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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Hearing impaired signal?
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-25-2005 01:35 AM
quote: Michael Schaffer
I thought you worked in a state-of-the-art arthouse theatre. What processor do you use for "MegaSound"? Doesn't" it have a center-weighted HI output?
Michael, my face laughs at you. I work at a NON-PROFIT art house.....and they are not kidding when they say non-profit. "State-of-the-art" in our place is more like spit and bubble gum....it's really in the eye of the beholder...or the guy who writes the copy. Actually, I was talking about the booth at the small Cantor Theatre that uses the output from the 4 channel aux mixer for the HI unit. I like it because, as I said, you can set your levels per channel to whatever you like. Mostly it's C, but I generally mix R & L under just because I am a little worried that sure enough, there will be a film that is going to mix some important dialogue pinned to the location of a character off-center and it might get lost if I am only feeding Center channel exclusively.
quote: Richard Hamilton
What is "MegaSound"?
Hey guys...it's not my fault....Richard asked. In the big theatre where we have Megasound,, this is what we've got -- it's a humble CP50, but modified by Lonny himself at Dolby to replace caps and improve it's response and outfitted it with an automation card. Anyway, it's as state-of-the-art as we get, and we make no apology. DTS is about as state-of-the-art as we get with digital -- no money even over the horizon for SRD. MegaSound is a marketing word; it's got its own logo icon (suspiciously similar to 70mm logo). Before that it was Enthraphonic Sound, but that was to esoteric....the masses like Mega much better; it's immediately understood. I almost went with EpiSound, but Mega won. We worried that Warner had already used it (ALTERED STATES, I believe), but we couldn't ever find it anywhere in print where it had the (R) or (TM) after it, so we made it ours. No cease and desist emails from Warners for over ten years, so I guess we are safe.
Actually what the system had that we felt was unique enough for us to claim that it's special and thus deserved a name all its own was this: we were lucky in that the theatre already had a massive rock & roll sound system with 8 super-efficient proprietary fiberglass Community subbase bins each with 2 18in subwoofers, each driven by 800w HH amps. Hefty, to say the least, Mega to say the most. I always said if I ever get a hold of a print of EARTHQUAKE and that ramdom LF noise generator, I could do a very respectable rattle-your-gonads Sensurround without bringing in any extra equippment.
Instead of wimpy side speakers for the surround sound, we had two double bins in the corner for point-source surround, something THX first talked about as preferable to mulitple surrounds, although I still can't find the white paper where that is discussed. To make it even more unique, the system also uses a BBE aural exciter for the center channel to enhance speech intelligibility (this is a 2500 seat cavern and it really needs help; I experimented with the Aphex Aural Exciter but found the British BBE equivalent more effective. The AX gives a subjective sense that things are just clearer and cleaner. I don't know how it does it, but it does it while not artificially excentuating the high frequency response -- it's not brighter as much as it is must "cleaner." It's hard to explain, but nice to hear. And lastly, I use an IMX Dimensional Enhancer. It uses phase information to give a better sense of space in the music and effects; it works on only the L & R channels and seems to make sound come from beyond the speakers. We ran TOWERING INFERNO and there is one scene where the music track had a quiet, plaintive flute solo & damned if it didn't sound like there was a flutest hiding just behind the curtain playing live. It seems to make everything wider. In a large hall, the stereo effect can sometimes be deminished. With this box you can dial it from zero effect to pretty wide. If used judiciously, it can be quite impressive....Mega-impressive, in fact.
Don't ya just LOVE showbiz? ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Oh and PS, we don't show films FLAT (could there BE any more unattractive nomenclature?)....our flat films are in Wide Screen Dimension.. Yes sir. We even have a logo icon for it that we slap on every ad, flyer and 1-sheet. Actually, I originally was going for Wide Screen Dimension 185 -- an homage to the great Dimension 150, of course -- but my associate drew the line in the sand on that one. And we don't just have anamorphic lenses, we proudly boast that we show films with Ultra High Definition Baush & Lomb CinemaScope 55 Lenses . Got a icon logo for that too!
I'll stop now.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-25-2005 08:21 PM
quote: Michael Schaffer
Do you have a logo and icon for everything?
Yes, Michael....yes we do.
quote: Michael Schaffer
Do you also sell MegaPop(TM) or EpiCorn(TM).
Hmmmmm, now that you mention it.....here's my chance to finally use that Epi thing. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
quote: Michael Schaffer
Are you registered as a trademark too? FrankAngel(TM)
Well, not quite, but pretty close. In the mid 70s I created a programmed package of prerecorded music that we rented mostly to college cinemas -- there were quite a few of them back then BV (Before Video) that actually ran film. The preshows were 20-25min programs that were used much like movietunes only not nearly as obnoxous -- no stupid "DJ" and no ads. And yes, Frank Angel's Preshow Stereo Rock Concert(tm) to this day is still a Registered Trademark.
It even had it's own jingle and a psychadelic snipe in both 16mm and 35mm formats. It was recorded in matrixed 4->2->4 and if you used any of the then popular Quadraphonic decoders to decode it, you got 360 stereo surround sound. Most of our cinema clients only had mono filmsound, but damn if they didn't have 4 channel preshow music! And of course, that 4 channel sound was recorded in -- you guessed it -- Enthraphonic Sound (r). And you bet your bippi it was a trademark.
The programs were sent out on 1/4trk reel-to-reel or cassette. We recorded the programs on both sides of the RtR tape and both the A & B sides of the cassette, so that when they played it for one performance, it was already heads up for the next show without any rewinding. We called this feature the MobiousWind It had an icon; it had a circle and an R.
The preshow could be timed so as to end EXACTLY as the feature hit the screen. It had built in musical cues to cue the house lights, screen lights and curtian should the theatre want to go that professional. All the programs ended with a signature, very souped-up enhanced tag from the end of a Beatles song. Bet you can all guess which one it was.
If I can figure out how to post a .wav file (and if it is allowable) I'll post the jingle and the closing tag just as we run into the Warner Bros cartoon soundtrack. It's the way we always started the show. If I can figure out how to scan movie film, I'll post the snipes too.
[ 01-25-2005, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: Frank Angel ]
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