One would assume they have seen it or they wouldn't be asking for so much from it.

Bill, I'm with you on version one of the trl...my favorite.

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Children really brighten up your life...they never turn off lights.

Private pilots tend to loose their high frequency response early in life, due to the roar of the airplane engines (and maybe air pressure changes with altitude). Likewise lumberjacks, jack-hammer operators, shooters, and fans of loud music tend to loose the highs early (unless they wear hearing protection).

If the person who shows up to EQ your theatre wears a hearing aid, be VERY afraid!

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

One side of my family has members who have had fairly extensive hearing loss as they aged. I have an uncle that is stone post deaf, and had another that used two hearing aids before he died. The other side of my family has hearing that is amazingly sharp. If you averaged the group, the drop-off would look terrible, even though some in that group could hear the proverbial pin drop.

A major cause of hearing loss is the breaking off of the cilia in the inner ear that pass the sound to the nerves. Essentially, after a certain amount of flexing, the tiny hairlike strand breaks from material fatigue, just like bending a bit of metal back and forth. The more noise and sound you are exposed to, the fewer working cilia you have.

Knowing my family history, once I got past my early twenties I began noticing loud environments hurt my ears, and worked to avoid them. My hearing is still sharp, the noise of television and computer equipment still bothers me, and I still have close to perfect pitch, so I've lucked out or my noise avoidance has paid off. If a movie is too loud for me, I walk out.

Bringing this ramble to a point, sound is a personal experience and each individual has the graphic equalizer in his head set at different levels. By tweaking systems to what sounds right to you, you subject the audience to your personal taste - which may be a different flavor of sound than the director and sound crew intended. Is that a bad thing? Based on the trailer volume problems we've had in the industry, I don't think anyone can say with certainty that it is, but it is still troubling to me that previous posts give the impression that such tweaking is a good thing.

Given the wide variety of hearing abilities and listening skills, tone deafness, and other factors that make up an individual's sense of sound, I'm more inclined to trust an unbiased measured tweaking of a sound system by a pro with meters and scope than any off-the-cuff tweaking - except that done by a piano tuner or first chair violin. Some folks, like Joe, might get away with it and even get compliments, but it isn't as easy to get it right as it sounds.

I agree that objective tuning with a RTA is probably less subject to bias than strictly "by ear". Few of us have the proverbial "golden ears" of a gifted musician or sound mixer. But I also feel that common sense says the tuned system should "sound good" to most people, without undue harshness, bass, treble or "holes" in the frequency response. Any well-designed system is unlikely to have huge gaps in response, so if you see large deviations in the EQ required between adjacent 1/3 octave bands, something is probably wrong in your procedure. And as Brad said, your ears will also tell you this.

An analogy might be a piano tuner. Today's piano tuners have wonderful electronic tools to speed up the tuning process, but in the end, a really good piano tuner does the final "tweek" by ear, and then goes on to play some real music.

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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

Four words:

Jerry Bruckheimer, Michael Bay.

In many peoples opinions the kings of excruciatingly loud sound mixes...

BV is going full-out for 'Titanic' style hype and praying for like business from this. If it hits, it will give Bruckheimer powers with studios that currently only people like Lucas, Speilberg, Cameron and Coppola have.

If it 'Kamikazes'... I see Bruckheimer going back to doing 'Coyote Ugly' and 'Remember The Titans' knock-offs, and Michael Bay returning to doing 'Got milk?' commercials... Not to mention the huge dent in the Disney empire's armor...

Aaron

2) Taking these recordings and mixing them to the images on the screen and getting them to sound as good as possable in the perticular mixing studio that they are using.

3) then encoding them to the optical negatives for analog and digital processing.

4) then it is the theaters turn to take those recorded sounds and process them the way they should be done. Using the best equipment they can get or using whatever they have to do the job. It is important that the A-chains are alighned as perfect as they can be. If that is not done then sound will be effected. I think the B-chain curve is harder to achieve acurately because we have added more obstructions to the auditorium.

Biggest being stadium seating. How many mixing studios are set up with stadium seating.

I think the B-chain can be set up accuratly with the analyzer but familiar film should be played and listened to at proper fader setting of 7. If the sound sounds bad then u should tweek it while u still have equipment hooked up. Once u get the sound the way u want it make notes of where the anylizer is reading so it can help aid u in the next auditorium. Then do the same thing there.

The tuning should definitely still be done with the multiplexer and RTA running. Tone deafness is something I did not get into in that earlier post, but it is a very valid argument. This is why it is ideal to still have the RTA running for visual aid. Also, when adjusting the final tweeking by ear, only very minimal adjustments should be performed. The idea here is to smooth out what the RTA could not catch and the actual rolloff of the curve is never the same as auditorium sizes and acoustic designs change. Ideally only cut should be used when tweeking by ear...and of course AFTER the system is aligned as best as possible with an RTA. Still as I said earlier, my point was that a hearing test should be performed for sound techs. It doesn't matter if you are 30 or 60. If you can't pass the test with flying colors, you should not be touching a B-chain, regardless of age. The chart I posted earlier is an average, of course, but still is a very good ballpark to go by with respect to age. Maybe you are that incredibly rare exception to the rule. Most people do not like to admit hearing loss though, which is why I bring up the hearing test point.

Next time you need an aperture cut, hire a tech who wears glasses and make him do the job without them. Just how good will that aperture be?

I have used the R-2 for quite a few years now and I have gotten results that are so consistant its almost scary. Anyone other than a sound mixer that actually worked on a given mix should never tune a system any other way. Simple as that. If its tuned any other way then it simply tuned to that persons taste and hearing. Unfortunately there are other sound systems that are installed new this way as well. One never knows what to expect of these.........typically they sound boomy and like you are hearing sound from a horn.

A technician friend of mine that works with Edwards once told me that they tune the system with an RTA, and then tune it by ear and color the sound. I have to admit that the sound in their theaters is no where near as good as if it had been tuned with just the use of an R-2 and set to industry standards. It definately reeks of coloration and IMHO is pretty substandard sound.
Mark @ GTS

No one is saying that an EQ should be performed without the proper equipment. But R2 or not, rooms which are EQ'd to spec on the RTA and that's it, never ever sound as good as one where the tech went back in and actually listened.

This is all well and good, but who defines what sounds good. Good to one person (even with '20/20' hearing) may not be good to another. Why not 'tune' all sound systems by ear, eliminating the need to buy expensive analysers, or even better get the mixer to inject pink noise through the play heads of the theatre after he mixed the film, observe the trace on the RTA and send that out to theatres such that the same settings may be replicated..... just a thought.

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