Actually both Showscan / HPS-4000® systems that were installed in Europe are no longer in operation. I do have other installations in Germany and Norway.

The Northpark theatre no longer exists. The building was torn down. The system worked beautifully but was severely tampered with. Wires were cut. The EQ was completely changed. I am not surprised at Mr. Nelson's report of distortion in the system. It was quite a mess. The retuning, if you want to call it that -- restoration would be more accurate, was done by me after a General Cinema Vice President heard the system and knew it did not represent my work. Even after that, the system was again tampered with. After the theatre closed the system was moved to General Cinema's Framingham, Massachusetts complex, where it was installed in the new theatre #1 that opened late last year.

I don't know where you heard that there have been thousands of HPS-4000® installations. As I believe I said earlier, the number is around 300. Of those, the theatres on the preferred list are the ones I believe are properly maintained.

I am sorry that you did not appreciate the installation at the Carib. You're the only one I know of who didn't. Certainly the owners appreciated it as the Carib became the highest grossing theatre in the entire West Indies and as there are now almost nothing but HPS-4000® theatres in Kingston. The other theatres have now gone out of business, unable to compete with the superior presentation of the Palace Amusement theatres. You should also keep in mind that the Carib theatre was 180 feet long. Each of the screen speakers was powered by a 1000 watt amplifier. Even so, the peak level possible at maximum power, as measured in the middle of the theatre, was no more than our typical installations. The room was 50 percent larger than Boston Symphony Hall.

As I have tried to explain, producers and directors tell me that their films sound better than they made them in HPS-4000® theatres. If you think they are wrong to feel that way about their own films, you should take it up with them. I am just reporting what they have said.

The argument about everyone seeing the film exactly as the director saw it is silly and nothing more than a marketing slogan. The only way for such a thing to be possible is for everyone to see it in the same theatre the director did. Failing that, at least all screens should be the same size as that in the studio. The room should be exactly the same dimensions. The lenses should all be the same. I think you get what I mean. Works of any kind can be presented in different venues. It may indeed be possible, if not quite likely, for various venues to be superior to the one where the work was created. This is true for a painting, a symphony, an opera, a play or a film. If the quality of a theatre's presentation can enhance a motion picture, why shouldn't it?

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The Northpark theater has not been torn down. The manager of the Northpark mall (Mr. Nasher) in all of his greed decided he could make more money if that incredible theater was a Foley's. His plan fell through, this fantastic theater was destroyed, but only on the inside. The outside remains intact.

Also, specific orders to "break the seals" on the eq cards were given by GCC before Mr. Allen's return visit. There were several techs who retuned that system in all of it's days, but the first was done at GCC's request. That is why Mr. Allen returned to a rewiring and recalibration of the eq cards after the first tech's lousy attempt. GCC's ok was later given again a second time by another higher up after doing a comparison with the THX auditorium (granted probably the best THX system in the country). I was given the task towards the end of it's existence and the theater closed with my eq settings (about a year's time).

My beef with the system was the surrounds were nothing short of shit, whatever make and model they were (too high up to tell). They were "4k happy" and shrieked like crazy. (I brought in outboard eqs to handle these channels and flatten them out. If only that CP-200 had've had an Aux rack!) The stage speakers sounded very nice, but didn't reproduce anything below 50hz very well at all. The system sounded extremely good with normal movies (dialogue in particular was extra clean and crisp), but it just did not have enough power to drive a track like Titanic at the intensity it needed to be run at in that size of an auditorium (800 seats). The amps were clipping constantly, hence the cause of that distortion mentioned above. I'm sure with the digital tracks of today, the HPS-4000 systems are built to handle such power requirements. This was an early system built back in the days of SR that was being forced to run DTS with one hell of a mean track (referring to Titanic).

I do look forward to being able to travel to the Framingham to the reference theater I've heard so much about! Apparently it's nothing short of astonishing.

This is very odd information indeed. I can assure you that any "authorization" to touch the settings of the HPS-4000® system at Northpark #2 did not come from the home office. When it was discovered that the system had been ruined, people were in danger of being fired for it. I personally argued that, despite the mistakes made, there were good people there and that no one should be fired.

I do not understand your comment about the surround's frequency response as they produce a very flat response throughout every other theatre where they have been installed, as they did at Northpark when I was there. The Northpark surround speakers are now in Framingham and are as flat as they have always been. I am puzzled by the need for outboard surround EQ. Did not the CP-200 have at CAT-560 card? In any event our surrounds do not require equalization. If you thought they needed it, then something else was going on. I should also point out that all these "problems" that you describe, were dealt with without a single telephone call to me.

The distortion and amplifier clipping would be due to technician mistakes. The theatre was 92 feet long and 73 feet wide. The screen channels clipped at 113 dB in the center of the theatre. That's 2 dB higher than our minimum specification of 111 dB. The subwoofers clipped at 122 dB and the surrounds at 111 dB. The loudest passage possible from a digital soundtrack, therefore, would use no more than 1/4 of any amplifier's power unless the system wasn't set up properly. Since you report amplifier clipping after someone other than myself or someone trained by me adjusted the system, it's not hard to know where the problem really was. A complete set of setup instruction was left at the theatre. All anyone had to do is read them and do what they said.

When I received the amplifiers from the Northpark #2 theatre, I noticed that their inputs had been turned down at least 12 to 14 dB. This would have caused the CP-200 to work that much harder. There's no way to be certain what that would mean for distortion as I had set the gain structure for the CP-200's optimum. For the amplifiers to have been set in that manner is a fairly serious mistake.

By the way, the old Framingham theatre was longer than the Northpark #2, though not quite as wide. Their sound systems were virtually identical. No amplifier clipping occurred here. The home office executives knew the sound and performance of the Framingham system extremely well because that's the theatre they watched their movies in. When they heard the condition of the system in Dallas, they knew where the problem was before I was called.

I am surprised to learn that the building is still there. GCC has told me on several occasions that it was their understanding that it was gone. The plan had been to replace it with a Framingham type complex, but those plans were dropped.

Your reply is very insulting. As I stated before, I have first hand knowledge of this theater. Your statements that it was "ruined" and "people were in danger of being fired", etc are false. I personally saw a memo from GCC that gave the permission to break the seals, so do not call me a liar. The bottom line was people were not happy with the system after it was installed, there were customer complaints (granted by comparison to the THX auditorium next door) and you were not notified because as I was informed, you had a real temper if anyone else ever touched one of your systems and no one wanted to deal with it. Basically they were not happy with this particular installation and did not want to fight you in regards to what was their auditorium. On the flip side, I was also told they were extremely pleased with all of your other installations.

The surrounds performed poorly, with a strong peak at 4K as I noted above. Perhaps it was the placement, as you well know placement will drastically alter frequency response. They were installed at the joint of where the walls connected to the ceiling if you remember correctly...and that was a very high ceiling. Before the outboard surround eqs, the surrounds were run lower than spec due to the harshness it created to the overall blend, thus giving the system more of a "mono-ish" sound. Again, I have first hand knowledge and this is a fact of the combination of those speakers in that particular auditorium. I am not doubting that they performed well in another, but not in this one. Yes, the CP-200 had a cat560 and the peak was strong enough to necessitate outboard eqs that could not be controlled with that card.

As to distortion, I can assure you the system was not powerful enough for the level that Northpark presented their movies. As anyone who has experienced a movie at that location before it was closed can back me up on this. Movies were not set at a standard 85db fader of "7" and left. Action movies such as Titanic were as I said before, an "experience". I can also verify the system would clip before the eq cards were "tampered" with on action movies. I think the problem here is you are not understanding how hard that theater drove it's sound systems. It was not your everyday run of the mill theater.

As to the gain controls, that was something that was played with over that last month of the theater's existence. A comment was made by someone (I do not know who) about the possibility of various combinations between the outputs of the CP-200 vs. the gain inputs of the amplifiers to attempt to cut back on the clipping. I do not know specifically how this test went, but I cannot imagine it providing any more headroom. Again, this was done in those last few weeks and my comments above were directly after both of us had a crack at the eq, years apart.

I do not doubt your personal expertise nor do I doubt the capabilities of the HPS-4000 system. However, not every installation will yield perfect results. This is an acoustic impossibility and a fact of life.

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I cannot find the word "liar" anywhere in what I wrote.

We knew that the theatre had operational issues, but I have not gone into them and won't go into them on a public forum. If nothing else, to do so is in my opinion, impolite. Let's just say that the system was not in qualified hands and it is now.

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The Kintek subwoofers were part of the Kintek stereo synthesizer system. They were never used with the CP-50 is stereo. I did not recommend them, but they were used anyway. Their sound was considered unsatisfactory. They failed after a short period and were not repaired or replaced. I think that was the only time they were ever installed in an HPS-4000® theatre.

Our large three-way units generally did not require optical bass extension when used with Dolby "A" type optical. I started adding them in all installations when "SR" came along. That is why the original Carib installation did not have a stereo optical subwoofer channel.

The high frequency units you are referring to were the tweeters. The earliest installations were done with a stacked tweeter array that Paul Klipsch and I did not like. He spent two years coming up with a superior unit. When we finally had it in production, we replaced all the existing earlier units, including the ones at the Carib theatre. Following that, the theatre was further upgraded from three-way systems behind the screen to four-way. This was made possible to more powerful amplifiers that could reliably be bridged into 4 ohms. The original Carib installation needed to be bi-amped as that was the only way, at that time, to build up that level of amplifier power. The 1000 watt amplifiers of the day were not considered reliable enough. The bi-amplification was removed when we upgraded to the four-ways.

John F. Allen

I am not trying to insult anyone. I don't have the time nor do I have such a desire. The system in question is not the only one that performed poorly after someone with no training with that kind of system thought they'd done the right thing and made a mess of it instead. I do leave specific instructions with every installation. When these are followed everywhere else in the world, there is no trouble. When they are not followed, then you get what you get.

Since I do not maintain most of the HPS-4000® systems around the world, I would be silly to insinuate that only I can, and I did not intend to do so.

As I have said, there were known operational issues at that theatre. The source of the complaints was well understood. Now the theatre is closed and those issues have been resolved. I really will not get into the personalities or who did what. I hope you can understand.

This theater was one of the ONLY theaters I've ever been to that did NOT have operational issues. Every presentation was flawless in every aspect. That comment is even more insulting than your previous one to myself, the operators and the managers of that establishment, and it's incredible following of dedicated patrons.

The system was put into several "competent" sound tech's hands over a few years time. By your comment, you are stating that all of those techs, including myself, are "unqualified" to do soundwork of any caliber.

As to the specific word "liar", no you did not use that. You did however say it in different wording. My choice of the word "liar" is taking all of the fat out of your reply and combining it into one word.

You did not hear an HPS-4000® system. The sound you describe is exactly the sound that results when one of our systems is tampered with. Shrill and no bass. I can do it too. All I need to do is mis-measure the frequency response and mis-EQ the system. It works every time. It is truly unfortunate that the technicians who service movie theatres are handicapped by such poor and outdated methods. That's the source of most of the problems I see.

Of all the tampering incidents that have happened, this was one of the two worst. There was one other instance of cut wires. I had to go back to that one too.

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