Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Projector Noise in Auditorium

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Posted by Rick T. Fire (Member # 2873) on 12-10-2004, 08:22 PM:

Hello All, long time reader first time poster. [Big Grin]

I was recently attending a 15 plex movie theatre our of town and noticed during the presentation that you could hear lots of noise from the booth (mainly the projector motor) and I found it extremely distracting, this along with bad slices made the movie vary unenjoyable. I could even hear the projectionist threading up and having a conversation with someone else.

I know where I work there is no noise from the booth into the theatre, and the building I work at is quite old and run-down, and where I was attending was fairly new and modern.

How many people here have noise from the booth in the theatre?

Thanks,
Rick

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 12-10-2004, 08:40 PM:

Multiplex construction is usually really shabby. You shouldn't be able to hear the projector during a show but you could go into a silent empty auditorium in almost any cinema and hear that the projector is running. I hope that any projectionist knows that voices travel through booth walls - and especially glass - exceptionally well, and that talking about the people in the auditorium WILL be heard by them when least desired!
Older cinemas are probably built to toughter "nitrate" standards with quite solid walls between the booth and house and extremely small projection and view ports. If glass is properly installed in thee small ports booth sounds will be very hard to hear outside.
The place you describe must have really cheap wall construction and/or very large single glazed ports. I suggest you go elsewhere.

Posted by Rick T. Fire (Member # 2873) on 12-10-2004, 08:46 PM:

The sad thing is the auditorium is THX certified, it just goes to prove THX is just a money thing!

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 12-10-2004, 09:50 PM:

You shouldn't jump to hasty conclusions. I know for a fact that up until at least the end of 1997 THX was VERY picky about auditorium construction methods and noise leakage in particular. What I'm guessing happened is the port glass has since been changed out and a cheaper brand was subsituted, reducing the noise dampening effect.

Of course if THX recerts were done properly this would have been caught, so on that you do have a point.

Posted by Rick T. Fire (Member # 2873) on 12-10-2004, 11:17 PM:

Its possible that they did change something such as the glass. It looked to me (from my memory) that they had a single porthole about 3' x 1'.

At my theatre we have two portholes (from the the days of changeovers I suppose) and I think their only single glazed... I wonder why we don't hear the noise in the theatres....

Posted by Daniel Alt (Member # 2303) on 12-11-2004, 12:41 AM:

Our observation glass is chewed up enough that we have to lift it up to get a good view to focus. When you do that, the projector noise is quite obvious in the balcony. Once it's closed, it's not bad at all.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-11-2004, 02:31 AM:

Worked with a company who had a bunch of small town theatres, and this one theatre needed an intermittent assembly rebuild badly in a Century.

One can actually feel the play in the sprocket when the cam pin was in the starwheel. You can hear that machine hammering away in the auditorium, picture jumping, sound somewhat garbled. I offered to do the rebuild, but was declined, for the operations director wanted to do the rebuild himself (yet he knew that I can do rebuilds without any problem), but as time went by, that intermittent assembly finally bit the dust, and did some damage that more money had to be spent on, plus the parts to do the rebuild. I had to laugh!

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 12-11-2004, 02:47 AM:

our projectors are audible in the auditoriums. theater is from the 'teens, but has changed a lot since then, obviously. the upstairs ports have sheets of glass that simply slide into grooves. they aren't sealed at all. downstairs, there's a large port that tilts in towards the projector. it's not really sealed either, but at least there isn't an air gap.

replacing the ports is one of the things i'd like to see happen, but don't really have high hopes for.

carl

Posted by Thomas King (Member # 2745) on 12-11-2004, 08:14 AM:

We certainly wouldn't get THX certification, because our auditorium doubles as a lecture theatre (a pox on anyone who says it's the other way round) and has a very wide viewport. (About 2'x12'). Sadly, the noise of the air-conditioning is much, much louder than the practially inaudible chatter of the projector.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 12-11-2004, 08:23 AM:

DLP should take care of the above "problems". [evil]

fjn
Local 294 Ret.

Posted by Phil Blake (Member # 2012) on 12-11-2004, 08:30 AM:

All our projectors can be heard in the auditoriums , and the candy bar , and the foyer , and the toilets ...........but.................then we are running vic 5's [Frown]

Posted by David Yauch (Member # 2754) on 12-12-2004, 04:16 AM:

We are running vic 5's too but you won't hear ANY noise outside of the booth. Of course the walls are thick concrete and the port glass is sealed. We were THX certified when the standards were strict, you won't hear any noise from other theatres even if it's a quiet scene and the next theatre over is in a very loud scene. It's actually quite nice.

Posted by Chase Hanson (Member # 2779) on 12-12-2004, 03:46 PM:

Sadly you can hear our projectors in the auditoriums too.

Luckily its only when its empty/silent that its most noticalbe. I think its probably our port glass that is the largest culprit.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 12-12-2004, 04:49 PM:

I think it is so cool when you can hear the change-over warning bells and the second projector starting up and you can hear the slam of the change-over solenoids and then hear the projector chatter throughout the movie. Makes you feel like you are really in a movie theatre. [Big Grin]

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 12-12-2004, 05:12 PM:

Maybe, Frank, if you don't have any customers ask for the audio-augementation headsets, you could pipe a live mic from the booth into the headsets and give them out to the projectionists in the audience [Big Grin]

.

--jhawk

Posted by Dean Kollet (Member # 1789) on 12-13-2004, 12:48 AM:

I watched Shrek 2 at the AMC Pleasure Island 24 in Downtown Disney (Orlando, FL) and I heard the projector the entire time. My mom even comented on it, and she is deaf when it comes to stuff like that. It was in theatre 20 (which is THX as well). I said something to the GM who was walking about the theatre (and even mentioned I was a projectionist at another AMC) and he was like, "yeah, I'll call to booth and have them look at it" [Confused]