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Topic: Sensurround

Donald Brown
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 131
From: Lincoln, DE
Registered: Sep 2009

posted 02-10-2018 02:25 PM

Edwin's post brought back a memory that I have always discounted as deceptive advertising, but perhaps not!
I was in my teens when both Earthquake and Midway were released. I saw both titles in indoor theatres, Cinema 28 and the Cape Cod Mall Cinema, respectively, where the Sensurround speakers were arrayed in the rear of the auditorium. When Midway was released, the Wareham Drive-In Theatre advertised the engagement in Sensurround.
Edwin's reference to the network broadcast of Earthquake and the accompanying Sensurround simulcast leads me to wonder if the drive-in's ad might have been accurate, with the Sensurround effect presented by radio broadcast and the standard soundtrack by in-car-speakers?

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William Kucharski
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 244
From: Louisville, Colorado, United States of America
Registered: Oct 2012

posted 03-07-2018 11:13 AM

quote: Frank Angel
Funny that the Mod I is so hard to come by, given how the film played pretty extensively all over the country and overseas. What happens to all that hardware...theatres just chucked it in the dumpsters?

When Mod II Sensurround around came out with the release of Midway, theaters could send their original Sensurround control boxes back to MCA, who would modify them and return them as fully functional Mod II boxes.

Since the changes were all done by MCA, the modifications were impossible to reverse and as the two systems were entirely different, it's likely MCA just chucked the parts from the original boxes.

What makes this even worse is that there is an error in the schematic in the patent application for Sensurround, meaning you can't just build a new Mod I box from the circuit diagram in the patent. [Frown]

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Martin Brooks
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 900
From: Forest Hills, NY, USA
Registered: May 2002

posted 03-08-2018 10:54 PM

Is this that complicated? I thought it just used two control tones: 25Hz and 35Hz and that the 25Hz control tone generated 17Hz through the Sensurround subs, Seems to me the complicated part would be reproducing the speaker systems. IIRC, the Sensurround amps were 1600 watts

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Gordon McLeod
Film God

Posts: 9532
From: Toronto Ontario Canada
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-09-2018 08:39 AM

All the Sensurround systems i workled with were two channel 220 watt BGW amps running bridge mono per cabinet
The box also provided DBX decoding as well

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Jim Cassedy
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1661
From: San Francisco, CA
Registered: Dec 2006

posted 03-09-2018 09:56 PM

quote: Gordon McLeod
the Sensurround systems i workled with were two channel
220 watt BGW amps running bridge mono per cabinet

That's my recollection too. I photographed several of the systems
I worked with back in the 1970's,and went looking for the negatives so
I could scan some pix of the installations, but couldn't locate exactly
where I'd stashed the negatives. They're here "somewhere".

> But I did manage to locate my Nov 1975 "Earthquake" issue of
American Cinematographer which I'd held onto all these years, and
has been long lost. (or at least long mis-placed - - It had somehow
gotten folded inside an old religious magazine that had an absolutely
hysterical article about Pope Gregory and the Council Trent.
Whatta wacky guy! Pope G was quite a pip!. . . . but I digress))

It's a great issue! Over 95% of it is dedicated to the production
of the Earthquake flick, and to the Sensurround technology.

Lots of info, and great pictures.

Film-sound legend Walden O Watson risks permanent hearing
damage giving one of the Sensurround cabinets a close inspection.
[my caption- not from A-C !]

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