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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: simple stupid mag sound question
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 10-14-2007 04:32 AM
TOMMY was billed as "Quintaphonic Sound" and it was designed by John Mosley who had worked on multichannel optical sound using a multicolor soundtrack (was it called Kinetek?). Thing about the TOMMY release -- try to find a print; they were very hard to come by, at least here in the states. Evidently whatever inventory they had of them were concentrated in the UK. We could only get a straight 4trk.
We also ran another non-standard 4trk mag print -- LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE ROLLING STONES. It had split surrounds, using what was normally the center channel as one of the surround sides, the normal surround track being the other side. The center channel was a sum of L&R. It worked fairly well, and in our house which does have point-source split surrounds -- two JBL double bins in either corner -- it was very impressive indeed.
The center sum was a different story -- dialogue was indistinct and you got the sense that it "wandered" depending on the seat and even how you moved your head. It would have been helped by Dolby's "smart" processing that boosts center information that is identical in L & R, so dialogue is dominat in the center. Be that as it may, the mag made it sound spectacular over what you were used to hearing over optical mono.
Given that our system uses a patchbay to route all signals, reconfiguring it for this feature was easy. Not so sure how easy it would have been in other places.
There was another maverick mag configuration that we ran into -- I don't know if it even had a name, but when Samuel Goldwin bought the rights to SOUTH PACIFIC and OKLAHOMA! in the 80s, they struck 3 trk mag prints on standard sprocket stock. This gave them room for L, C, R but no surround. It also made the heads ride ever so slightly on the sprocket holes themselves which was not a good thing for the heads, I would imagine. We only played both these titles for 4 shows each, so I wouldn't think it could damage the heads for that short time, but it probably would not be a good idea to play these prints for weeks on end. They did look excellent image-wise and the screen channels were mag and duly robust and impressive but I really did miss the surrounds.
To compensate, I took one of our recording studio Sansui QS Vario matrix decoders which we used to record and play back Quadraphonic sound in the studio and rigged that in the booth to feed that the L & R screen channels and outputed the Sansui to the L & R rear channels.
The matrix extracted out-of-phase ambience from the L & R fronts and I would manually sneak that up into the surrounds during the musical numbers in the films. L & R did have dialogue, but it was under the music and the matix totally eliminated it, so we didn't get vocals in the surrounds just music -- whatever the matrix found out-of-phase. I only brought this up very gently, just so there was a hint of it behind the audience. The exception was the very long ballet sequence in OKLAHOMA, which sounded spectacular with it playing equal volume in the surrounds. The orchestra was 360 around the audience.
For CAROUSEL, we only could get a mono print. DAMN Fox -- they PROMISED a mag print -- sent me one which indeed SAID mag on the can, but turned out to only be mono. I was so angry (we had advertised stereo) that I was determined I was going to get SOME surround, so I went into the studio with a christmas ornament -- a bundle of little glass bells on ribbons. They made a perfect sound of the glass stars that tinkle in the "heaven" sequences in the film. I recorded them {in stereo} and then during the run of the film, I had my assistant playback the stereo "bells" recording in the split surrounds. It was very effective -- just the subtle sound of the "stars" almost identical to the stars sound in the screen channel, but all around the theatre.
So what if my collegues pointed fingers and whispered and called me crazy -- it's all for the audience!
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