title or body
• Reviews — by review body or reviewer
• Lists — by list title or description
• Discussions — by comment body
• Users — by display name
• Builds — by project title or description
• Home Theaters — by system name, gear, or owner

Type a movie title ("Dune"), a reviewer name, a quote from a discussion comment, or the brand of a receiver — results are grouped by type on the results page.

Choosing what to search

The dropdown next to the search box defaults to Any, which searches all eight types together. Pick a single type to narrow the search to just Movies, Users, Builds, and so on.

Each type has a minimum query lengthso short fragments don't return noise: movies match from 1 character; users, lists, builds, and home theaters from 2; posts, reviews, and discussions from 3. In Anymode this happens automatically — a one-letter query searches only movies, and the other types fold in as you type more. A short note under the box tells you exactly what's being searched at any moment.

Type-ahead suggestions

As you type, the top few matches appear right under the search box. Each suggestion is tagged with its type, and choosing one — with the arrow keys and Enter, or a click — jumps you straight to that item rather than to the results page. Press Enter without picking a suggestion to run the full search instead.

Context-aware search

When you're on a browse hub — Movies, Home Theaters, Builds, or Lists — the search box pre-scopes to that surface and shows a "Searching in: …"pill in place of the type dropdown, so a search from the Home Theaters page looks through home theaters by default. Click the pill's ✕ to drop back to searching everything.

Community posts & comments

Beyond rating and reviewing individual movies, you can start broader conversations with posts. Head to New post and pick a type:

• Question— you're looking for help or recommendations ("Best Atmos demo to show off a new sub?").
• Discussion— an open-ended topic for the community ("Why do so many streaming mixes bury dialogue?").

Tags, images, and movies

• Tags — add up to three from a curated list (the tag set is maintained by HDIS staff) so others can find your post by topic.
• Images— embed photos inline (a screenshot of your AVR settings, a room shot). They go through the same resize/strip pipeline as system photos.
• Link a movie— optionally attach the post to a specific movie so it surfaces in that context.

Comments & @mentions

Posts have a single level of threaded comments— you can reply to the post or to a top-level comment, but replies don't nest further than that. Hitting Reply auto-inserts an @mentionof the person you're replying to.

You can @mentionsomeone by username. Mentions resolve when the person is already in the thread, or is in your follow graph — that keeps mentions useful without letting anyone ping a stranger out of nowhere. A resolved mention notifies that user (see Notifications). The same @mention mechanic now also works in movie discussions and on project update comments.

Publishing your first version of a post earns +3 reputation (once per post). Posts and comments can be flaggedfor moderation like any other content. Deleting a post is a soft delete — the thread structure is preserved.

Reactions

Reactions are how you endorse good contributions. The Helpful button appears on reviews, posts, and post comments— it's the same control everywhere, showing a running count next to it.

• Click to toggle. Tap Helpful to add your endorsement; tap again to remove it. You can only count once per item.
• You can't react to your own content,and signed-out visitors see the count but a disabled "Sign in to react" button.
• Reputation goes to the author. When someone marks your review or post helpful, youearn the reputation — not the person reacting.
• No notification on a reaction.By design, getting a Helpful doesn't ping the author — it keeps the count meaningful without creating notification noise.

Helpful votes are now reactions

If you used HDIS before, the old "helpful votes" on reviews are now part of this unified reactions system. The familiar Helpfullabel on reviews is unchanged — only the plumbing underneath it changed.

Major edits reset reactions

Reactions endorse what you wrote. If you substantially rewrite a review or discussion comment, its Helpful count resets to zero so a highly-endorsed post can't be quietly swapped for different content. Fixing a typo or small wording tweak keeps your reactions; a meaningful rewrite clears them.

Activity feed

The feed is a live stream of what's happening on HDIS — new ratings, reviews, posts, and discussions — rather than a single movie's page. Three independent controls shape what you see: which tab (whose activity), the sort, and a content filter.

Tabs — whose activity

• Discover — the best of everything across the whole site. Open to everyone, signed in or not.
• My Feed — your personalized stream: your own activity plus the people and movies you follow.
• Follows — only activity from people you follow.
• Watchlist — only activity on movies you've added to your watchlist.

Sort & filter

• Sort — New (most recent), Hot (gaining traction now), or Top (most engagement over a 24h / 7d / 30d window).
• Filter — narrow to Posts, Reviews, Ratings, Discussions, or Project updates — or leave it on All activity.

New project updates flow into the feed too — but only from public projects that have feed-sharing on (each update can opt in or out individually). System profiles you share to the feed show up here as well, under All activity.

What changes when you sign in

Signed out, you land on Discover— a great way to browse the community without an account. The personalized tabs (My Feed, Follows, Watchlist) need a login because they depend on who and what you follow. New members start on Discover until they've followed enough to fill out My Feed.

Your profile & network

Every member has a public profile at /u/your-username. You can set a custom avatar and a short bio, and your contributions are organized into five tabs:

• Overview — a snapshot led by your featured system, then reputation, badges, and recent highlights.
• Posts — the questions and discussions you've started.
• Reviews — your written reviews.
• Systems— your system profiles (speaker config, gear, photos), plus a Projects sub-tab for your build logs.
• Network — who you follow and who follows you.

Your featured system

Your Overview leads with a featured systemcard — a hero photo of your main rig plus its speaker configuration, receiver, speakers, subwoofer, room, and build cost, with a View full systemlink. HDIS picks your primary home theater profile automatically (private and retired profiles are never featured). It's the first thing visitors see, so it's worth keeping that profile's lead photo and details current — see System profiles.

Guestbook

Every profile has a guestbook where other members can leave you a note. The full thread lives on your Overview tab, and a compact recent-comments panel follows you onto every other tab and onto each of your system detail pages ("Leave a comment for @you"). Any signed-in member can post; comments allow a single level of replies and cap at 2,000 characters. You can edit or delete your own comments, and moderators can remove abusive ones (leaving a [Comment removed by moderator] tombstone with the reply tree intact).

The guestbook is on by default for new accounts. You own the switch: the Disable Guestbook / Enable Guestbook button on your own profile turns it off or back on at any time.

Following people

Use the Followbutton on anyone's profile to keep up with their activity. Their new ratings, reviews, and posts then show up in your My Feed and Follows tabs. Follower and following lists are public — anyone can see them on the Network tab.

Watchlist

Add movies to your My Watchlist to track titles you care about. Activity on those movies — new ratings, reviews, discussions — surfaces in the Watchlist tab of your feed.

Finding people to follow

The leaderboard and Top Contributors highlight the most active and trusted members — a good starting point for building out your network.

Badges

Badges recognize meaningful contributions. They're awarded automaticallythe moment you meet the criteria — there's nothing to claim — and they show up on your profile. You'll get a notification each time you earn one. Badges are permanent: once earned, they stay even if your counts later change.

The starter set

• 🏆 Top Contributor — submitted 50 or more ratings.
• ✅ Verified Submitter — had 5 or more audio formats verified by a moderator.
• 👍 Helpful Reviewer — wrote 10 or more reviews that others found helpful.
• 🚀 Pioneer — first to rate a movie that went on to attract 10 or more raters.
• 📸 System Documenter — documented a system with 5 or more photos and a budget.
• 🎂 Member Year One — has been a member for over a year.

This is the launch set — expect more badges as the community grows.

Notifications

HDIS notifies you in two places: the bell icon in the top nav (in-app notifications) and optionally via email. You control which categories email you on the notification preferences page.

Categories you control

• Guestbook comments — when someone posts on your guestbook
• Discussion replies & mentions — when someone replies to your discussion comment or @mentions you in a movie discussion
• Post & project activity — when someone comments on, replies to, or @mentions you in a post or on one of your project updates
• New followers — when someone follows you
• Format status changes — when a format you submitted is verified or rejected
• Admin broadcasts — site-wide announcements from the HDIS team

Always in-app

A couple of notification types appear in your bell regardless of email settings:

• Badge awarded — when you earn a new badge
• Project cap request result— when a moderator approves or denies your request for a higher project cap
• Moderation actions— content removal, strikes, suspension, and role changes (these can't be turned off)

One deliberate omission: getting a Helpful reaction does notnotify you — it would be too noisy. You'll just see your Helpful count tick up.

Reputation & promotion

Reputation is HDIS's way of recognizing community contribution. Points accumulate automatically as you participate.

Point values

Trusted Contributor promotion

Promotion from User to Trusted Contributoris automatic and one-way. It's based on how active you are on the site — a combination of your reputation score, how many ratings and reviews you've contributed, and how long your account has been around. Stay engaged and it happens on its own.

Promotion is checked after every reputation event. It's one-way— reputation drops never demote you, but a Trusted Contributor with too many upheld flags can still be suspended.

Moderator and Admin roles are manually assigned by HDIS staff — there's no automatic path to them.

FAQ

Short answers to questions that come up a lot.

Contact

Question, bug report, or feedback? Send us a note. Messages go to the HDIS team and we read every one. For privacy or account-deletion requests, email privacy@howdoesitsound.io directly — that goes to the privacy mailbox specifically.