[/beginrant]

Regarding bass & sound leakage, and speaking of local Regal and Cinemark theaters, all of them with digital sound. I've whined about this before, might as well whine some more.

The Regal houses (which were originally THX-certified) all have strong, well-articulated deep bass. They also have significant sound leakage between theaters. SO WHAT????!! I've been there many times when sound leakage was very apparent, but I've never seen anyone get up and complain. The worst ever was seeing "AI" next door to "The Fast And The Furious" (I think that's what it was). Sound leakage into AI was terrible. I didn't care because it didn't bother me, and the other audience wasn't being cheated.

The Cinemark houses all have weak, anemic deep bass. Especially the SR-D ones, which have practically no deep bass. I've complained to them, and the response is "We comply with industry standards. The other guys goose their systems up." Which is BS. And besides, they have sound leakage from the mids and highs. Might as well balance it out with the lows too.

I happen to love powerful, well-articulated deep bass. That's one of the sound characteristics that's difficult to duplicate in a home theater setting, if for no other reason than the small volume of air in a small room. In a large theater with good subwoofers, they can move a lot of air, they don't have major problems with standing waves, so they can really sound good in this department. If the subs are deliberately muted, it's cheating the audience out of one of the things that movie theaters can almost always do better than home theater. Bah.

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"And besides, they have sound leakage from the mids and highs."

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Is Cinemark trying to take the AMC "Silence Is Golden" program to a whole different level?

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If there is mid and high leakage from the auditorium next door at your local multiplex, they REALLY went super cheap-o with the sound insulation between rooms

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I don't doubt that at all. This is really the only significant thing I can fault Cinemark on in the design of these theaters, considering this is relatively new construction and they have plenty of "history" of awareness of this issue. I suspect even the roof HVAC units are sound-damped. Beats the heck out of me why they didn't do a little more to help abate sound leakage through the adjoining walls.

Regal gets a free pass on this issue since they inherited this location from Act III. It's a mystery why Act III didn't do something about this problem when they renovated the place in the mid-90s.

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It's no wonder they have to set their subs to what mine as well be referred to as "off".

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Well, my argument would be they shouldn't worry so much about this issue. Regal doesn't and nobody's banging down their doors complaining. Turn up the subs for crying out loud.

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nobody's banging down their doors complaining.

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That doesn't mean anything. Unless the film stops, I've never seen anyone complain. In fact, that's the excuse that theatre managers use whenever I complain. They say, "well no one else is complaining." And that's with out of focus images, sound channels in the wrong place or missing, etc.

I remember years ago seeing ET in a first-run Broadway theatre in which there was 60-cycle hum in all the surrounds. I went to the manager and he said to someone else, "oh..he noticed the problem. Give him his money back." But I was the only one there complaining.

Some weeks back I went to see a film and the Dolby was acting very strangely. The center channel had really strange EQ and the dialogue level was way down. But the trailers had all played okay and I'm almost certain they were also in digital. So I complained, the manager came into the theatre but stood only way in the back and only listened for a second and pronounced everything fine. So I demanded my money back and when the cashier wanted to know what was wrong he said, "the sound doesn't meet his standards" as if it were only my problem.

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Film Journal Exhibition Guide

Some circuits now have feedback forms on their websites.

If the distributor hired THX, Dolby, Kodak ScreenCheck, etc. to monitor the quality of presentation for a particular feature, use their feedback form or hotline:
http://www.thx.com/professional_services/tap_800.html
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/screencheck/worldwide.shtml
http://www.dolby.com/press/co_pr_0207_PrintChecking.html

------------------
John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion

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Remember that when you measure a subwoofer level with an SPL reader out of the port window you are near a wall where, usually, the bass level are stronger.

Also, I found (for experience and for user's suggestions!) that SPL reader is no reliable with subwoofers.

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Online feedback forms: In recent months, Regal always replies. It's a "canned" response, but I know they're forwarding the comments to the district and local managers, and they have fixed some things I've complained about. Cinemark always forwards the comment to the local manager, who always replies personally. The only "brick wall" I've run into with them is the subwoofer levels, which I've mentioned a couple times. The local manager insists they are correct, maybe because that's what his tech is telling him. They are not correct, and they are also inconsistent from house to house. A few are almost OK (all DTS), but most are very low or non-existent (especially SR-D). Their largest house has SR-D that actually sounds like it's EQd very well in the mids and highs, but there is NO deep bass in there at all. ARGH!

I often hear many managers that say that subwoofer level is right because "I can hear it from the outside of the theater". Unfortunately they ignore physic laws that say that while a high frequency is stopped by a door, very low frequencies continue their trip despite doors and walls. But in the auditorium the low frequencies has to be louder than the high ones to be felt correctly.

Am I right?

Do you know if the Cinemark theater subs sounded correct from the theaters opening day? Reason why I ask is they may have a problem they are not aware of or unwilling to do anything about. We found a problem with our rack systems that we have remedied. Apparently when they pre-wired the racks they added an unnedded ground wire to the wiring conections in the bottom of the racks. This was causing groundloops and problems driving the subs causeing unknown overloads and speaker failures. We eliminated the extra grounds and wired all conections by tying them together with the appropriat wires instead of using that block down in the rack. This has improved bass response and allows the amps to run cooler. We also had to replace around ten subwoofer cones.

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