Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Is anyone running DD, DTS or SDDS with out a sub?

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Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 08-17-2010, 05:52 PM:

Ok, I have to ask this. I started working in the theatre industry in 1993. We were running DTS in two (1987) former THX certified theatres without subs. So were running 5 track digital.

Fast forward a few years later. I get transfered to a 10 plex, and to my surprised, no subs in the digital theatres.

I usally watched most movies at these theatres and I think my ears trained themeselves to like Digital without a sub. For years I watched movies at home without the sub, the sound normal that way.

Anyone else in this situation?

Note: I have currently gotten a sub for my home system and my new regular theatre uses subs in all DTS equipped theatres.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 08-17-2010, 07:03 PM:

There is no sub channel with dts, so you just heard normal sound. louis

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-17-2010, 07:03 PM:

5 of my six auditoriums do not have any subwoofers. Hell, when I arrived at this theater 5 out of the 6 auditoriums weren't even set up for stereo surround, but we had Dolby Digital in all of them. Instead, only the right surround signal went to all speakers which were wired together in one big, tangled rat's nest. I didn't have time to change this right away, so what I did was switch the surround amps so that both the left and right surround signals could at least be heard in the auditorium, albeit smooshed together into a single signal. Later on when I had the time, I rewired each speaker so now we have true stereo surround in each auditorium. Not sure why the $85-an-hour installer didn't bother to wire them correctly in the first place.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-18-2010, 01:18 AM:

A sound system without a subbass speakers is like Playboy without the centerfold....it's like Christmas without Santa Clause....it's like a Wurlitzer organ without the 32 and 64ft pipes. It gives a sound system it's kick. It's what makes it sound so much better than what they can get at home.

Listen, for the apparent improvement in the overall sound system at such an affordable price and for an upgrade so easy to install....you have to wonder WHY would anyone NOT install at least one hefty subbass unit?

Our motto is, you can't have too many subs. You want to make them feel it in the pit of their stomachs, and areas even further south. The guys who designed Earthquake knew if you could bring 'em close to sound induced orgasm with a 25hz warble tone at 160db, they'll come back time and time again and not even know why...hehe.

Hell, I first added two dual speaker subs when we were still running mono and it made the system sound so much richer. There was no subbass channel for 4trk mag, but we added them and a dbx subbass synthasizer and frequency halving processor -- knocked the socks off everyone; people always commented how much better our house sounded than our competition.

Subs make your patrons sit up and take notice and any sound system, whether or not it incorporates a distinct subbass channel or not -- even if it is the old mono or 4tk mag or all the way up to 7.1, they can all benefit from as many subbass bins as you can afford.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-18-2010, 03:08 AM:

Frank, I agree with your entire post except for this:

quote: Frank Angel
It's what makes it sound so much better than what they can get at home.

They do sell subwoofers for the home, y'know. I have two myself and they sound better than any current theater I've heard in the greater Denver-metro area. What's kind of funny is that most people will probably turn up their subwoofers way too high and think it sounds good. Then they'll go to the theater and think it sounds weak because it is closer to being properly tuned. I hate people.

Posted by Greg Routenburg (Member # 1742) on 08-18-2010, 11:26 AM:

I could be very much mistaken Louis but I'm pretty sure that there is a LFE or Sub channel on all 6 Channel DTS players. L,C,R,LS,RS & Sub. Alternately the surrounds were configurable as Mono depending on your theatre configuration.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-18-2010, 12:58 PM:

The dts sub frequencies are in the surrounds. There is a crossover to obtain the sub channel. It doesn't sound as good as SRD or SDDS in this regard, but it works ok.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-18-2010, 07:02 PM:

..bet the floors weren't cut so the wall can be below the floorline, double sheetrocked and insulated, and raised high enough through the ceiling to keep the sub channel within the confines of the house, prob why subs weren't installed..

Posted by Tom Petrov (Member # 1534) on 08-18-2010, 08:45 PM:

at monte

quote: Monte L Fullmer
.bet the floors weren't cut so the wall can be below the floorline, double sheetrocked and insulated, and raised high enough through the ceiling to keep the sub channel within the confines of the house, prob why subs weren't installed..

What do you mean the floors were not cut?

The individual theatres at the time were state of the art Cineplex Odeon theatres built for 1987. They were both THX Certified however they were not certified at the time of install.

Eventually, the theatres were re-certified for the Dolby Digital EX when Phantom Menace was released.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-18-2010, 10:35 PM:

quote: Tom Petrov
floors were not cut?

LFs loves to go anywhere where it can, and even under walls over ceilings..et.al.

1987, we just got a hold of Dolby SR optical. Digital sound was lightyears away still .. and shoebox houses with shotgun seating arrangement covered in multicolored straw burlap wall covering with 12x24 ft screens hanging in the front were the norm with no masking..and you might still see some unbaffled A7's behind the screen which you could power with a quarter watt transistor radio and sounds good.

And with low powered amplifiers, who even thought of soundproofing a house from the house next door?

With Digital Sound, it became apparent that house designs and construction procedures had to drastically change for the massive increase of dB sound that digital can produce.

Gotta make that house like a soundproof box where it can trap sound from seeping out.

I've seen where the walls and ceiling meet being lined with lead sheeting to keep sound from "crawling out through the cracks"

-Monte

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 08-19-2010, 01:13 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
A sound system without a subbass speakers is like Playboy without the centerfold....it's like Christmas without Santa Clause....it's like a Wurlitzer organ without the 32 and 64ft pipes. It gives a sound system it's kick.

A sound system without subs equals a sound system with no balls. [Big Grin]

And sadly too many people don't install enough subs to cover the room size. Which results in repeated blown subs..the cost of which could have been spent on installing the right number of subs in the first place. When I serviced theatres for RCA/NCS, those auditoria with enough subs never blew them out (But here in So Cal dry rot of the cone surrounds is a problem).

Now Brad knows how to install the correct number of subs..check out his screening room pics!! [thumbsup]

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 08-19-2010, 01:17 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
too many people don't install enough subs to cover the room size.

Yea, saw a pict of a house that has well close to 300 seats, all JBL loaded and only one sub bin on the floor...

..either some tech didn't know how to spec out a house, or the owner went cheap and cut corners to justify...

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-19-2010, 01:45 PM:

quote: Tony Bandiera Jr
And sadly too many people don't install enough subs to cover the room size. Which results in repeated blown subs..the cost of which could have been spent on installing the right number of subs in the first place.

This is a very common problem. A lot of theater operators may think they have sub-bass drivers in their auditoriums. But if the speakers are blown or turned down low to prevent damage (or as response to loudness complaints) the theater might as well not have any bass drivers at all.

Digital cinema has done little if anything at all to solve this common problem. Many commercial theaters have wimpy sound. It's yet another sales point for home theater systems.

Posted by Richard Hamilton (Member # 321) on 08-19-2010, 02:10 PM:

At Megasystems, I think the smallest house I installed had 4 subs. Typically we put in either 6 or 8 in 1 room.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 08-19-2010, 02:46 PM:

I agree with Bobby. Theaters need to start being cheap and install kick-ass sound systems in EVERY auditorium, venue permitting. For example, it would be kind of impractical at my theater because fairly thin walls and doors that don't do much to block the sound from adjacent auditoriums.

Posted by Marin Zorica (Member # 1716) on 08-19-2010, 03:57 PM:

Sub is pretty important today, in time of Dolby SR and before it was mentioned to give more power for stage speakers as they didn't have enough good LF response, and we know SUB is not encoded in Analog sound. In digital era we have sub mentioned to give us more detailed sound image of shaking and earthquakes in movies, and due to that sub channel is encoded separately, due this we need to have enough power for it, as some 4000W for mid size rooms and similar. Mostly, money is not factor, but installers which (as I saw) put so little power in sub channel, they think as you need single speaker per screen channel, single sub will do fine....

Posted by Tony Ratcliff (Member # 1196) on 08-19-2010, 04:10 PM:

I do not have subs in my theatre.
I'm afraid it would cause damage.
Already the auditorium side lights (all glass) rattle
from what bass I do have.
Plus the bleed over would be horrible.
The theatre was built in 1938 and twinned ( one up and one down ) in 1978.

I'll be the first to admit that I have crappy sound.
But I'm kinda stuck unless I do some major upgrades in structure, soundproofing, acoustics, etc.

I'll bet there are a lot of old theatres in my position.

Now if it is a newer theatre, then I see no excuse for not having proper full range sound.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 08-20-2010, 01:23 PM:

quote: Tony Ratcliff
The theatre was built in 1938 and twinned ( one up and one down ) in 1978.

And therein is the reason the word "twined," when applied to stately old single screeners, is anathama. You know....it sucks.

And as we all know, it never stops at twinning. The reason a theatre is twinned is because the owner wants to make more money and pretty soon he finds out he's not making as much as he thought he would, so he "triplexes" it, then he quads it, and the screens multiply like horny rabbits until he's finding slop sink closets that he can turn into "cinemas," and so forth and so on until even the bathrooms become "cinemas" with flat panel monitors attached to the stall doors which of course allows him to claim they are "digital" cinemas as his patrons sit on the toilet bowls to watch movies. [Eek!]

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 08-20-2010, 01:41 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
.....even the bathrooms become "cinemas" with flat panel monitors attached to the stall doors which of course allows him to claim they are "digital" cinemas as his patrons sit on the toilet bowls to watch movies.

Great Frank, now you've given management the next "great idea"..way to go. [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-20-2010, 03:26 PM:

Yeah. You're going to need TWO admission tickets now. One ticket for the feature playing in the auditorium. The second ticket is for watching the movie playing above the urinal when you have to take a leak.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 08-20-2010, 04:27 PM:

quote: Frank Angel
.....even the bathrooms become "cinemas" with flat panel monitors attached to the stall doors which of course allows him to claim they are "digital" cinemas as his patrons sit on the toilet bowls to watch movies.

Its the first indoor Autoscope!