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Author Topic: Is there such a thing as an ENVELOP (overhead or height) channel ? Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 06-27-2006 09:06 PM                     Tom Holman's 10.2 lab uses elevation speakers behind the screen. But any processor that will handle 10.2 would need more than just elevation channels because there are additional surround channels too.  |  IP: Logged Martin Brooks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 900 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 07-05-2006 07:14 PM                        quote: quote: Frank Angel And you can be sure someone is already thinking about putting a channel UNDER the seats -- they will call it envelope-up-your-butt-surround. William Castle did it in the early 60s with first run showings of The Tingler (with Vincent Price). They wired some seats with vibrators so when the tingler got loose, it seemed like it was crawling through the theater. You should have heard the screams! Now this was showmanship!  |  IP: Logged Jarrad Salmon Film Handler Posts: 25 From: Baulkham Hills, NSW, Australia Registered: May 2006 posted 07-06-2006 02:16 AM                     Although it exists, I personally don't see the point in it. I guess many people have the same view as me, seeing that it is not a regular installation. Personally, I believe if a film is mixed right, sound will be percieved to be going overhead, when in fact it is comming from the surrounds. Kinda the same way sound can be percieved to be coming from the middle of two speakers in a stereo mix of a cd.  |  IP: Logged Brian Guckian Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 594 From: Dublin, Ireland Registered: Apr 2003 posted 07-08-2006 12:21 PM                     Elevated channels behind the screen would also seem easier to retrofit in exisiting theatres than getting into the ceiling void and all that entails. You would additionally need more speakers for a "Voice of God" because of the relative depth of most theatres. quote: Frank Angel This thing about adding more and more channels has gotten a WAY out of control, IMHO. Sony's 8 channles makes you feel positively sensory challenged when you realize you only have those mere two wimpy ears to hear it all with. How will I ever appreciate all those extra channels? To be fair, the great thing about SDDS-8 (and currently DTS-8) is the separation of music and effects from dialogue. With 5 stage channels, music and effects can be spread across the right, inner right, inner left and left channels, keeping the centre free purely for dialogue. In the 5.1 system, music and effects are often mixed in with the centre channel dialogue to ensure a good spread, but keeping the centre completely free for dialogue gives terrific clarity. I remember seeing Godzilla (7.1 mix) in an SDDS-8 theatre here on release and it just sounded fantastic - far better than 5.1.  |  IP: Logged Gordon McLeod Film God Posts: 9532 From: Toronto Ontario Canada Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-08-2006 12:44 PM                     Imax has a centre top screen channel that works very weel with rocket launches and flyovers  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-08-2006 02:10 PM                        I would think that keeping dialogue locked into fixed center position, while it was necessary when mixing within the limitations of alignment-intensive matrixed stereo (put that dialogue anywhere but dead center, and in playback systems that were even slightly misaligned, it could wind up anywhere, especially in the surrounds), in discrete systems like 4trk mag and digital, you have the ability to have location-specific dialogue. Why waste all those channels if you are afraid to have dialogue follow the visual action? That was the beauty of 70mm and even 35mm 4trk mag -- they could (and DID) mix for sounds, even dialogue, to follow screen location. An actor could walk across a 65 ft screen and his voice would follow him perfectly. It was a beautiful thing, and it was all abandoned when the 4-2-4 matrix debuted. Why should a rocket ship get the realism of sound following it, not only left to right, but from bottom to the top of the screen, while someone talking on the left side of a 60 foot screen has to have his detached voice coming from 30ft away? There have been opinions voiced by some members here which contend that speakers placed above the screen instead of directly behind it will negatively impact the visual cues as to where a sound is coming in relation to its visual position on the screen. Well, if that is true and dislocated sound by speakers placed a few feet to the left and right of the screen and slightly above it can negatively impact eye/ear sync, how much more disconcerting would dialogue be if it's point source is 20-30 feet away from its corresponding image? And if anything, we are much more sensitive and much less forgiving of skewed vocal location where a person's voice is out of sync with his visual position, than, say, the music score. I say USE those 8, 10 whatever channels; bring back location-specific dialogue!  |  IP: Logged Martin Brooks Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 900 From: Forest Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2002 posted 07-08-2006 10:11 PM                        I have sought out SDDS-8 channel presentations on the few occasions when they've actually been advertised that way and I've never actually discerned the extra channels. In addition, I don't think I've ever been to an SDDS presentation that I thought sounded really good. Part of this is probably because both the acoustics of the theater and the mixes themselves are designed to present a sound field, not a discrete mix and it's possible that even the SDDS-8 releases, didn't do a separate mix, but instead just combined the adjacent channels, much like many later (non-Todd-AO) 70mm releases did with channels 2 and 4 before Dolby pushed the Baby Boom format. I have a lot of respect for Tom Holman's work, but one of the things I disagree with is his insistence on that sound field. I remember seeing one of the Lethal Weapon sequels (probably Lethal Weapon 2) in San Francisco at a THX certified theater (maybe the Coronet?). In that theater and mix, the dialogue was primarily center and the music soundtrack was everywhere but the center. I thought it sounded spectacular. It created a level of definition that you don't ordinarily hear in movie mixes. I saw many 70mm films with stereo or panned dialogue and while I loved it then, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it now. As far as channels added for height effects, I can't believe it would add enough of a positive effect to be worth it. I don't think I've ever been able to actually perceive the center surround channel (Dolby Digital EX or DTS ES) and the height channel would probably be used even less. Non-discrete sounding stereo has been a trend for many years- in music recordings as well as movies. Most stereo recordings don't have much more stereo in them than the stereo echo return. (You can hear the stereo portion of a 2-channel recording by switching to mono and making one channel out-of-phase with the other [L-R]). What's left is just the difference signal - just the stereo.  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-09-2006 10:53 AM                     I am a big advocate of panned dialog. I also have found that you need 5-screen channels in most any theatre to pull it off. 3-screen channels never really works since phantoming dialog leads to poor clarity. I have often complained about the hard center dialog leading to poor perceived lip sync and out and out confusing the brain. Dialog above the action also does not work...I can't be in a theatre watching a movie for more than a few seconds before that drives me nuts. Personally, I would go for 7 speakers across the front before I went for the first raised speakers. I would have 5 laterally behind the screen and one just outside the screen for "off-screen calls" that are not "surround" effects. 5-screen speakers works well for dialog because most every postion is good for the actors on the screen (1-shot, center; 2-shot, LC and RC, 3-shot, LC, C and RC...etc.). To hear this...go listen to a 70mm show of The Sound of Music. For me, the priority would be 5-screen channels with one surround, then the second surround, then a 4-channel surround (Left-Side, Left-Rear...etc) so an effect can be pulled arround the audience)...then I would add the Left-Outside/Right Outside...then the Ceiling or raised channels. In reality, who has time to mix for all of that? The sound MUST augment the story, not be the "star." When one is conscience of the technicalities of the show, it ruins the illusion...hence why I HATE hard center dialog. The only thing worse is "draped dialog" where dialog is louder in the center and "draped" into left and right to completely ruin the illusion.  |  IP: Logged Brian Guckian Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 594 From: Dublin, Ireland Registered: Apr 2003 posted 07-09-2006 09:10 PM                     I remember reading though somewhere that panned dialogue caused editorial problems, i.e. problems in the cutting, and that's why it fell out of favour. I think it was that when one cut from one angle to another, the actors could switch positions, and it was very difficult for the mixers to follow the action correctly. But with modern digital mixing desks, with their programmable faders, maybe it can be reintroduced. [Dubbing theaters are really great places to visit BTW... you really appreciate the hard work that goes in to creating movie soundtracks]  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-10-2006 10:38 AM                        quote: Brian Guckian I remember reading though somewhere that panned dialogue caused editorial problems, i.e. problems in the cutting, and that's why it fell out of favour. I was at an SMPTE meeting where this issue was discussed and it seemed to be the concensus that only discrete channels were capable of handling panned dialogue whereas the Dolby matrix simply was not accurate enough. Keeping dialogue dead center kept everything nice and neat, if not dull and with all the shortcomings that Steve enumerated but without the worry that it would leak into the surrounds, a real no-no. It's one thing if a special effect that you position to the extreme left or right bleeds into the surround, that only broadens the spacial feel of it, but dialogue bleeding into the surrounds is just a horrific artifact of matrixed surround. On the other hand, there were also some filmmakers who chimed in that they didn't like panning, not because it was to difficult for the sound guys (sound mixers can do ANYTHING the director tells them....we are THAT good ), but because precisely on those cut-aways, if you are keeping hard and fast to "absolute" true dialogue localization, the sound would have to jump back and forth with each cut, and THAT would call too much attention to itself. So in most productions where dialogue localization was used all those descrete mag prints of 60s and 70s stereo releases, a good sound mixer would compromise and cheat a bit to avoid just that kind of jolting audio switching. During the many years where there was no such thing as Dolby stereo and ALL we had were 6 and 4 descrete channels to work with and sound could be placed anywhere the director wanted it without worry about crosstalk, they pretty much learned how to do panning without drawing attention to itself, which is the goal of any cinematic process or special effect. (Aside) Which is why the idea of needing to put on and take off polarized glasses over and over during SUPERMAN is just a stupid gimmick and it reeks of ultra-assholism. As for overhead speakers, to get this thread back where it belongs, I seem to recall that the Zeigfeld in Manhattan used to have ceiling surrounds in the early days, and I read somewhere, I believe in one of the earliest white papers on Dolby's 4.0 matrix stereo, probably in their SMPTE article, that overhead surrounds were discussed as a viable way to do surround. At the museum we have ceiling surrounds, not that it was designed that way -- in fact the original design had NO surround channel. When I was called in to run film there, I insisted they install surround speakers, but that, they informed me, would "compromise" the famous Japanese architect's design. I kept thinking, "....but we're running movies, the lights are out....no one is looking at his design." So I did the best I could with what I had -- luckilly the PA system used an array of ceiling speakers that was separate from the cinema system. I patched into that system and sent the surround channel into the PA ceiling speakers. It's passable, but just barely. It can't get up to reference level so it's OK for ambience surround mixes, but current day mixes that demand full range, full power surround playback, it pretty much craps out and since it's all 70v distribution, the dinkly little transformes that they are using just saturate and act as their own self-limiter. Good thing they don't have digital in there yet -- one good explosion and that would just blow the little buggers apart.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 07-10-2006 02:13 PM                     I guess I don't really understand how the matrixing algorithm works. It sounds like, Frank, you are saying that a signal panned into the left channel is more likely to bleed into the surrounds than a signal solely in the center channel? I would have thought -- since the center channel and the surround channel are both represented by out-of-phase information in-common between left and right -- that center channel sound would be most likely to bleed into the surrounds, and left and right sounds would be least likely. Is that wrong?  |  IP: Logged Oscar Neundorfer Master Film Handler Posts: 275 From: Senoia, GA Registered: May 2000 posted 07-12-2006 12:00 AM                        John, Center channel material is represented by in-phase and equal level on left total and right total channels from the soundtrack. Surround is basically out-of-phase and equal level material between left total and right total. As long as center channel material is derived this way, then minimal leakage to the surrounds will result. A matrix is not perfect, however, and neither is the mix and the a-chain setup, so long ago and far away, time delay was added to the surround channel to help mask what little crosstalk occured. All in all it works pretty well.  |  IP: Logged Sam D. Chavez Film God Posts: 2153 From: Martinez, CA USA Registered: Aug 2003 posted 07-12-2006 10:55 AM                       Ah, panned dialog. What a subject. Even if mixed perfectly on mag or 5.1, whatever, the timbre of the actors voice always sounds just different enough on channels other than the center. Even if all the speakers are identical the left and right can gather more bass from the closer proximity to the front corners of the theatre and tend to sound chestier or heavier. If different actors are talking to each other across the screen, it sounds OK but then is very level dependent. The surrounds are a whole other matter and an even worse problem. Placing dialog only works in a very controlled situation Take that Steve G. who is loading his weapon as it were.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 07-12-2006 04:08 PM                     I pretty much agree with you Sam. In the old days of more limited bandwidth A & B chains the obvious differences in overall speaker sound didn't matter as much but today its a different story with wode band material and playback systems... You're right with side speakers being in closer proximity to the wall, it really does have an effect on lower mid and down. If only everyone built their rooms an extra 30 feet wider than the screen was! I say Thank God that Sony is now really a dead issue and that they get to meet the dumpster as they die. Mark  |  IP: Logged Steve Guttag We forgot the crackers Gromit!!! Posts: 12814 From: Annapolis, MD Registered: Dec 1999 posted 07-12-2006 07:07 PM                     Actually, Sony still has 8-channel films on the schedule. In fact, they probably outpace Surround-EX. As one that has heard panned dialog in a great many places over a great many systems...it almost always is a worse experience with a hard-center dialog...it is most un-natural. While it is true that panned dialog can be done wrong and annoying, there is no reason it has to be. Rules need to be developed and learned just like the 180-degree rule for shooting the picture. The Sound of Music is an excellent example of panned dialog done right...2001 is another one and it shows they figured out how to pan dialog without being distracting...there are times when the dialog will NOT be where the actor is because shifting it at some points would be distracting yet keeping it where it was last heard works AND gives directional cues. Dialog in the surrounds almost never works...except for "HAL" in 2001...HAL is everywhere and it adds to his creepiness.  |  IP: Logged

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