Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Old GCC Northpark THX System

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Posted by Lyle Romer (Member # 1266) on 07-17-2005, 01:20 PM:

I guess this question is more for Brad than anything. What was it that made the Northpark THX sound so good? Was it just a willingness to spare no expense and overdesign the system? Was it room acoustics? Basically, how hard would it be to re-create that sound in another theatre and would it be within the realm of reasonable cost to do so?

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 07-17-2005, 01:44 PM:

The sound system itself wasn't anything overspectacular in speaking of equipment. It was all in the tuning of it. Each and every feature had the system tweeked to the movie it was showing. Being only a 2 screener, this was a possibility that no multiplex could ever even hope to do. On occasion I would custom tweek a select auditorium or two at other theaters I have worked at for really big event movies, but that practice pretty much ended when Northpark shut down.

Another way to think about this would be to take the best system that could possibly be put together with today's equipment...sparing no expense. Then hire someone who doesn't truly know what they are doing to B-chain it. The sound would be awful! The reverse is also true in that a good/decent system can be tweeked to sound pretty damned good, if the technician knows what he is doing and isn't afraid to do the job, then listen and make final little adjustments based upon what he hears which the RTA was unable to reveal.

There will undoubtedly be people who will chime in with the same old routine about "the ears are not accurate" and such, but the reputation and tremendous fanbase of that theater speaks for itself.

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 07-17-2005, 06:57 PM:

I did a number of previews at this theatre over the years and the equipment was nothing out of the ordinary for that time. The sound system had been added on to as time went by but there was no magic wire or anything.

The walls seemed to be ordinary but the results were always very good and the room was very well damped, not too live and not too dead either. Sometimes a room just wants to sound good. Good maintainence always helps of course.

The Northpark tended to run a lot of 70mm soundtracks as well. To this day, nothing sounds better in a theatre than discrete mag tracks.

This took a lot of adjusting the response of the heads and each film had its own pink and Dolby tone. If all this were adjusted correctly the results were awesome. Even not perfectly tuned they want to sound great

I never heard SR.D played there but I'm sure it was great as well.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 07-17-2005, 08:13 PM:

I saw a few shows there in Dolby Digital, such as "The Lion King" and "Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas." If there was any venue where Dolby Digital would sound great Northpark 1-2 was it. They even played the really loud version of the Dolby Digital train trailer (when the format was still called "Dolby Stereo Digital").