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Author Topic: Ingesting Doremi DCP2000 Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-22-2011 02:31 PM                     William - I guess most here would suggest you take the step towards a dedicated processor instead of wiring the DA directly to your amps. The Dolby 750 is 'relatively' inexpensive compared to their other film-capable processors - though I have to admit even the 750 is overfeatured for you. I don't know. I do know people can enjoy movies even through suboptimal audio systems. Yet I would not encourage it as a base installation. I mean, you saved so much on the projection system - the Dolby 750 should be in your budget. With it, it is relatively easy to expand your system to center and even surround speakers. Or, try to find a second hand JSD80. It just seems so wrong to connect a state-of-the art multichannel linear PCM source to such a mediocre audio system. What kind of movies will you play? - Carsten  |  IP: Logged William F Green Film Handler Posts: 84 From: Brighton, East Sussex, UK Registered: Jun 2005 posted 08-23-2011 07:42 AM                     Carsten - Yes, I would be the first to admit that the current system is not ideal. It's not mediocre though, it's just not processed or multi-channel! Having said that it actually sounds considerably better than a colleagues Dolby digital (film) system.. which doesn't say much for his setup. The screen is non-perf (not fitted by us) making a centre channel a little impractical for now. There's no surround at the moment but we could add this later - maybe (depends on permission from the local authority who own and run the building). But yes, anyway I take your point about connecting digital kit to an inferior system - and I agree. We have to decode the digital output from the server one way or another and so a processor will probably be the most efficient way to do it rather than just a DA converter - even if it is overkill from the perspective of our current 2-3 channel analogue system. Carsten, you asked about AAM contacts - they are all listed on their site for each region/country. Thanks for all the suggestions so-far about the server and sound etc.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 08-23-2011 09:56 AM                     So it's not mediocre because you know someone who has a system that sounds worse? And to be frank, I'd say Carsten was being kind referring to it as mediocre here. It's one thing to not have surrounds. But you don't even have a CENTER. You can't properly play back dialog. You're missing what is arguably the most important speaker in the entire setup. Just calling it the way I see it.  |  IP: Logged William F Green Film Handler Posts: 84 From: Brighton, East Sussex, UK Registered: Jun 2005 posted 08-23-2011 10:58 AM                     Chris that's not what I was saying at all. It's not mediocre full stop. The point I was making is that more channels do not always equal better sound. How would you expect a centre speaker to sound behind a non-perf screen? To my mind it would be pretty dumb to try to penetrate a non-perf screen in that way - although I've seen chains do it in small screens - and it sounds terrible. We are not missing the dialogue at all - all that info is contained within the left and right channels - which in our setup are not masked by the non-perf screen. Incidentally, the earliest prototype Dolby systems used no separate centre channel - this was added to 'lock' the dialogue into the centre and counteract the lop-sided effect you get when listening off-centre. So, for the avoidance of doubt: we are reproducing the dialogue and via the left and right channels. And for us - the dialogue is paramount above all else - so please don't think that we would be operating without clear dialogue. And again I would add that we have visited many screens (many of them preview theatres) which have far less distinct dialogue despite having digital 7.1 sound. For us on a limited (read zero) budget and serious practical constraints at the venue we figured that clear dialogue was infinitely more important than big bangs and lots of surround.. and clear dialogue is something we already have - without any processing, or separate centre channel.  |  IP: Logged Chris Slycord Film God Posts: 2986 From: 청주시, 경북도, South Korea Registered: Mar 2007 posted 08-23-2011 01:24 PM                     I never said you were missing dialog. I said you weren't playing it back properly. If a movie was mixed for the dialog to come from the center, sending it to the left-and-right isn't, imo, doing it properly. But good luck with your venture.  |  IP: Logged William F Green Film Handler Posts: 84 From: Brighton, East Sussex, UK Registered: Jun 2005 posted 08-23-2011 01:57 PM                     Chris thanks - it's not technically correct but works anyway! Probably the major limitation of this approach is that the dialogue can't be eq'd separately from left and right. Carsten you asked what type of movies we run - it's mostly art-house, quite a bit of non English language stuff - in original language with English subtitles. We are probably about 50-60% arthouse titles with mainstream titles mixed-in as well. For example in July we ran: THE GREAT WHITE SILENCE - BFI's restoration of Captain Scott's 1910 Antarctic Expedition (BluRay) YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER (DVD) LIFE IN A DAY (DVD) PIRATES OF CARIBBEAN 4 (35mm) BRIDESMAIDS (35mm) UNKNOWN (BluRay) CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS (DVD) We usually have a much higher proportion of 35mm but in June/July we made efforts to run more stuff on DVD as an experiment.  |  IP: Logged Dave Macaulay Film God Posts: 2321 From: Toronto, Canada Registered: Apr 2001 posted 08-24-2011 10:09 AM                     With digital sound, if you don't play the centre channel you have NO dialog in almost every movie. The channels are discrete and usually dialog is only on the centre. With optical you get the dialog on left and right. You will need some sort of mixer to add the centre channel signal to your left and right.  |  IP: Logged William F Green Film Handler Posts: 84 From: Brighton, East Sussex, UK Registered: Jun 2005 posted 08-24-2011 10:45 AM                     Yes of course I appreciate that and will have to do some down-mixing to add the centre channel to the left/right channels. So, it will have to done somewhat differently to how we are doing it now - but we ARE still stuck with only left/right stage speakers for the time-being so we will have to be creative and find a way! I have an 8 to 2 line mixer here which should do the job.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 08-26-2011 03:08 AM                        What a shame now that we have discrete channels and very well- matched and routinely EQed sound systems than we had in the 60s, that directional dialog sound mixing hasn't returned to favor among directors and sound desingers. When Dolby matrixed optical became the dominant 35mm sound system, there really was not much choice but to keep dialog in the center channel because the system just was not capable of keeping hard left of hard right audio out of the surround, especially dialog. Music bleeding into surrounds is tolerable; dialog certainly is not. But that limintation is now gone. It would be nice to see at least some sound designs that would take advantage of the freedom to place dialogue closer to visual location.  |  IP: Logged William F Green Film Handler Posts: 84 From: Brighton, East Sussex, UK Registered: Jun 2005 posted 08-26-2011 05:42 AM                     I'm not that keen on 'directional' dialogue myself - it sounds odd and you really notice that dialogue has suddenly shifted to one channel from the centre - it's a bit of a distraction really. I saw a preview movie yesterday (in yet another preview screen with muffled dialogue) where the dialogue DID shoot off to the left or right a couple of times.  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-26-2011 07:32 AM                     Can you explain your sound system a bit more in detail? How is the optical track decoded, which kind of further processing do you have? An 8:2 mixer could get you working in the beginning. Though you could still get an active speaker system and place it under or over the screen center just for the dialog. Such an active speaker wouldn't cost you more than 250-450GBP. E.g. Mackie Thump TH-15A. You could probably feed and control it through an auxilliary output from your existing mixer. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Pete Naples Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1565 From: Dunfermline, Scotland Registered: Feb 2001 posted 08-26-2011 10:31 AM                     quote: Carsten Kurz E.g. Mackie Thump TH-15A. Please tell me you're not serious?  |  IP: Logged Carsten Kurz Film God Posts: 4340 From: Cologne, NRW, Germany Registered: Aug 2009 posted 08-26-2011 11:43 AM                     I'm completely serious. There is NO center speaker at all currently. ANY speaker there should to be taken serious. - Carsten  |  IP: Logged Monte L Fullmer Film God Posts: 8367 From: Nampa, Idaho, USA Registered: Nov 2004 posted 08-26-2011 12:32 PM                     I knew of a twin (converted from a single) that had just that: L/R/S with no center, and Center was mixed in with the L/R. They had old USL JS 95/195 processors.  |  IP: Logged Pete Naples Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1565 From: Dunfermline, Scotland Registered: Feb 2001 posted 08-26-2011 01:18 PM                     It's called 'phantom centre' Monte, it can work very well. Without knowing or better still, hearing Williams room, none of us are qualified to state that a dedicated centre speaker is essential. And in any case, I'd rather have phantom centre between two decent boxes, than anything involving Mackie, 'Thump' or otherwise.  |  IP: Logged

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