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The only thing we could think of to do, was to change the gain settings for a few of the ampliphiers and lower the volume to about 4.5. The sound quality was crap, but at least there were no interruptions to the show.

This only happened in one theater with xXx, the theater right next to it ws also playing it, but there were no problems.

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Tim, from the sounds of it you are driving all of your amplifiers off of one power outlet strip, meaning off of only one breaker (probably a 15-20A). Plus there is no telling how many other things are also coming off of that circuit. Now's the time to call in an electrician to give you more circuits!

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You're absolutly right Brad. But this setup has been this way for about 9 years or so. And xXx is the first time there have ever been any problems at least in the 4 years that I've been there.

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" Shouldn't a system be bullet proof enough or self limited in some way so that nothing a track can do can destroy it, at least not while at fader = 7.0?"

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ABSOLUTELY! Unfortunately you can build a system that is plenty overkill to prevent such a thing from happening, but if you put a sloppy EQ into the processor, you can still blow drivers.

Case in point, I have worked at the Galaxy for around 4-5 years. The #5 house there was the auditorium to see a movie in around these parts. (80 foot screen and a top notch THX sound system, plus of course my film presentation. ) For a solid 3+ years we would commonly run films over "7" when it was appropriate. Not all movies played well at or over "7" though. I remember playing "The Mummy" at 5.5 in there. Other movies like "The Matrix" we ran between 8-9, depending on the crowd. Not once did we blow a driver...until about a year ago a tech came in and decided to retune the system using his ears (conveniently listening through the port window) and a Radio Shack SPL meter. That first show of the day with the fader set at "5", the center diaphragm blew. No joke, no exaggerations. It also sounded like shit and we immediately started getting customer complaints. Fortunately I had the EQ settings saved on my laptop and put them back and the theater has not blown another driver since, and that is with Episode II running between 7.5-9, depending on crowds.

As a comparision, trailers play at 4, and still do to this day in that room. By the way, I resigned from there a couple of weeks ago, as I don't have the time to devote to it any more. Josh and Paul got the last tour.

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I didn't want to mess wit hthe gain settings. It wasn't my idea. But it was the only thing that seemed to work. Simply lowering the volume by itself didnt work unless it was about level 4, and that was way too low.

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Tim, if you have to live with all the amps running off of one circuit breaker I would suggest that next time you have amps shutting off due to power starvation that you turn down the fader to a level suitable for the front channels then if you must shut off surround amps in left&right pairs (if bi-amped shut off hi&low for each left&right pair). Still not a proper solution but far better than adjusting input gains on a calibrated system.