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NATO and UNIC release exhibitor requirements for immersive audio
Feb 15, 2013

The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) and the Union Internationale des Cinémas (UNIC) have released cinema exhibitor requirements for immersive sound technologies.

Neither organization currently endorses this emerging technology, whether called “3D” audio, object-based audio or immersive audio—nor any proprietary sound format. However, both organizations believe it is essential that, whatever audio rendering solution an individual cinema may choose, it must be capable of playing whatever movie is released with immersive sound. The Exhibitor Requirements explore two possible paths to that goal.

AMC Theatres’ executive VP of operations and NATO Technology Committee chairman John McDonald said, “It is in nobody’s interest—not exhibitors, studios or vendors—to repeat our experience of the multiple, proprietary and incompatible digital sound formats of the 1990s. While it is critical that we continue to innovate, it is also critical that we work together to implement new technologies in a rational manner that serves all stakeholders. These Exhibitor Requirements represent a first step in that process.”

Kim Pedersen, UNIC VP and chair of the organization's recently established technology committee, commented, “High-quality sound is essential to ensuring an attractive and competitive cinema-going experience. We must, however, ensure that new innovations in sound can be harnessed by all exhibitors. We therefore welcome the fact that our colleagues at NATO have initiated this important dialogue regarding the latest developments around immersive sound.”

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CinemaCon: Issue Brewing Over Proposed Immersive Sound Standards
Barco and DTS announce support for open format MDA; Dolby argues that the option won’t ensure consistent playback.
9:49 AM PDT 4/18/2013 by Carolyn Giardina

LAS VEGAS -- The promise of immersive sound to further extend the theatrical experience into one that can't be duplicated in the home is a big topic this week at CinemaCon, but there's also a contentious issue developing around how to create and distribute mixes for the multiple new sound systems making their way to theaters.

To understand the situation, start with a look back to February, when NATO and the Union Internationale des Cinemas (UNIC) released cinema exhibitor requirements for immersive sound technologies to ensure that any audio rendering system that an individual cinema may choose is capable of playing back immersive sound when a studio releases it.

This requirement impacts all sound system developers, particularly the two companies making the biggest push in the space: Barco, developer of the Auro 11.1 system, and Dolby, creator of the Atmos system.

On Wednesday morning, in advance of an afternoon sound panel at CinemaCon, Barco and audio technology developer DTS announced that they would together support a proposed open format for immersive object-based cinema sound, which they believe will meet the NATO/UNIC requirement.

The companies said in the announcement that “the efforts represent a collective desire to protect exhibitors’ freedom of platform choice, ensuring their ability to play any movie regardless of which 3D audio system they procure.”

To do this, they are recommending DTS’ MDA (Multi Dimensional Audio), an open object based archiving/mezzanine format. “We hear from every studio that multiple mixes are not sustainable financially. We’d like to find a common workflow and common deliverable,” said DTS senior director John Kellogg, speaking on the sound panel.

But Dolby disagrees with this approach. “It will lead to a bad experience in the [theater],” Matt Cuson, senior director of cinema at Dolby, asserted in a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter. “You need to have control of how to capture and reproduce the artists' work. The NATO spec is suggesting that you break them apart. Then you lose control of the quality and consistency of the experience.
"The industry needs standards. Some portions need to be open. … Some parts are best kept closed," he argued.

Cuson related that Dolby supports openness in packaging, security, streaming protocols and picture and sound synchronization, but “how the original intent is captured and rendered needs to be tightly coupled.” He added that Dolby wants its developed Atmos system to control that part of its pipeline, saying, “We believe it’s in the best interest of the industry and consumer experience. ... That is the only way to ensure consistent playback. ... It does the industry a disservice to specify a file format without specifying a speaker configuration or a render method."

But Brian Claypool, senior director of strategic business development at Barco, told THR that while there always have been variables in theater configurations, Barco believes its “recommended workflow allows for consistent results.”

Added Claypool: “We’d like to find a standards-based approach that everyone can participate in.”

With immersive sound still new -- and installation costs that could range anywhere from $50,000 to more than $200,000, depending on system, size of theater and other variables -- the stakes are high, as any requirements could potentially impact a theater owner's decisions as to when or what to adopt.

DTS doesn't offer an immersive theatrical sound system, but insiders tell THR that they believe an advantage for DTS would be to have content available in its MDA format, which could potentially give the company a boost in the home audio market.

An entity that will have a lot of influence in this area is global standards setting body Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), whose technology committee on digital sound systems -- which invites all stakeholders to the table -- is working to lay the groundwork for a new audio standard aimed at creating a consistent sound experience in theaters, and a parallel project involves incorporating immersive audio content into the new standard.

Speaking Wednesday at CinemaCon, SMPTE committee chair Brian Vessa -- who is executive director of digital audio mastering at Sony Pictures Entertainment -- urged studios and exhibitors to get together and push for a common standard, saying that this is needed for wide adoption of immersive sound.

Vessa reported that SMPTE’s early study likely will conclude in June or July, then it would take about a year to develop the common file format and probably another year to implement it into production workflow and theaters.

He told THR that he views MDA as a good starting point but that more work is needed to fulfill all industry requirements.

Various stakeholders discussed the issue on panels or privately with THR this week at CinemaCon.

During Wednesday’s sound panel, Mark Collins, director of projection technology at Marcus Theatres, said: “We are sometimes getting 12 different Digital Cinema Packages (the digital equivalent to a film print), including versions for 3D and different light levels. We’d like a common standard for sound.”

While he viewed immersive audio as the “next step” in large-format theaters, he asserted that “[exhibitors] are looking at a considerable cost” for such installation, and he therefore believes standards are key because “we have to know we are making a long-term investment.”

Director Sam Raimi weighed in on the subject during Wednesday’s filmmakers panel.
Nothing that he used both Dolby Atmos and Barco Auro for Oz The Great and Powerful, Raimi said: “Both systems are great. I hope [exhibitors] put them in theaters. They create sonic dimension, and I don’t think home systems will have this for a quite a while.”

But he warned that studios haven’t started to account for the extra time that will be needed should they choose to use multiple immersive formats. “You need to do different mixes,” he said. “It is very complicated to maintain the quality over different formats. I hope a standard will come out soon and get rid of two track and maybe 5.1.”

A similar view was shared by three-time Oscar winner Richard King -- supervising sound editor of DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo, which will get both a Auro 11.1 and Atmos mix. He visited CinemaCon on Wednesday to introduce the Turbo trailer in Auro for a Barco presentation at Cinemark’s Century 16 South Point Theatre.

“For certain films, [immersive sound] will be great,” he said, adding that it can offer an experience in a theater that consumers can’t get at home.

But he admitted to THR that he hopes eventually there will be just one mix when a studio chooses to release in multiple immersive sound formats. “It has created havoc in schedules; we have weeks for extra mixing,” he said. “I think filmmakers would be more comfortable if there is just one version of their film out there.”

Barco’s Auro has been used for eight releases since it debuted in 2012 with Red Tails, and 17 more are in the pipeline, including the upcoming Turbo and Elysium (both also are being released in Atmos). The company reported that 67 theaters worldwide are now equipped for Auro.

In 2012, DreamWorks Animation committed to releasing all of its upcoming titles in Auro. It also installed Auro in its Campanile Theater on its Glendale campus as well as equipped one of its mixing rooms on the campus with the sound system.

Atmos -- which was installed temporarily at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace for CinemaCon presentations -- launched in June 2012 with Disney/Pixar’s Brave and to date has roughly 40 released and upcoming titles and about 100 installations in theaters worldwide. Postproduction installations include the Zanuck Theatre on the Fox lot and Disney Stage A.

Upcoming Atmos titles include Transformers 4, Godzilla and Star Trek Into Darkness.

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-02-2013, 10:14 AM:
 
All this talk of "immersive sound" is all fine and good. But these efforts are the equivalent of placing the cart ahead of the horse if the damned movie theaters can't bother to do surround sound right in the first place.

Where is NATO on the subject of basic sound system maintenance? What about proper theater design as it relates to room acoustics? What about having proper, capable staff levels to keep movie theater sound systems properly tuned!?

It sounds to me like these movie theater chain executives are slightly fired up (maybe) to get brands like Auro 11.1 and Dolby Atmos onto the marquee maybe after they get all their other crap done on the check list. So far the marketing efforts for these sound formats has been terrible.

By the way, I kind of thought 5.1 and 7.1 channel surround sound was supposed to be immersive.

I guess I don't know enough about Barco's Auro 11.1 process. But I've been under the impression it's little more than Surround-EX style fakery to make a 5.1 channel or 7.1 channel LPCM audio mix pretend it is an 11.1 channel mix. Is that correct? Or does the DCP contain some other kind of proprietary audio stream compatible only with a Barco Auro 11.1 processor?

This talk of "open standards" regarding theater sound kind of reinforces my impression of Auro 11.1 being a system that merely enhances an existing 5.1/7.1 LPCM mix. Home theater electronics companies have been building that sort of thing for more than a decade. Yamaha has built surround receivers for the home that could fake a 5. mix into 11.1. With "open standards" it sounds kind of like the same fakery would be applied to the commercial cinema as well.

On a fundamental level I like Dolby Atmos' approach. The object based format does much to address the limitations of 5.1 & 7.1 channel based audio layouts and goes well beyond the 10.2 channel based concepts I've been wanting movie theaters to adopt for more than a decade. Unfortunately, Atmos is an expensive process for a theater to install. It does require its own proprietary audio format to bundle on a DCP or send separately.

If movie theaters are going to push for an "open" format, I guess the Linear PCM format would be nearest to that. But it is a channel based process. To make LPCM more "immersive" more channels of audio would be required, which gets us back to that whole 10.2 idea that few seem to want to pursue, but could easily be implemented since it is supported in the D-cinema specifications. Instead, I guess we're just going to get 5.1 mixes and have booth hardware fake them into being something more as well as making audiences pay more for it.

Meanwhile, the issue of making far more commercial movie theaters sound great (or correct) will continue to be ignored.

 

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Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 08-02-2013, 10:37 AM:
 
Solution: just mix everything in mono. Like Woody Allen. And who doesn't like a good Woody Allen movie??


 

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Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 08-02-2013, 11:00 AM:
 
The Auro codec allows you to encode a full-range 11.1 discrete mix into the 5.1 channels on the DCP, so it's not just upmix fakery (although the processor does include an upmix algorithm for playing back 5.1 or 7.1 content). The mixers create a discrete 11.1 soundtrack, which is passed through the Auro encoder and laid down as a 5.1 printmaster, which then gets distributed out on the standard DCP as 5.1. If the cinema has an Auro system installed, it decodes out the full 11.1 mix; everyone else hears the 5.1.

It's using data compression of a kind, they're taking advantage of the fact that 24 bit printmasters have more headroom than you need; they're using some of the "extra" bits to hide the additional channel data.
 

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Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 08-02-2013, 12:29 PM:
 
Back in the years there were Dolby, DTS and SDDS. It was a long fight with winners and losers.
But the master was the same - ok, 5ch SDDS was different, but not so much.

Now Atmos and 11.1 are quite different systems. Will studios keep mastering features using two different systems? I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that something happens to cinema sound, but I reckon either of them will at some point completely disappear. If I was an exhibitor, I would be very cautious at the moment.
 

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Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 08-02-2013, 04:26 PM:
 
I don't understand why Auro even needs to use any sort of proprietary encoding piggybacked onto standard LPCM 5.1 audio. It sounds kind of like a compromise -as if the primary tracks are being dumped from 24-bit or 20-bit down to 16-bit or even possibly less to make room for the hidden Auro channels. The DCI standard supports up to 16 discrete channels, with enough channel assignments available for at least ten full range audio channels.

I understand that some of the channel assignments in the specification are not unanimously approved. At the very least 5 stage channels, 4 surround channels and 1 sub-bass channel are supported by the specification. At least a couple of the channels will be reserved for special purposes, like descriptive audio tracks for blind audience members. In the end at least a couple or more channels can have their assignments hammered out and finalized so we could have an actual "open" 10.2 or 11.1 audio format where all 12 channels have all the bits available.

I also recognize that many theater sound systems don't have the capability to reproduce all the detail in a 24-bit 48kHz audio stream, much less something better like 24-bit 96kHz. But that is an admission that many theater sound systems are not designed and maintained as well as they should be. If I'm going to be expected to pay an extra surcharge on top of the normal ticket price I think that extra money will entitle me to expect audio and projection standards that are excellent, not just pretty good and loud.

That's really the biggest disconnect in all of this. The theater executives are thinking about all the extra money they're going to make advertising this stuff as it relates to their premium priced auditoriums, but they're not concentrating on the basics of doing the job right with sound. They're not doing it well enough in their standard priced houses. And they're taking that not done right approach into the higher priced houses and merely cranking up the volume level a notch or two. That ain't worth a surcharge.
 

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Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-02-2013, 10:07 PM:
 

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Where is NATO on the subject of basic sound system maintenance? What about proper theater design as it relates to room acoustics? What about having proper, capable staff levels to keep movie theater sound systems properly tuned!?

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quote: Mike Blakesley

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What is it with the movie theaters in Colorado anyway? Are there NO good ones there?

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Not really, no.
 

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Posted by William Kucharski (Member # 7246) on 08-14-2013, 05:05 AM:
 
To be fair, the RPX theater at the Regal Continental in Denver is still a (mostly) decent theater - certainly the only one still capable of bass pressure felt in the chest from the subs, likely due to the substantial amount of concrete used in its original construction.

The Century 16 Bel-Mar used to be OK but since they dropped THX the quality there has dropped precipitously.

Alas, in newer theaters like the recent remodel of the AMC Flatiron Crossing 14, the primary concern was the powered reclining leather seats, not the quality of the presentation on-screen; note also that most of the time I am the one who has to close the outer theater doors at any given theater to avoid hearing the people leaving the theater next door in the middle of the film, despite having had several conversations with theatre management.

What I wouldn't give for an Arclight here…
 

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Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 08-14-2013, 07:19 AM:
 
It's a pity that the vast majority of movie-goers are mindless sheep that are going to pay extra money for these "premium experiences". The studios and the exhibitors know this, and are going to milk it for all it's worth. Not necessarily bad business, but a little dishonest if you ask me.

One of the biggest selling points of digital cinema has been perfect presentation, every time, even on the 30th week of exhibition. Sadly, a film that's been running that long will most likely be in the 90 seat shoe box at the end of the hall that is missing a surround array, hasn't be aligned since the Bush administration, and smells like a teenager's gym socks. I can't tell you how many times I would have gladly paid for a ticket and concessions to go see movies theatrically, only to stop myself because I knew just how shitty of an auditorium I was going to be in. What's the point when my home cinema looks and sounds more cinematic? I even complained to Cinemark about it once. Their answer? Wait for digital (it was a 35mm theatre). That was 6 months ago.

This is another reason I'd love to see some sort of semblance of quality assurance/guarantee (like THX) that would tell me that, hey, this place has its act together. It's become a crapshoot on whether or not the experience will be great. Kudos to Celebration Cinemas' flagship cinema in Grand Rapids. I drove a couple hours to see something in their THX house and it lived up to expectations. The whole experience was a delight.

AJG
 

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 08-14-2013, 11:22 AM:
 

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What I wouldn't give for an Arclight here…

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quote: Marco Giustini

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One big advantage of Atmos Vs. any other system - besides this very clever way of rendering sound - is the dynamic behind it. Since EACH speaker should be capable of reaching 102dB SPL at listening position (this is then compromised a little to help with budget!) the final power reserve is just huge. On a channel based system the WHOLE ARRAY should be capable of reaching 102dB at listening position.

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quote: Marco Giustini

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Atmos can also play 5.1 and 7.1, some pre-defined surround speakers are grouped - and EQ'd - together so standard formats can be also played as intended with no compromises.

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As usual every cinema installs what they want but even though you want to save money, you'll still end up with one amp for each surround speaker (with some exceptions if you follow the latest Atmos specs).

What I am saying is that if an Atmos system is installed you won't find a 5.1 system driven by three amplifiers! Because it is Atmos, you WILL have more power than the average.

Let's also say that if the customer is investing in Atmos, usually they are willing to invest some money into it.

Keyword: "usually"
 

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Posted by Aron Toplitsky (Member # 6950) on 09-26-2015, 12:28 AM:
 
Thanks for the reply guys.

So Atmos can sound different or should I say better, depending on how it's set up for each theater? I have watched Atmos films in various theaters around the LA area and I can say some sound better than others.
 

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Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 09-26-2015, 11:23 AM:
 

quote: Bobby Henderson

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I don't know what "Auro Extreme" is. There's nothing mentioned about that at the Auro website and web searches don't turn up anything for me. Maybe the theater made up the term to go with that "XD" thing.

Given the relationship between Auro, Barco and Datasat (if I remember right Datasat makes the Auro sound processors), I kind of expect Auro to transition over to supporting DTS' Open MDA format, a.k.a. DTS-X. Since various third parties might possibly apply their own branding to the technology, Auro would be likely to do that. However, I see more brand equity in something like DTS-X than I do Auro.

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quote: Aron Toplitsky

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So Atmos can sound different or should I say better, depending on how it's set up for each theater? I have watched Atmos films in various theaters around the LA area and I can say some sound better than others.

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So it's going to mimic Atmos!

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quote: Aron Toplitsky

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So which of the two formats have better bass management and provide a better LFE experience?

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quote: Aron Toplitsky

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Also, does the Auro 11.1 system place subs in the rear like an Atmos set up?

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quote: Marco Giustini

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The 'LFE experience' will be be dictated by the soundtrack and the auditorium. I don't think that bass management has anything to do with that.

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quote: Jonathan Goeldner

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couldn't a master 13.1 mix be made, and then the theaters that are 11.1 - the processor's decode what the theater's speaker/system setup is, if the theater isn't 13.1 - it doesn't decode the speakers that aren't there?

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