What do you think?
As far as I know, this is not the first ceiling channel experiment. But I do not recall where I heard about earlier systems.
Michael
It is kind of disappointing Dolby Labs is simply trying to merge this concept into the existing Dolby Digital Surround EX model. I can understand it from an aspect of cost control. But really, the 5.1 systems for commercial theaters are out of date and need to move onto a next generation system.
The 10.2 Surround format promoted by guys like Tomlinson Holman has provisions for two ceiling surround channels, along with three discrete surrounds for the left, right and back walls. That, combined with 5 stage channels and 2 LFE channels, make 10.2 a very formidable concept. It would certainly humble most any home theater surround system.
However, ceiling surrounds have one big drawback. How do you incorporate them into the typically flimsy drop ceilings of many movie theaters and get the speakers installed between all those air conditioning ducts and other stuff?
Besides, aside from a few effects films, you know that they're not going to discretely mix those extra channels. Half the time, they don't even mix into the Surrounds today.
Sound on film systems will never be able to deliver this kind of thing. Cinema Digital Sound was the closest to it, using 5.1 channels at an incredibly high bitrate.
There is really little problem at all with dual systems (such as DTS, Sonics or any other special venue digital sound format). They are proven to work and proven to be more reliable than any sound on film printed system. The only drawback I see is not having all the movie trailers available to play in digital sound. But that is not really a huge loss.
Dolby Digital, using its current bitrate and printing method, could easily accomodate 10.2 Surround by printing a second DD sountrack in between the perfs on the right edge of the filmstrip. It would double the number of channels and double the overall bitrate.
SDDS is pretty much maxed out on what it can do.
DTS time code could theoretically be used to drive any kind of sound format since the media and hardware are separate from the film print.
These surround speakers always had round openings, and resembled the type you see mounted in many stores with suspended ceilings.
Dolby already has the rights to that space for future use
As for 10.1....SDDS hardly ever creates special 8 channel mixes that use the full 8 that it's capable of. It's really a matter of cost. Those kinds of additional mixes for nonstandard configurations don't come for free, and given the number of theatres that would spring for the additional amps and speakers, it really seems a 10.1 system would languish on the designer's drawing board. After all, the original 70mm configurations had 5 channels behind the screen and we know how fast they dropped two of them. The trend is to create one mix that can be used for everything, not multiple mixes for different theatre configurations.
Then you also have to ask yourself, where is the point of no return? When is it that the average movie-goer -- you know, the ones with only two ears -- stop being impressed by the number of channels that the system is capable of reproducing, given the fact that you can easily create 360 degree sound with the simplest 3 in front and 3 in rear configuration, unless you are talking about the big movie palace size theatres which are gone forever. Besides, if a movie is really good, the general public is fairly oblivious to the number of surround channels -- they are paying attention to what's in front of them, IMHO.
And what's with that name? It sure looses something in the translation. They aren't going to capture the imagination of the public with such a goofy moniker: "Sonic Whole Overhead Sound." That's good for unrelenting jokes by Leno and Letterman.
Frank
- Many films today are simply marketing exercises for the DVD release, which is 5.1.
- I seem to remember research that the Russians did in the 1960's or 70's which maintained that listeners could not perceive additional channels beyond six or so. I think there was a translated book on this subject.
- If you believe in the THX concept of a largely diffuse sound field, especially in the surrounds (and as designed by Tomlinson Holman), you have to wonder what the extra channels are going to get you. I haven't read the papers (if there are any) on the subject, but it surprises me that the same guy who pushed for diffuse sound fields in theatres is also the guy who is pushing for 10.1 channels.
In home systems, THX certified speakers are specifically designed not to interact with the floor or ceiling. If you were add another channel or two for overheads, you'd be interacting with the ceiling. And even if those overheads do get you something, is the cost/benefit ratio worth it, just to get a bomb or aircraft sounding like it's coming from above?
- As per previous comments, my count (which could well be inaccurate) shows about 40 films in Dolby Digital EX, 10 in DTS-ES, and about 60 in SDDS-8 channel. although relatively few in recent years.
Given that bass is less directional than treble, would it not be a good thought in todays tile ceiling cinemas to install only the Ceiling surround horns in the ceiling and the bass at the top of the side and rear walls ?
Try matrixing off existing systems and prints, eg use the extra surround (i.e. the out of phase output on the SA10, Smart, whatever) output ? One big disadvantage - under no circumsatces could you have all surround channels going at once. For instance if there was an explosion effect at the rear or all around the audience only one channel would be able to play this track.. If Ls + rs play it it would go to Bs, or if you wanted the ceiling too (say an overhead effect) then Ls Rs and Bs would be silent .. Also you'd need more than before seperate level controls for the stalls and circle as the stalls ceiling would be a lot lower than the circle.. Delay could also be an issue in theatres with high ceilings at the front - the ceiling surround could hit the front viewers from the rear before they get the sound from above them , sounding like it was part of the Bs track..
10.2 channel designation is as follows;
L, Le, C, Re, R, LS, BS, RS, Ceiling Surr Ch1, Ceiling Surr Ch2, (=10)
+ 2 separate incomplete range Sub Channels (.2)
Dave
Then you have the issue of home theater one-upping the commercial cinemas with its DVD and HD tape formats. Dolby Digital theatrical runs at only 320kb/s. On DVD, the 5.1 format runs at 384kb/s or 448kb/s. On D-VHS tapes it runs at an even better 576kb/s. Yet a commercial theater operator has to pay a lot more for his DD processor than any home user. And then we know all about DTS-ES having a 6.1 discrete home system, but no 6.1 discrete format for commercial cinemas. If I were running a movie theater circuit, I'd be fairly pissed off about the situation. Shouldn't commerical cinema have the lead on sound format sophistication?
Of course, the thing killing off chances of any "next generation" system like 10.2 Surround is how theatrical releases are indeed more and more just a marketing prelude to the home video release. The increasinly short release windows between theatrical and home release makes me wonder if things like DLP and digital projection are not actually designed to intentionally kill off the exhibition market.
Problem is, no matter how much money DVDs eventually bring in, and the video market certainly is a major cash cow for the industry, there IS no after-theatrical market if the theatrical run does not reach that critical mass that excites the public. If there is no "magic" at the theatre, there is no video market. That probably will not change for the long term -- it is a social thing. After all, any film that would be marketed directly to video would be nothing more than a "made for tv movie." And we know the studios are not going to make their 50 to 100 million in one weekend with a made for DVD movie.
When the studio honchos talk about "movie magic," they are talking about the film's opening weekend multiple millions, because they know that besides the money, those kinds of big openings drive all after-theatrical sales. Bottom line....they still need the theatres.
Frank
p.
This idea has been bandied around ever since the introduction of EX. Can't you just imagine the conversations down at the Dolby marketing department: We've got this extra channel (sort of) just sitting there doing nothing, we must be able to use it for something. Hey, what about ceiling speakers? Then we can bill it as another "exciting new format".
Trouble is, this idea raises some disturbing compatibility issues for normal non-ceiling-speaker-equipped (NCSE) cinemas (every cinema in the world that is, except for apparently one TODD-AO soundstage). Now to use the surround output from the EX matrix requires a 180 degree phase shifted (out-of-phase) signal to be encoded into the digital stereo surround channels (as per Dolby Stereo analog).
Now consider those unfortunate audients (deliberate mis-spelling folks) sitting down the centre line of the auditorium. They probably went to some trouble to get a seat down the middle because they like good, evenly balanced sound. Now whenever a sound comes along that is supposed to go to the (exciting new) ceiling system, in a normal (NCSE) cinema the sound will either be played out-of-phase through the left and right wall channels (and thus make all the audients down the centre line feel like their heads are being turned inside out), or (depending on their brand of EX processor if they have one), it may not be played at all because the logic steering is steering it to a dead end.
Great idea, don't you think? Sorry don't mean to be sarcastic, but I just can't help myself.
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
Is this "advance" something that the SA-10 design anticipated to any degree or is this the ultimate vindication for those who implemented EX via a kit-bashed CP-50 or similar?
Tom Holman's 10.2 layout is a little bit different to what was discussed in this thread.
To my knowledge the specs are:
C on center line
L,R at +/- 30° from center line
wide L,R at +/- 60°
high L,R at +/- 45° with vertical 45° angle
LS,RS at +/- 110°
BS at 180°
This is an enhancement of the ITU standard for home and DVD use which does not directly translate into the cinema setup.
10.2 does not use the five SDDS-8/70 mm screen speaker setup. The aditional wide L,R are located for outside the screen which has (or should have) a +/- 22.5° angle for the prime seats. The idea is to reproduce sidewall reflection for increased envelopment. In the cinema these speakers would be somewhere in the front part of the sidewalls.
The two elevated speakers are located in the front. In the cinema these speakers would be located above the screen. Whereas the new ceiling channel of the EX format is enhancing the surround with speakers above the audience.
There are two discrete LFE channels to increase low frequency envelopment especially for small rooms. For large rooms like cinemas LFE envelopment with one channel works much better.
Re: EX ceiling speaker
I do not share the criticism about lack of compatibilty of the matrixed EX ceiling channel.
We have the same situation with the matrixed Dolby A/SR and the compatibilty issue to mono playback. I think the ceiling channel will be used as an enhancement not mixing the sound entirely into the ceiling channel.
Strong localization from above is anyway limited as the voice of God does apply for too many movies.
I would agree that the issues would be similar if the overhead channel is not reproduced at all, which would probably occur in any cinema equipped with an SA10. However for all those other zillions of cinemas that do not have an SA10, the out-of-phase surround playback could be very annoying. Ok so it's not a big deal, but it is something that should be taken into consideration none the less. Out of phase signals are not so bad when coming from the front speakers, but locate the speakers either side of your head and tell me it doesn't bother you.
My biggest problem is with this "exciting new format" hype. Now really!
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
Back to ANALOG
Now I have an excuse, it is still before midnight in the underworld, eh sorry, "downunder" and I haven't turned into a pumpkin yet.
Of course my post above may seem a little silly (it was written with tongue in cheek) but the fact is this is something we can do right now with existing technology.
Of course we wouldn't consider trying to store 256 individual channels of audio, that would be wasteful of resources, but what we could easily do is store say 5 or 6 channels of audio information and also store some megadata that tells the the replay system which combination of speakers each channel of audio should be sent to at each moment in time.
This way, we could easily re-create a wave of sound that travels up, down, across, diagonally, you name it, around the theatre. Or you could get an screen character to talk to just a selected number of specially selected seats, so the rest of the audience are all the wondering what secrets the selected participants have been told and what they have missed out on.
Impossible? Nothing is impossible with DIGITAL. Remember, if you have DIGITAL you are invincible! (I love that line from whatever James Bond movie it was). When this happens and it will eventually, (or something like it) you heard it here first folks..
Now I am going to bed. Goodnight all.
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
If anyone needs me at that early hour (7 am), just dial 1-800-457-6278 and then dial 304 when the night message answers. If I am here, I will answer.
Back to the topic, OVERHEAD CHANNEL, the SMART CS-3X ex format processor has had the "future use" outputs (SP1 and SP2) available since its inception. It is simply what would be the surround channel in a regular matrix. Exciting new format???? Not even close!! But then again neither was EX. It was just another application of existing technology.
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
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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: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: here
Steve
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"Old projectionists never die, they just changeover!"
The comical thing was, after they did all that figuring for the Cantor, they realized after everything was in and wired that the ceiling was undulating -- i.e., the architect designed it to look like waves (if Brad ever gets a free moment to post the pics, you will be able to see how one of the ceiling "waves" dips down right in front of the right hand corner of the screen -- it's a change-over house; you have to bend down to see the cues; save us from the architects). The thing is, they calculated the speaker coverage patterns based on a FLAT ceiling. When the contractor installed the speaker high-hat enclosures, none of them pointed straight down. They had to rebuild the scaffolding and install offset frames inside the high-hats so that,although the high-hats were aimed in weird directions, the speakers pointed straight down. But this couldn't be done without removing the 70v xformers from the back of the speakers so they could be aimed correctly. I think they just gaffer taped the xformer to the side of the high-hat. As soon as that tape begins to dry out and pulls away, the xformer will no doubt drop on top of the speaker. I give it a 50/50 change that it will puncture the speaker cone. Plus, I saw the workers trying to re-aim the speakers -- it sure didn't look like they were doing it with any of the precision that the sound designer did with the original calculations. It was just workers shoving the speakers back into the high-hats with some attempt at aiming them straight down....hardly a precision operation.
And how do you a B-chain alignment on this kind of surround? Where to you aim the RTA mics.....toward the ceiling? Do you get under a few of them and average out your readings?
Frank
They're are at least 2 NCSE's now, I saw a CS (single speaker, dead center)at Dolby's LA screening room last week. Looks quite strange hanging there.
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Larry Shaw
Kinoton America
[Exclusive North American Distributor of Kinoton GmbH]
8 Goodenough Street
Boston, MA 02135-1903
Tel: 617-562-0003 x104 Fax: 617-787-4253
E-Mail: larry@kinotonamerica.com
Website:http://www.kinotonamerica.com
An overhead channel certainly has merit from a sound presentation point of view, however it is not a very practical idea. As Steve G points out, trying to achieve any kind of standard from one cinema to the next will be difficult to say the least.
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Ray Derrick
President/Chief Engineer
Panalogic Corporation Sydney, Australia
Phone: 61 (0)2 9894 6655 Fax: 61 (0)2 9894 6935
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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: +1 585 477 5325 Cell: +1 585 781 4036 Fax: +1 585 722 7243
e-mail: john.pytlak@kodak.com
Web site: here