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The guy who tunes our theaters is a real audio guy.. he runs a recording studio, but likes free movies. So, he does only the audio for us with an R2 unit, and we let him in free.

GOSH!!!
I could understand a little correction after the standard EQ but... 93dB?????? How could he made it????

Regarding poor EQ, perhaps I post this example again, in this case pls excuse me.

Once I have a very bad tech to EQ my theater. After the EQ the theater (an old theater with "normal" acoustic and good digital sound system) sonded terrible.
We tried with TITANIC. When the sailor saw the iceberg and they sounded the bell, the bell seemed far, closed in three boxes...

We projected in these condition for few weeks. When I had to project "INSTINCT", I had big troubles with sound level. If I put the volume to 6 or 7, the sound was so bad that was noisy. If I set the volume to 5 or lower, I had problems to understand dialogues.
Peoples complained that volume was too high, but when I tried to turn down the volume, pople complained that volume was too low...

Than, I had a true equalization, made with an R2 RTA by a THX tech. My system, for many reasons, was calibrated to 6.3 instead of 7. After that EQ I set most of the film between 6 to 6.5 and all sounded perfectly. I had 1 or 2 sound compliants during the next year while I had 1 or 2 sound compliants a week with previous EQ...
Ok, sometimes I had a movie recorded to impossible levels... But just few times.

Oh, that day, we tried TITANIC again. The bell was just behind the silver screen, where it should be.

Bye
Antonio

(Sneaky Trick: I used a translation engine! )

Seriously, I have no problem understanding you. Sometimes I see that you use English words with Itallian grammar but I don't have a problem with that. When I graduated high school, I took a summer vacation in Italy. (La Toscana) My friends, who spoke Itallian, told everybody that I spoke a little bit of Spanish so everybody thought I could understand them.... if they spoke LOUD ENOUGH!!! When I look back on it years later it's funny, but it wasn't a joke back then! I spent most of my time pulling my hair out just trying to understand people.

I think your English is molto bene!

I live in Tuscany!!
Thanks for your reply, I'm more relaxed now... I can continue posting here without the fear that anyone could understand me!

Ciao
Antonio

------------------
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

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JP said that JA said "He contends that room acoustics (especially reverb) require modification of the procedure for "tuning" a room, since human hearing tends to concentrate on the direct sound from the speakers, but the RTA microphones "hear" the entire room including the low frequency reverb, often making the objective EQ sound too "bright" and "harsh".
My experience with this is that it can be true in some instances but is usually not true. Probably more true in an HPS system because JFA has no reverb standards that are specified anyway. In fact I can remember JFA telling me many times that he liked a room that was a little on the live side. I always felt that this covered up the problems that were inherent in the high end response of the HPS speakers. As I have said before hearing a 70mm film with a great mix at the Chinese #2 in Hollywood was the confirming arm of this,at least for me and for a number of others I know.
If a room is built to The specified THX standard it will end up with quite little reverb, sometimes almost none, then what ever small bit reverb there may be is not nearly as big of a deal as the mics are not picking up much of it and the amount that might have to be factored in to readings is pretty irrelavent. Should standards be changed just to accomodate JFA's non-standards...I don't think so. His methods and designs are already a bit far to the left for most of us and probably justifiably so since he has other factors to deal with in his systems and rooms that most of us don't experience. Quite simply, his systems require a set of standards all their own.
Mark @ GTS

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Despite all the best intentions, the perception of what is comfortable in terms of volume varies widely with room size and acoustics. This, of course, assumes that everything else is properly calibrated (which is a BIG assumption!). As a point of reference, in our preview theater (49 seats, short decay time), we typically find we have to set the fader around 5.0 to 5.6 for most commercial titles. This varies slightly depending on whether it is a digital or analog track.

In conversations with other mixers who have been working in smaller rooms, they have stated that they typically have to set their monitor level about 4 db below 85dba, to maintain a good correlation to the apparent loudness in a larger house. While I still find that 85 dba works in theaters of about 250 seats or larger, the situation changes as the room volume shrinks. The other paradox is that on better quality systems, I find that the level usually needs to be a little lower. This could be due to better speech intelligability, high peak power capacity, etc.

Gord also makes a good point as well. Pink noise SHOULD ALWAYS be suspect and you should use a known good pink noise source only! Some inexpensive processors have really lousy built in PN generators and I generally refuse to use them for B chain alignment. I use either the Ivie PN generator or the C.E. card. Be careful here!!!!!!
Mark @ GTS

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