Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Nice 35mm Dolby SR sound Pre. SRD/DTS/SDDS

This is topic Nice 35mm Dolby SR sound Pre. SRD/DTS/SDDS in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=012314

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 06-04-2018, 11:29 AM:

I gave a reel of DAYS OF THUNDER a spin some time ago.
The Dolby SR track was quite nice. Was lacking a bit in the deepest bass section, but otherwise quite crisp and full.

Do you have any thoughts or tips of great sounding SR tracks pre 35mm Digital sound. (CDS not counted)?

Any thoughts of what you like and why would be interesting to hear. I bet the 70mm SR tracks of DAYS OF THUNDER was not lacking in the bass section...

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 06-04-2018, 01:28 PM:

Hi Jerry,

TERMINATOR II in Dolby SR comes to my mind, stunning soundtrack.
Batman returns in Dolby A also sounds PRETTY good.

I recently tested reel 1 of "007 - LICENSE TO KILL" in Dolby SR and was very surprised to hear the Title Track in great quality, very dynamic, nice HF and nice bass response.

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 06-06-2018, 03:53 PM:

Hello Sascha,

Thank you for your tips.
I have only seen the two films you mention in the original release year at my local cinema which at the time had a Dolby CP-50 with (Dolby A only). My memory of these films is that they sounded nice even played back in Dolby 04. But that was like +27 years ago.

Any more tips out there?

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 06-06-2018, 04:06 PM:

The original release prints of Terminator 2 were Dolby A, and sounded outstanding. SR was not yet in existence. Other great sounding Dolby A films (original release) were Edward Scissorhand and Lion King (I believe SR prints were also struck).

My favorite early SR film for sound quality was Twister.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-06-2018, 04:47 PM:

There were SR 35mm prints of Terminator 2.

Lion King had SRD prints struck.

Every print of Twister was quad format (meaning DTS/SRD/SDDS/SR analog).

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 06-06-2018, 05:23 PM:

> There were SR 35mm prints of Terminator 2.

I did not know that. Thanks for the heads up.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-06-2018, 08:38 PM:

quote: Jerry Axelsson
Do you have any thoughts or tips of great sounding SR tracks pre 35mm Digital sound. (CDS not counted)?

I was fairly impressed with the Dolby SR track on Thelma and Louise. I watched it at the Loews Village Theatre VII, which had just opened. It had the first THX certified screen in Manhattan. They played the Cimarron trailer (my favorite THX trailer) and a Dolby SR trailer too. Dances With Wolves was another early 35mm Dolby SR show I thought sounded pretty good in the theater (the Loews Paramount).

Once the 35mm digital sound formats took hold, with Jurassic Park being the one that blew the doors wide open on it, great sounding 35mm Dolby SR became a lesser priority. I had been kind of impressed with how 35mm Dolby SR sounded, but got quickly spoiled to digital sound in association with 35mm prints. I was blown away by the Jurassic Park shows at the GCC Northpark 1-2 in Dallas. I had never experienced quality movie theater sound in such a big auditorium -with dynamics that could literally pound the air in my chest. I must have watched that movie there at least half a dozen times in 1993.

quote: Jerry Axelsson
Any thoughts of what you like and why would be interesting to hear. I bet the 70mm SR tracks of DAYS OF THUNDER was not lacking in the bass section...

Were the 70mm prints of Days of Thunder in Dolby SR? Or did Paramount have dual inventories of A-type and SR-type 70mm prints? The ads for Days of Thunder in New York City didn't mention Dolby SR for any of the 70mm shows. I watched the movie near the end of its run at the Ziegfeld. If the 70mm print was A-type the show still sounded very good. I think Flatliners replaced it (also in 70mm).

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
The original release prints of Terminator 2 were Dolby A, and sounded outstanding. SR was not yet in existence.

You might be getting the release date of The Terminator (1984) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) confused.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) was the first movie to use Dolby SR (on 70mm prints at a couple of Los Angeles locations). IIRC, Robocop (1987) was the first to use Dolby SR optical on 35mm release prints. I watched that movie at the Loews 34th Street East theater. I'm pretty sure that was a 35mm Dolby SR show. It didn't sound quite as good as magnetic audio on 70mm, but it was definitely better than the typical optical (often mono) sound I associated with most 35mm shows. Great movie. I sat through it twice during that trip to the theater.

quote: Brad Miller
Lion King had SRD prints struck.

I can't remember where I read the technical detail, but Disney had two inventories of Dolby Digital prints of The Lion King. Some of the prints had optical tracks with A-type noise reduction while others had SR-type. Normally the whole "SR•D" thing was supposed to mean the print would have SR-type analog and digital audio on the same print. Some of The Lion King prints were really in "A•D" format.
[Razz]

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-06-2018, 09:59 PM:

Bobby, there were Dolby A optical (no digital) prints and Dolby SR optical with SRD digital track prints on Lion King. Not many of the SRD ones though, as there was only one printer at Technicolor that could print SRD at the time.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 06-07-2018, 04:14 AM:

The prints of terminator 2 Dolby SR where also on polyester stock for what i've seen. They sound great, but most of them where dolby A because of sound issues i heard.

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 06-07-2018, 10:56 AM:

The german prints of TERMINATOR II were Dolby SR only and on Acetate Stock (Agfa Gevaert).

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 06-07-2018, 11:24 AM:

I saw U2: Rattle and Hum in optical SR. I think it was a THX screen too. It sounded pretty impressive.

Posted by Victor Liorentas (Member # 5272) on 06-07-2018, 11:41 AM:

I have a lab fresh Dolby SR 35mm print of Remains Of The Day which sounds very smooth and dynamic.
Interesting thing is the Dolby Digital track on it reads great but is silent.No audio at all. Must have been when they were testing the system.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-07-2018, 02:13 PM:

Florian - what makes you think T2 was on polyester stock? Have you personally handled one and know for a fact it was? I would be shocked to hear that unless maybe the print you handled in the Netherlands was dubbed and printed on some non-Kodak stock at a lab in your part of the world.

The Russian dubbed prints of T2 are on Agfa and fading horribly. (Plus they would have the dubbed track.)

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 06-07-2018, 02:39 PM:

Going back to Summer of 1980 here:

Villa Theatre in SLC, UTAH

This venue opened up "Xanadu" and friend and I went to this theatre (I was a Mann Theatre employee at the time. Thus, being the Villa was also Mann, I knew the projectionists there..)

The sound was incredible for a 4 channel, Dolby A setup. The local tech for Mann in that city, fine tuned the house for Dolby Optical and did a fantastic job in his trade.

Location was still a changeover house. Thus, the two machines were in total sync where you couldn't sense the changeovers.

On a business note: Xanadu was a total flop for Universal, yet, with just the sound alone, the film made good money for Universal that summer at the Villa.
Film ran for six weeks at this venue.

-Monte

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 06-07-2018, 03:01 PM:

There were 70mm prints of Day of Thunder that had the early ORC/Kodak digital system. The Cinema in Corte Medera CA got a week run out of it before the sound died. They decided it was time to run the print through the film cleaner and that was the end to the digital sound. The print was sent back and stripped with mag sound.

Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 06-07-2018, 03:23 PM:

Xanadu was dual inventory Academy Mono on some prints as well as Dolby Stereo . This was normal with Universal back in those days.

Posted by Benjamin Bakija (Member # 10458) on 06-07-2018, 04:59 PM:

I saw Platoon last summer and I was amazed by the sound quality.

However, I haven't seen much 35mm films that had analog soundtracks only, but I remember that voices sounded very real, especially when there were short breaks in dialogue resulting in a very clean, realistic silence. Low frequencies were strong, but not too powerful. Adagio for Strings theme sounded beautiful, with right amount of bass. I'm not sure that it was Dolby SR, but I remember that the surround channel was active during shooting scenes.

Posted by Jason Metcalfe (Member # 5739) on 06-07-2018, 06:46 PM:

The mag track DAYS OF THUNDER print we screened a few years ago had one of the best sounding, most dynamic mixes I've ever heard, and was definitely not lacking in the low end, really gave the impression you were right there at the track watching the races.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 06-08-2018, 12:48 AM:

If I remember correctly Days of Thunder footage was among the pieces of demo material to sell digital audio formats to movie theaters in the early 1990's.

quote: Stephan Shelley
There were 70mm prints of Day of Thunder that had the early ORC/Kodak digital system. The Cinema in Corte Medera CA got a week run out of it before the sound died. They decided it was time to run the print through the film cleaner and that was the end to the digital sound. The print was sent back and stripped with mag sound.

That's the first time I've heard failures of the Cinema Digital Sound format on 70mm prints of Days of Thunder blamed on film cleaners. I was under the impression the folks at Kodak and ORC just put too much faith in how much film printing equipment could do back in 1990. The bit rate of Cinema Digital Sound was pretty insane. They used a mild form of audio data compression called delta modulation. It was a forerunner of the ATRAC compression codec used on SDDS. But the end result was still roughly 6 million bits per second worth of bitmap data printed on 35mm or 70mm film. That divides down to 250,000 bits of digital data to cram in the margin of each film frame. Pretty tall order there.

The SDDS system had a total bit rate around 2.2 million bits per second. But that was divided between the primary digital track and redundant digital back up track. Dolby Digital had data spots easier to see with the naked eye. The entire digital track, including error correction data was around 550,000 bits per second, but the actual audio track was only 320 kilobits per second.

quote: Victor Liorentas
I have a lab fresh Dolby SR 35mm print of Remains Of The Day which sounds very smooth and dynamic.
Interesting thing is the Dolby Digital track on it reads great but is silent.No audio at all. Must have been when they were testing the system.

That was a Columbia Pictures title in 1993, after they had debuted the SDDS format. Prior to that the only movie Sony (under the Columbia/Tri-Star brand) had released in Dolby Digital was Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1992. They tried CDS before that with Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Hudson Hawk (35mm only) and Flatliners in Los Angeles only (70mm prints in New York and elsewhere were 70mm mag only IIRC).

It wouldn't surprise me if the studio had a dummy SR•D track on Remains of the Day to compare the consistency of the printed digital audio track. I remember seeing 35mm trailers from the Disney studios for movies like Nixon that had DTS time code; this was before they started releasing movies with DTS audio (starting with Con Air). I specifically remember the release of The Edge (Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Bart the scary as f*** giant ass bear) in 1997. That 35mm print had Dolby Digital audio and DTS time code, but as far as I can tell no DTS discs were ever made for it.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-08-2018, 01:22 AM:

The theater with the failed CDS print most likely used a dry film cleaner on a dirty print (meaning the dirt accumulates and then scratches the print as the dirt becomes abrasive). In total fairness though, the CDS system as Bobby pointed out tried to cram too damn much data in the allotted space and if there was enough dirt on the print to cause a scratch, then the show wouldn't have ran but for another day or two anyway before failing due to too much dirt obscuring the data blocks.

Film prints must not be permitted to become dirty. If you can see dirt accumulating on screen or you find your projector isn't completely clean after the show, your print is dirty. Regular preventive cleaning (preferably wet) is mandatory for the print to stay in lab new condition during the run.

Posted by Stephan Shelley (Member # 8587) on 06-08-2018, 01:40 AM:

It was definitely a dry media cleaner. From what I heard back then they ran there digital print longer than most of the other theatres.

I also heard that most of the engineers on the Cinema Digital Sound project went to work for Sony on the SDDS project.

As I remember the CDS track replaced one the outboard inner mag track on 70mm. It was wider than the mag track and you had to use a modified gate pad on a JJ.

Posted by Florian Kuik (Member # 9322) on 06-08-2018, 06:02 AM:

Brad,

My 2 prints are on polyester stock and SR. They are UK prints, AGFA stock if I remember right. One of it has strangely red parts in it. Someone mentioned maybe it sticked in the development lab or something (the print is otherwise looking new)

The leader mentions Sprectral Recording.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-08-2018, 09:05 AM:

All Agfa fades. Not like pre-82 Eastman, but all Agfa (and Fuji) lowfade does experience color shifting. Agfa is worse though.

Very interesting it's on polyester. The first Agfa polyester we experienced here in the US was on prints of The Fugitive, and virtually all of them have red discoloration randomly taking over the image as time goes on. It's absolutely horrible stock.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-08-2018, 02:43 PM:

NOt pre-digital but True Lies is abn absolute knock out. I had just installed my first really big THX system and the guy fomr THX that came in to certify it sugested we listen to the analog tracks because someone in the THX office said they were a lot better than the SRDF track. So we did listen and we ended up running that movie in SR the entire time it played. It was THAT spectacular.

Mark

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 06-08-2018, 03:25 PM:

Hello Mark,

I also have a very nice memory and impression of the 35mm prints of TRUE LIES. The image was a knock-out in sharpness, and the SR track was nice. But we had a CP50 at the time and an average sound system with Dolby A only, so technical aspects where held back to a large extent...

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 06-10-2018, 01:04 PM:

I have a print of Mortal Combat (the first one). Both the SR and DTS tracks are pretty dynamic, with good deep bass and very active and full surrounds. Too bad the movie itself is so inane.

On my test reel (consists of trailers of all sound formats in varying condition, plus some Dolby Digital snipes and the Ultra*Stereo snipe) there is a trailer for the film "Beautiful Thing"...a great test for dialog intelligibility. If you can understand the very UK accents in the dialog, your EQ is, as Gordon Ramsey would say, "spot-on." It also has some old Mama Cass music which tests both midrange EQ and quality (Will sound very "honky" if the horns are not crossed over correctly or midrange EQ is too hot) but also wow and flutter.

The only drawback to that trailer (which IIRC was a red band) is the subject matter (gay teens fall in love), so depending on the client, I had to advise them that my test reel contains content they may find offensive.

One of the absolute worst feature films tracks was Stallone's "Cobra" ..they literally pushed the analog tracks so hard on the low end they clipped badly..you could actually see the tracks clipping if you pulled the aperture plate and projected it. That film generated many service calls for me.

And some years later, the "Addams Family Rap" trailer came out...and same thing, they clipped the analog track on all the bass hits. I think I still have that trailer but left it off the test reel.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 06-18-2018, 11:59 AM:

70mm mag track of The Thing is pretty impressive. If it wern't for the background hiss i'd have thought it was DTS. - really good dynamic range.

35mm optical (not sure if A or SR) of Top Gun I saw a few years ago was sounding pretty good. Good quality and good surrounds.

Koyaanisqatsi in 35mm optical is pretty good for the phillip glass musical score.

I think some of it can be down to the acoustics of the theatre as well. This is going back a few years but an SR print of Mr Deeds at my local multiplex sounded like crap, later in the afternoon I ran Moulin Rouge in Dolby A at my university cinema and it sounded a lot better.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 06-18-2018, 12:43 PM:

quote: Stephan Shelley
I also heard that most of the engineers on the Cinema Digital Sound project went to work for Sony on the SDDS project.

Some of those CDS veterans went to DTS as well. A big part of the DTS philosophy was applying the lessons learned from CDS, and making sure the DTS digital system could coexist with the optical track, and that there was an elegant fallback to analog in the event of digital failure.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 06-18-2018, 01:54 PM:

ALL Moulin Rouge prints had an SR track. Playing in A would have sounded terrible.

quote: Daniel Schulz
A big part of the DTS philosophy was applying the lessons learned from CDS, and making sure the DTS digital system could coexist with the optical track, and that there was an elegant fallback to analog in the event of digital failure.

The same statement applies to SRD and SDDS as well. (Kind of obvious really.)

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-18-2018, 02:05 PM:

quote: Jerry Axelsson
I also have a very nice memory and impression of the 35mm prints of TRUE LIES. The image was a knock-out in sharpness, and the SR track was nice.

I can also tell you the dailies (which I ran quite a bit of) looked like they were shot on 65mm instead of 35mm. The images we projected were just knock out quality. The lenses and film stocks used were quite common in the day of this film and I ahev listed them below. I can only say the lab did an extra good job and the lenses must have been hand selected. It's one of the very best Super 35 shows ever done IMHO.

2 hr 21 min (141 min)
Sound Mix 70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby Digital (35 mm prints) | DTS
Color Color
Aspect Ratio 1.78 : 1 (open matte)
2.20 : 1 (70mm)
2.39 : 1
Camera Arriflex 35 BL4, Zeiss Standard Speed, Super Speed and Cooke Varotal Lenses
Arriflex 35 IIC, Zeiss Standard Speed and Super Speed Lenses
Arriflex 35-III, Zeiss Standard Speed, Super Speed and Cooke Varotal Lenses
Beaumont VistaVision Camera
Bell & Howell Eyemo
Moviecam Compact, Zeiss Standard Speed and Super Speed Lenses
Laboratory Continental Film Laboratories, Miami (FL), USA (additional film processing)
DeLuxe, Hollywood (CA), USA (prints)
Consolidated Film Industries (CFI), Hollywood (CA), USA
DuArt Film Laboratories Inc., New York, USA (additional film processing)
Film Length 3,855 m (Sweden)
Negative Format 35 mm (also horizontal) (Eastman EXR 50D 5245, EXR 200T 5293, EXR 500T 5296)
Cinematographic Process Super 35 (common-top)
VistaVision (special effects)
Printed Film Format 35 mm (anamorphic)
70 mm (blow-up)

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 10-12-2018, 09:53 PM:

After tonight‘s screening I definitely want to add „BRAM STOKER‘S DRACULA“ (1992) to the list of excellent Dolby SR tracks.
(Seems that there were also Dolby A prints available)

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-13-2018, 10:27 AM:

What type of soundtrack reader? Specifically white exciter, infrared, red?

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 10-13-2018, 02:31 PM:

Kinoton Reverse Scan.

Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 10-13-2018, 07:50 PM:

I presume Kinoton never made infrared scanners? I don't know, but the real question is was that red light on the silver track? I've always thought red light readers on older silver tracks sounded bad.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 10-14-2018, 08:13 AM:

It varies on red light with silvered/doped tracks. Some sound fine, some sound harsh with Crossmod distortion (sound like the signal is clipping). It really is all over the place.

I don't know if Kinoton ever had IR readers (we never sold any from the factory that way) but we have put IR LEDs in for sites that cater to classic titles.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 10-14-2018, 08:23 AM:

True Lies 35mm SR is absolutely spectacular... Way better than the SRD digital track. Same on The Fugitive.

Mark

Posted by Sascha F. Roll (Member # 9043) on 10-14-2018, 10:14 AM:

I second what @Steve said. With some (actually I have the impression: with most, at least the ones we have played) it works fine, others sound distorted. But then again, I frequently test those with my exciter lamp setup I have at home (same processor) an usually they also sound somewhat harsh using the oldfashioned Philips Macro Soundhead with exciter lamp on my Philips FP56.

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 10-15-2018, 01:05 AM:

I agree that THE FUGITIVE is really nice in SR.
Another nice SR print was SHINING THROUGH (1992).

If my memory serves me right, CAPE FEAR and THELMA & LOUISE were nice in SR also.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 10-15-2018, 01:40 AM:

quote: Brad Miller
Florian - what makes you think T2 was on polyester stock? Have you personally handled one and know for a fact it was? I would be shocked to hear that unless maybe the print you handled in the Netherlands was dubbed and printed on some non-Kodak stock at a lab in your part of the world.

I also remember the Dutch subtitled T2 prints to be on polyester, I guess that was a choice of the local distributor. There is no Dutch dubbed version, no Hollywood releases get dubbed in the Netherlands, unless they're targeted at children.

Posted by Thomas Hauerslev (Member # 566) on 10-15-2018, 02:08 AM:

"Adventures of Ford Fairlane" in 35mm Dolby SR - amazing soundtrack.

"Streets of Fire" & "Amadeus" also wonderful in Dolby A

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 7758) on 10-17-2018, 10:14 PM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen

True Lies 35mm SR is absolutely spectacular... Way better than the SRD digital track. Same on The Fugitive.

Mark

Permit me to be slightly OT. "The Fugitive" was an early SRD title. Back in the '90s, we used to use a cut from The Fugitive as a home theater demo. Sourced from laserdisc, it had a great-sounding digital matrix track that perhaps would have been the same as the Lt/Rt master used for the SR print tracks, but we never heard it in SRD.

Then the DVD came out, and with great anticipation, we finally heard it in its "legit" Dolby 5.1 mix. BORRRINGGG! Playing the laserdisc sound through the Pro Logic matrix resulted in so much wide stereo information to the left, right, and rear, the train wreck was FAR more immersive and impactful than from the "discrete" mix.

This, in spite of being nominated for the best sound Oscar that year, and winning it from the BAFTA and CAS awards. Maybe the voters heard it in SR!

So, if you will, please humor me: how many of these great-sounding SR tracks are due to matrix decoding "leakage" that just happens to sound sweeter than a less aggressive 5.1 mix?

Posted by Jerry Axelsson (Member # 3175) on 10-18-2018, 12:57 AM:

Interesting observation Bill.
The Fugitive is really sweet in SR.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 10-19-2018, 12:23 AM:

Eh, I don't know. When I watched The Fugitive for the first time I watched it at the Cinemark Hollywood USA theater in Garland, TX on its best THX certified screen. The theater was equipped for Dolby Digital. I remember watching the original controversial cut of The Program in the same auditorium only a couple months later in SRD. A certain very stupid dramatized stunt involving college kids laying on the center line of a highway got reenacted with tragic results, which resulted in all release prints being altered and all the home video versions deleting that scene.

Anyway, getting back to the topic of The Fugitive, yeah it sounded pretty decent in Dolby SR (it was an advertised THX-Dolby SR show). But I had been spoiled to the rib-rattling dynamics of Jurassic Park in THX-DTS a few miles away at the GCC Northpark 1-2 theater. So I was pretty pissed that the giant sized Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex was deemed unworthy to get a Goddamned Dolby Digital print of The Fugitive despite the fact the damned theater was already equipped to play Dolby Digital prints. I heard all this buzz about how amazing and dynamic the train crash scene sounded in Dolby Digital 5.1. Us folks in this part of the nation had to settle for good ole optical SR. The Hollywood USA theater was one of only two screens in the entire DFW metro area at that time that could play Dolby Digital prints. So it ended being another thing that I liked so much more about DTS. A hell of a lot more theaters were getting equipped with DTS and next to no one at the time was paying the big bucks it took to install Dolby Digital.