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Author
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Topic: 6 Track Magnetic vs 6 Track Digital
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-01-2011 06:02 PM
quote: Edward Havens
Forgive me for disagreeing, but what got DTS a permanent foothold in the market was cost and George Lucas. DTS was half the cost of Dolby Digital and SDDS, and when Lucas demanded theatres be equipped with digital sound in order to book the Star Wars Special Editions in 1997, that's when they exploded.
That's incorrect on many points.
Like Tom said, George Lucas had nothing to do with DTS. Further the SE versions of Star Wars were released years after DTS cemented its position in the marketplace. Supposedly Lucas wanted his new Star Wars special editions playing only in THX certified theaters. The only thing he was able to do was give THX certified theaters priority in booking the films.
If George Lucas wanted to give DTS any sort of priority he could have released his movies exclusively in DTS. However, by that time quad format SR/SRD/DTS/SDDS prints were being used more and more often. Even Sony and Universal dropped their exclusive use of SDDS and DTS respectively to go quad format.
Steven Spielberg (not George Lucas) and Universal Studios backed DTS either in late 1992 or early 1993. DTS' debut with Jurassic Park put nearly 900 systems into theaters. That dwarfed the install base of Dolby Digital systems. DTS carved out an even larger lead over the next three years. Dolby Digital made up that ground and eventually overtook DTS in worldwide install numbers after they developed the CP500 integrated cinema processor/Dolby Digital player.
Cost was a big difference between Dolby Digital and DTS. The first Dolby Digital systems were priced at over $20,000. In the DTS roll out the DTS-6 players cost $3500 and the DTS-S systems cost only $2500. The regular price for a DTS player was $5900. I think DTS ran the pricing special again for the release of Stargate. Dolby Digital cut its price in half with the release of the DA-20 system. When the CP500 debuted in the late 1990s it had a cost advantage with integrating a cinema processor and Dolby Digital player into one unit. Dolby initially only planned for Dolby Digital to be used in major theaters in big cities; the system was originally priced that way. DTS saw the situation differently. Dolby was forced to answer DTS' challenge rather than play things conservatively.
quote: Tom Petrov
I am not 100%, but Warner Bros was the first studio to support all three sound formats.
I think Fox was actually the first to do it with Die Hard With A Vengeance. Warner Bros. had released a few movies with Dolby Digital and DTS in 1994, but shifted to supporting Dolby Digital and SDDS until 1996 when Twister was released. Then they went quad format.
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Frank Angel
Film God
Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 01-02-2011 11:25 PM
quote: Ron Curran
I thought it was a highly inferior cheap substitute and was saddened to see it overtake mag as a sound format.
You thought exactly right, Ron. The difference between DISCRETE tracks as opposed to MATRIXED tracks was/is palpable. Going matrix, that alone was a significant step backwards. The matrix is incapable of playing back audio in one specific channel without it bleeding into the other channels.
Had Dolby abandoned the insistence of including a surround track and designing a system as a discrete, two track stereo system with a derived center, they could have avoided all that matrixing nonsense and time delay trickery which was only accurate for very limited seating locations. If they had settled on a discrete, two channel system (with a derived center), then if the mix required a sound to emanate from JUST the left channel or JUST from the right channel it could do that without the compromises a matrix design required. It is because their 4.1 system cannot do that (mag, of course, can), that Dolby mixes are relegated to having dialog locked to the center channel only, lest dialog wind up coming from behind the audience with a surround bleed. Dolby matrix cannot effectively localize dialog to the image on the screen. Dolby was quick to spin this inability as a positive, claiming that localized dialog was "distracting." Bullshit.
Like Ron, we played practically every 4trk mag release. Hiss never was even a minor issue. We have a Conservatory of Music attached to our facility and a TV Center populated by some very talented and discerning audio engineers,many of them AES, SMPTE and NARAS members and when I installed our mag system I was just a green pup and enlisted their help in calibrating and aligning the system. We did hours of testing and listening to both test loops and reels of film -- 2001, to be exact -- and the final sound was clean and hiss so unobtrusive that it could not be heard over the ambient noise contained on the film soundtrack.
Also remember, mag predated noise reduction by a decade. If mag had the advantage of Dolby A applied to the tracks of 35mm 4trk mag, hiss would be below the noise floor of the preamps themselves. Hum is more of a problem than hiss.
And say what you will about 4trk mag, but a study was done at some point and published in the SMPTE Journal that found that the smaller Fox sprocket holes ("Fox holes") actually wore better than the larger standard holes. When I heard that, it sounded counter-intuitive, but there it was and I found it odd then that the industry never changed over completely to the CinemaScope print configuration. As far as I know, a majority of theatres in the country replaced standard sprockets with the Fox sprockets even if they didn't have stereo equipment.
And yes -- less scratches as the film did not have as much contact with surrounding layers. A reel of striped 35mm and a reel of non-striped film of the same length would fill the reel to a greater diameter. That is why when 8mm and 16mm film is striped for mag on one edge they have to apply a "balance" stripe on the opposite side so the film will lay flat and evenly on itself. Without the balance stripe, a full reel would be a mess.
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