(Damn that Toy Story 2 mix was good!)EX of some form (not necessarily Dolby's) providing a 3rd surround channel
*or*
8 channel (5 speakers behind the screen) of some form (not necessarily SDDS)
...which would it be?
Now in all fairness, it seems just about the same amount of movies are being mixed in EX vs. 8 channel (and for this survey let's pretend the numbers are identical), so that should not be a consideration of this survey. Also, regardless of the problems many people have with SDDS dropouts, the SDDS format should not be considered part of the survey either (if you are a fan of SDDS then fine, if not pretend for this survey that DTS or Dolby has an 8 channel digital playback system).
I'm curious as to whether most people would spend the extra bucks on...5 channels behind the screen with 2 surround channels or 3 channels behind the screen with 3 surround channels.
I vote for 7 channels. Yes, the EX channel is derived from a matrix, but I feel putting most of your channels up front isn't as effective as adding a 3rd channel around the other 3 walls of a theater. The steering of the sound "around" you is more important to me.
Plus, it has more "wow" factor than 5 stage channels. If you tell an audience you have more surround channels now vs more screen channels, they are going to be more impressed with the idea of more surround channels. I have seen many 8 channel movies in 8 channel auditoriums and honestly could not discern much of a difference.
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The man with the magic hands.
But I also agree with Scott. If the industry moves toward bigger screens again, 5 channels would be needed.
What if we EX the L and C, and the C and R, to create a Le and Re..... oh, never mind....
I emphatically vote for 8-channel. 3-screen channels suck and it is as simple as that...true I don't hear any inspired 5-screen channel mixes out there but then again I don't hear and inspired 3-screen channel ones either. Gee dialog out of center, music and effects out of left and right.
I would take 5-screen channels before I got the second surround. Then I would add 2 more front channels before the 3rd, 4th or 5th surround.
My idea on the sound spread is 7 screen channels (5 behind and one just outside to the left and right), then 5-surrounds...(2-channels on each side wall and one in the rear...allows the mixer to pull the sound back).
I think the basic problem with all of the multi-channel mixes is the time-frame allotted for them.
I've said it before and I will say it again...Surround-EX is the worst bang for the buck. It should only be considered if you have everything else you want sound wise and want to put the finishing touches on.
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
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Perhaps if we could just clone Gary Rydstrom, he could mix EVERY movie!!! (Damn that Toy Story 2 mix was good!)
I was amazed at the sound especially during the scene where the Von Trapp family was singing on stage. As the family members moved back and forth across the (80 feet wide) stage, the voices were perfectly panned with them, and the 5 full range stage channels greatly enhanced the sound presentation.
So, if done PROPERLY, using 5 full range channels, and with a big enough screen, 5 stage channels are great.
Unfortunately, very few if any films these days would benefit very much if at all, so I would opt for the ex format in most cases.
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Oscar Neundorfer
Chief Engineer
SMART Devices, Inc.
oscar@smartdev.com
Seeing and hearing "Seven Wonders of the World" and "How the West Was Won" in 7 discrete channel Cinerama in Dayton OH last month made me realize how much we have lost, despite the latest in digital technology. That 7-track analog magnetic film played on 1950's equipment may have had some hum and noise, but the sound truly "brought you into the picture" and added a major creative tool.
The "ultimate" on my "wish list"? A great movie filmed using 65mm negative, with hundreds of 70mm DTS prints having 12 channels: L, LC, C, RC, R, 5 surrounds, 1 overhead, and 1 subwoofer. "Seat Shaker" optional. 
Guess what? --- all the technology and equipment needed exists today! Which makes me both happy (that it could be used), and sad (that it isn't).
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Eastman Kodak Company
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Only a few theater's in my country have SDDS, i wonder why
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It's the new small talk. You do it so awfully well! - My Fair Lady
The EX matrix is derived from a digital source, so it is a tad more accurate than its analog counterpart. The first DTS recordings were LT/RT decoded from a matrix. They basically fed two digital tracks into an analog processor.
EX also has a "spare" channel which I assume is reserved for future use. The real question is: "Where do we put that one?" <g>
Russ
Home theatre is ruining real theatre.
I tend not to think so, because they were doing panned dialog years before home theater (although that may be the reason they will keep doing it.)
I think that the reason then and now is cost. Who wants to pay for the set up of mulitple microphones? And if there is more than one camera filming the take, additional microphones would have to be set up, so the sound is correctly localized for each camera angle if that footage is used. Simply panning the dialog is so much easier, it was probably one of the first cost-cutting measures studios thought of.
I'm not saying I agree with it....
Also, when TAP did their big survey in 1983 I talked to the fellow they sent about this. He said that Lucas was told theaters don't maintain their equipment (speakers) and there was a high possiblity that a side speaker would be defective. Apparently he was told that "he would be crazy" to trust that all speakers were working. Since stereo is much more common now, that's probably not true anymore, but that may be why it took a long time to even get away from simply leaving the dialog in the center.
Gladiator certainly wasn't a phenomenal EX mix by any means, but Toy Story 2 sure was.
John-
I think you missed my point. Of course they panned dialog way before home theatre. But when home theatre started to become really popular, directors got concerned about the transfer. So they just kept all of the dialog in the center (by the TV in most cases) so it would come off better at home.
I don't think that it would cost any more to pan dialog nowadays, especially at the price some of these movies cost to get made! You could just as easilly pan dialog in the sound mixing studio as with extra microphones, and it would be seamless. Trust me, it would add nothing (noticeable) to the cost of any movie to pan dialog with the screen characters.
As for panned dialog, there's a certain philosophy that panned dialog tends to be a distraction to most viewers. I mean, imagine if every time they changed camera angles in the middle of someone's line, the dialog hopped to another location as the cut was made. Or what if the dialog wasn't panned at those moments but was panned in others? It tends to take the viewer out of the moment and remind him that it's just a movie.
Remember that in "the era of panned dialog" they used a different shooting and editing style for the visual portion of the movies too. There are no rapid-fire cuts in Oklahoma!. I mean, they'll leave the same shot on the screen for 3 minutes or more if someone's singing a slow song. Imagine 3 minutes without any visual edits! (Or just watch some of those old movies and you won't have to imagine it anymore.) In a movie which was shot for it, panned dialog works fine. But would today's directors and editors give up their rapid-cut style for the sake of accommodating panned dialog?
I see your point but don't agree. Panned dialog does not mean you can have rapid fire cuts. In fact, it is more distracting to have the dialog stay still whilst the cuts have the people jumping all about (over the shoulder shots).
There would also be a learning period where what works and what doesn't in panned dialog...just like the 180deg. rule exists for filming.
An example of this is in 2001:A Space Odyssey...the scene where Dr. Floyd is in the videophone booth...when the actors are VISABLE the dialog matches their location...if, on the other hand, they are not, the dialog does not move from their last location...eg Dr. Floyd is sitting at Left-Center position and the video phone is at Right....the edit places the videophone at center...his daughter's voice moves to Center but Dr. Floyd's stays at Left-Center....where as Left would have been more intuitive. The directionality of Dr. Floyd is conveyed without having you look for his disembodied voice. The next cut once again has Dr. Floyd at Left-Center and his daughter at Right...If you didn't watch the film dozens of times analyzing the sound aspects (as I did in college) you might not pick the trick off.
Panned dialog is sorely needed now that auditorium depths are shallow while screens are proportionally larger...having a voice clearly 20 or more feet away from the person is VERY distracting and annoying.
One problem I have found is that it really does take a minimum of 5-screen channels to properly pull off panned dialog. Two and three shots have the actors right on Left-Center and Right Center...you just can't phantom voices like you can music...voices are supposed to be point-sources.
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
I sort of mixed up my thoughts with several previous posts and got confused....
I just meant that the studio's used to record several discrete channels (like Cinerama) but dropped that (around 1964 or so) to save money. Then, they panned dialog until 1975 or so, but dropped that too, because (supposedly) theaters weren't keeping up the equipment.
I guess what I'm trying to say (and not doing a very good job of it) is I think they stopped even panning dialog before home theater.
I think the sdds web site is the only real place to get that information. However, don't expect those tracks to have panned dialogue just because they are "8-channel".
Why isn't stuff shot on 65mm neg and using 5 across the screen, a sub, and 3 surround channels? How much more could Titanic or Gladiator cost? It would certainly add to the impact.
Special venue theatres do not need to be large special format (Imax, Iwerks, Showscan etc) to drag a crowd. 70mm, 75 ft screen and 9 - 10 channels is where its at. Lets make the cinema experience like nothing that the home theatre can ever emulate, not even a Norelco AA11 in the garage!
David
I am going to modify my original comments here. After setting up the screening room for 5 stage channels and EX, I feel I can make a better judgment call than I could before.
SDDS with 8 channels...this is indeed very impressive! This is the first time I have noticed a difference between 3 stage channels and 5 stage channels. (Note the only other 8 channel houses I've heard ranged from 40 foot wide screens up to an 80 foot wide screen with THX certification.) The added "fullness" between channels was almost like adding more surround speakers to an installation that did not have enough in the first place and had "holes" in the sound...except that now there are 2 extra DISCRETE channels behind the screen that were extremely clear and localized. The argument in this thread up until now has been that 5 stage channels behind the screen is not really necessary with small screens. The screen in this room is 23 feet wide (scope) and I would consider that a small screen, although not for this particular room by any means.
The real difference I believe comes from the baffle wall and acoustics of the auditorium. The 8 channel installations I've heard either did not have a baffle wall, or the THX installations that were 8 channel were in such large auditoriums that the effect was lost in the echo of the room and all the stage speakers tended to acoustically mesh into each other. I add to that comment further by comparing my experience with the Toy Story 2 track.
As most of us know, the Toy Story 2 track had panned dialogue, yet the film was flat. In the 80 foot wide screen with THX certification that I first screened this in, only on a very few occasions did I notice the panned dialogue between the center and left/right stage channels (not a 5 stage channel mix). Also note that this auditorium for all practical purposes has side masking. (The top masking does lift up just a touch, but not enough to matter.) Yet the panned dialogue was wasted in this auditorium due to the echo! Playing the dts disc in the screening room alongside a DVD for picture via the video projector, I found the effect was so discrete that it was distracting. But again, remember this was a flat film on a screen with side masking, making the dialogue pan "outside" of the image area! Not good.
In regards to the EX, the effects in TS2 were indeed fantastic! I certainly do wish more films were mixed in EX, but aggresively like Gary Rydstrom did with this particular movie.
In closing though, here are my overall feelings between the two formats.
Flat films should never be mixed with panned dialogue...EVER! Flat films with panned dialogue may be fine for cheezy stadium theaters with top masking, but because in many instances (generally your better theaters) flat films will be presented on a common height screen, the dialogue should never leave the center channel. I also feel that a 5 stage channel mix is not ideal for flat films either, because again, there is no way to precisely know where the speakers in auditoriums around the world will be placed with the different types of masking systems.
Scope films are an ideal candidate for 5 stage speakers (SDDS-8). This is because regardless of the auditorium design, the scope picture WILL be the maximum width that the auditorium allows. I can only imagine how much the TS2 mix would have improved with 5 stage channels. (Perhaps Pixar will consider this on their next outing.) The only problem with 5 stage speakers is that as I mentioned earlier, huge auditoriums with less than ideal acoustics (echo mainly) will tend to bleed the sound together and kill the effect. Oddly enough, I would recommend the 5 channels more for medium to smaller houses where acoustics are easier to control.
EX is something that if mixed properly, can really add to any movie regardless of picture format. I hope this becomes standard practice and that the 8 channel and EX formats become standard with scope films that have a good sound mixer and can properly place the sound. Both of these combined with panned dialogue in one movie would indeed be something to hear.
Mixing flat films for center-only dialogue seem a bit unfair (although I certainly see your reasoning.) Suppose someone has a 40ft wide flat screen? Wide enough for patrons to "hear" any panning, and as a director, I may not want to "loose" this capability. My understanding is that most theaters now run with fixed side masking, so if making the sound mix match most existing theaters, then I should be able to "pan-away" in either format.
Also, I think people look for the "WOW" factor, and 3 surround channels seem to deliver more of that than 5 screen channels.
I suppose it would be nice if the SDDS processor could be programmed do something, (automatically) like the CP200's "speaker reverse" function, ie: On flat films, the Lc and Rc become regular L and R. Perhaps the L and R speakers (now behind the masking) could be sent some kind of "forward" surround information, since they are no longer screen channels.
With SDDS, you get both screen and surround, but there is a small but growing number of disgruntled SDDS users. Few SDDS films are mixed in full 8 channel, SDDS is the most expensive to install, and several people are not happy with it's reliability. Several rumors about Sony's commitment to SDDS (whether true or not) do not encourage owners to purchase the most expensive system.
I think part of the problem is that classic decision that has plauged sound in theaters for many years: do you make the mix match existing theaters, or do what you know is right?
BTW, In addition to EP1, Harry Potter has SDDS-8 and EX. There are more 8-channel mixes out and in the shoot than EX.
If all theatres were to equip for 8-channel then panned dialog could be a reality for all films, Flat or Scope since LC and RC can handle L and R rolls for "Flat" films. Brad, I'm surprised you don't have your screening room set up for this. You should look into making your own relay board for it or perhaps try and latch onto the Dolby SI-1 studio interface unit (which has the interchange function on it...you can't use the CP-200's internal switch since all of the digital formats come after the Processing unit). At the Uptown in DC, LC and RC are always used for "FLAT" films.
I agree that size matters not on the 8-channel question. The front-end and speakers should be proportional to each other.
Incidentally, I know of several screens that are SDDS-8 and EX equipped.
As to SDDS reliability...the 2000 is a bit of a mystery in it's erratic reliability (it works then it doesn't, but always tests fine in some installations). The 3000 series for me has been completely reliable.
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
As you know, I am outputting the un-EQ'd SDDS signal back into the control unit of the CP200 where all 5 stage speakers (and surrounds) get treated to good old fashioned (and vastly superior sounding) analog EQing via the cat64B cards. I've been looking for a simple solution to this senario and thus far the easiest thing I've come up with is to simply make a DB25 cable that switches the L into the LE channel and the R into the RE channel. I'm not sure how easy this would be to automate, but as far as rigging an external switch that could be thrown manually, I don't see any real difficulty there. Still, I like the separation that 99% of the flat films provide when using the L and R speakers. This only turns up with panned dialogue on flat films, which I still hold my ground as to saying is a bad idea. I wonder how many people sit at home with their DVDs and each speaker is 8 feet to the side of the tv listening to panned dialogue like that...or is the DVD mixed differently for home use?
As to the DFP-3000, I have been nothing but pleased with it's performance as well. Never a dropout and the quality of the audio is phenomenal. My only complaint is the sprocket drag is WAY TOO MUCH! I can't hear the projector sitting in the screening room, but I can quite easily hear that singing sprocket on the SDDS reader. There really must be SOME way to lower that tension just a little bit. I have an email off to Sony, so hopefully they have a solution and will email me back (or post it here).
More significant than the invention of sound itself, panned dialog is the most amazing thing ever to happen in movie sound history, and increases audience numbers over tenfold. There should be no fewer than 20 independant screen channels (for small screens). There should not be a space larger than 2cm between each speaker, so larger screens would require more speakers to provide adequate panned dialog. But even this setup would demand that the onscreen character's moving mouth stay vertically centered on screen. If he/she were to bend down or stand on their tiptoes, the mouth would be lower/higher onscreen than where the actual sound was emitting. This is absolutely unacceptable and would confuse audiences with poorly placed audio. Therefore there needs to be more discrete channels placed above and below, all the way to the top and bottom of the screen just in case, again with no more than 2cm of empty space above and below each speaker. There would be room for at least two rows above and below, bringing the minimum amount of discrete speakers required for a medium sized screen to 100. Only then would it approach acceptability.
Surrounds are stupid and serve no purpose. How can you pan dialog outside of the screen? It wouldn't make any sense! Therefore there is no need to have surrounds. All effort should go into making sure the panned dialog is perfect before any thought is given to "surround sound". Panned dialog is far more enveloping and has much more "wow" factor. Hearing things fly around the room only scares me and makes me hide under my seat.
I agree that it is odd that the 3000 doesn't offer the interchange option, the DCP-1000 did!
As to the sprocket tension. I agree it is too high. Sony did that, no doubt to offset the fact they didn't incorporate a true flywheel into the 3000 series reader. Why do engineers feel the need to out design old technology that works. There is no shame in using flywheels. There was no need for the "mag-clutch" thing. BTW, Brad, if you have more back tension on the film (from the platter or reel) the buzzing should stop. Also, I have noticed that if you change the film's angle of attack into the sprocket, it stops making noise (ie Sony could have come up with a film-path that would have lessened or eliminated the noise). Just grab the guide roller immediately before the sprocket and see if the buzz stops as long as you hold the roller.
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
Do 8-channel flat films exist? If so, perhaps the inner 3 speakers could be used for the normal stereo effect (like Steve describes) and the outer two could be "stage surrounds" (for lack of better term) for sounds that happen just offscreen. Of course this would not be practical since all auditoriums are different.
The only other complaint I have on the DFP-3000 is when the SDDS fails, there is a brief section of perhaps only a couple of frame's worth of silence as the processor switches to the backup format. Now in all fairness, the only way I was able to get it to drop was to stick a business card over the leds, but I wish it would switch just a bit quicker, without that quick mute. (The CP500 does the same thing.) Past that, the 3000 series machine was very well thought out and do provide outstanding reliability and audio quality. I have been extremely pleased. 
I hope that everything has been well for you lately, 8 channel, if it was more supported would be an execelent format. As it has been more than well discussed here before, most theaters would just install 3 stage channels. Based on availability I would go for EX...
** This post has been De-Toxified by the writer**
Anyway sarcasm is fun, just as long as its accompanied by a . Wouldn't it suck if this place was 100% serious 100% of the time? I think it would. I'd rather laugh than thread a projector.
Yes. An example is "Stuart Little":
http://www.mel-lambert.com/Writer/Profiles/SS.Stuart_Little.html
Had the good fortune to hear it in the Cary Grant theatre on Sony Studio's Culver City CA lot, and the 8-channel mix sounded great. SDDS done right!
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
EX does not do much to enhance the presentations that I have watched. I think I would have been just fine with LS and RS.
also was mixed and released in SDDS-8.
just my 2 cents
Josh
I stand behind that a minimum of 5-screen channels are appropriate for ANY sized screen. It is ideal...if it were the standard, we would have panned dialog today...it places a speaker just about where any actor would be (1-shot Center, 2-Shot LC and RC, 3-shot, LC C and RC; with a group then Left and Right would come into play (for dialog)...Left and Right are so far out that often they are used for just music or effects.
If any of you get a chance to hear Sound of Music in 70mm 6-track, you can hear how sound could be...much better than what we have today.
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
Tomlinson Holman (who developed THX at Lucasfilm) has definite views on the advantages of additional channels. He is the founding editor and publisher of "Surround Sound Professional" magazine:
http://www.surroundpro.com
And President of TMH Labs:
http://tmhlabs.com
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
ie 5 front channels and 3 surround channels.
For example i believe harry potter is dolby/DTS ex and sdds-8
so could it be shown in SDDS with ex.
Perhaps the cinema industry will compensate by running the Dolby matrix between the left and left surround, right and right surround, right and center, center and left, center and surround, etc to get additional "channels"? You can never have too much matrixing!
Just watch out all you kittys - that could be you.
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John P. Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Entertainment Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7525A
Rochester, New York, 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Cell: 716-781-4036 Fax: 716-722-7243
E-Mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: http://www.kodak.com/go/motion
Of course you could have 12-tracks right now using two 6DSVs running in sync....and at a cost much less than one SDDS unit.
>>> Phil
With digital, this restriction no longer applies, however two factors (other than production cost) have provided an impediment to the return to the use of panned dialogue. One is that everyone has become used to centre-locked dialogue, particularly mixing engineers. It is easy and it does not draw attention to the soundtrack. Secondly digital soundtracks need to be reasonably compatible with the analogue backup track. It is one thing for the surrounds to maybe collapse to mono on a fall-back reversion, after all, there is not that much stereo surround info in any given film anyway and unless you are sitting dead centre, it is not all that obvious. But can you image how annoying it would be to have the dialogue popping back to centre from some panned position everytime the digital track dropped out? A whole different situation!
Regarding EX, we installed a matrix across the surround channels of a DTS player and fed the centre output to rear wall speakers, years before Mr Rydstrom "invented" the EX process. At that time we discovered an interesting phenonemon. A person's ability to differentiate direction is greatly degraded when a sound is coming from directly behind, particularly in a reverberant field like an auditorium. Sounds from directly behind tend to become confused with sounds directly from the front.
So if you sit in the sweet spot (centre) in an EX equipped room, the rear wall EX channel seems to have very little impact. Move over to one side of the auditorium and it becomes a lot more dramatic. This is because our ears are aligned in such a way as to maximise our ability to pinpoint the source of a sound in the direction that we are looking.
So by experiment, we found that we had to increase the level of the rear wall at least 3dB above the technically correct level for the "EX" channel to work for people sitting mid-way between left and right walls. It is not surprising therefore that some people report a more dramatic effect from sounds panned across their field of view (screen channels)than for sounds that originate from behind.
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Ray Derrick
President
Panalogic Corporation Pty Limited
44 Carrington Road
Castle Hill NSW 2154 Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
Along with suggesting they go the DVD-ROM route, I also suggested it might be cool to make a new system into a server type of product. Make one box that can network itself to all the projectors in a theater. That would cut costs on getting a complex to have digital sound on all screens and make it easier to keep track of all the audio discs.
Back to the topic: 7-channel EX versus 8-channel, well I would choose the EX thingy since it is something I am more likely to hear. In a lot of theaters, I would not benefit from a 5-up-front mix unless I were sitting pretty close to the screen. And since so many movies are shot in grainy Super35 2.35:1 that would kind of suck.