Also, if a theatre buys and HPS-4000 system today (or maybe tomorrow or even next week), do they get a free upgrade when you come out with HPS-4000.1 or HPS-5000?

I figured out how to do the ®, but how do you do the "TM"? œ*´®Ý¥¨¨ˆø*åß*ƒ©·*°¬…æ“‘«*=ç**˜˜µ**÷¡™£¢*§¶•ªº–*

Wow, 30 hours per theatre. Try 20 minutes. That's about the time it takes to tune a theatre. It seems to take more time to set up the equipment than to do the work. I think I probably need about a day to do five or six theatres with "A" chains and the various digital formats. Some theatres with balconies take a day or two, due to the eight to 12 surround channels. Getting that balanced can take awhile and often seems to need to be done twice. I had to tune the Waikiki #1 theatre while the seat installers were working. When I needed a moment of silence, I'd ask for it. On maintenance trips, we do a 12 plex in 5 hours. I have two men doing "A" chains while I check all the "B" chains. We haven't started a show late yet.

Today, with digital processors, a technician can load a file with settings I provide, do the "A" chains and set levels. I don't even have to be there until after everything is done and the theatre is open. That way I am working in a completed complex and don't have to wait while the fire alarm is tested 100 times.

What brand of drivers were they? Just for reference, we stock theatre diaphragms for EV, JBL and Altec.

Steve

In the four theatres where we installed the SA-10 as well as the testing I did with it at Framingham prior to last May, I used the rear corner speakers in the rear group.

Back in 1972, I think, Daniel Queen published an excellent paper in the AES JOURNAL about the use of pink noise and real-time analyzers. He found that the measurements did not corollate with human hearing. I wish I could find that paper but I have not been able to. Once at an SMPTE meeting I was complaining that we needed to do something better. I was unsuccessful. Queen was there and didn't say a word. After the meeting, I asked him why he didn't and he said he was tired of fighting a loosing battle.

I also remember reading another AES paper in the late 1980s or early 1990s that came to the same conclusion. I thought I kept it but have not been able to find it despite several attempts.

I did a presentation for the ITEA here at Framingham in 1995 that compared the tuning that resulted form a four microphone setup, a single microphone and my tuning. I later repeated the demonstration for the local sections of SMPTE, AES, BAS and ASA. There was no dispute from any of the 400 or so people who have heard this that the far-field methods are inferior to terrible. Sorry I can't be of more help.

I can recommend a book by Jens Blauert called SPATIAL HEARING. It is available from the MIT Press in Cambridge, MA. The ISBN number is 0-262-02190-0. I think I paid $50.00 for the book 15 years ago. The book was translated by John S. Allen. No relation.

John Allen's good.

The Waikiki #3 is indeed HPS-4000® and is one of my favorite theatres in the world. We have not done any IMAX theatres. They have their own sound company. We have done several theatres around the world for Showscan.

We are always looking for ways to improve drivers. I think the horn designs are correct as they are designed according to the laws of physics and have stood the test of time.

As to the number of channels, I am quite satisfied with eight channels. I wish that all films were made that way. I have done mixes with four surround channels. There is a small advantage to having the surrounds split up into stereo side and rear groups, but I emphasize small.

I suspect that the easiest way to improve the system is to improve the amplifiers. We recently did just that and the results were incredible. BGW makes special amplifiers for us and has done so for many years. Their new Millennium 3-HPS® is the best amplifier of any kind I have ever heard. I now have one in my living room.

Our sound systems bleed through to other theatres but less than other systems. This is because horn speakers do not vibrate very much, so they don't shake the structure of the building as much. Airborne transmission must be dealt with by good wall construction.

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Today's drivers are generally interchangeable with older drivers. The manufacturers of the drivers have changed once in a great while, but the drivers are basically the same with the exception that they have somewhat greater power capacity. All the speakers ever used in HPS-4000® installations used drivers that meet today's needs. None has needed replacement or updating and, as I have said, except for manufacturing defects (maybe five in twenty years), none has failed. The woofers and tweeters are still from the same sources. There have been two sources of the midrange drivers.

When I changed cabinet builders, the drivers remained the same.

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The mixing stages are pretty well standardized with two-way systems, for better or worse. The good ones have had years of tweaking from mixers who know what their recorded materials really sound like since they often have recorded the things themselves. Though not the best sounding systems I have heard, the rerecording stages I have worked on do sound fairly decent.

The producers have always appreciated that our systems make their films sound better than they heard at the studio. They pour hours and hours into making the best sounding film they can with the relatively small two-way speakers they have available. When their film is played on a superior sound system, they are overjoyed that their hard work produced something that much better than they thought.

We had a world premiere of a film last year at a theatre in New York. The director was there and was so stunned by the sound quality, he talked about it to the reporters who were covering the opening. He later asked the technician how it was possible that this theatre could sound so much better than any other theatre he had ever heard. He even wondered if he had been deceived all these years by other sound technicians. I would like to have been there myself.