Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Turn The Sound Down!

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Posted by Ben Wales (Member # 92) on 09-10-2006, 03:38 PM:

I recently had carried some service work on a shared venue and heard that with their own Special Cinema venue have a pending Legal Action taken against them over high sound Volume in their Auditorium by one member of the Public who claims to have Hearing damage!.

The venue has been opened for at least four years and I found the Sound system is set up by a well respected A/V company and can not belive you could have Hearing damage for a 30min film.

We seam to live in a Claim Culture society and wondered has any other Theater/Cinema owners had Legal action made against them?.

And we just had the Empire Cinema in London UK (West End) with a massive 56,000watt THX sound system [Roll Eyes]

, how many complaints will they get? [Eek!]

Posted by Kara Tillotson (Member # 3899) on 09-10-2006, 05:55 PM:

if it was that painful, howd they manage to stay to long?
IMO damage to your ears happend over a long period of time..IE listeninf to your Ipod at a high level all the time causes you to ventually get used to it and thus keep turing it up etc.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 09-10-2006, 06:27 PM:

I have seen this before. What ended up happening was an audio engineer was sent out to measure the decibel levels in the auditorium. The measurement was well within the legal limits and the case was dismissed.

The funny part of the story was that the audio engineer who was called out to do the measurements was the engineer who installed the equipment. He was now working for a different company - but it was the same guy. No one ever said anything. The fact remained though - it was a frivolous lawsuit and everyone involved except the plaintiff felt it was ridiculous.

[Big Grin]

Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 09-10-2006, 07:29 PM:

About 5 or 6 years ago someone complained to the local
council about sound at my workplace. The Environmental
Health officer measured the sound levels during one of
our shows. I think they simply measured the instanteous
sound pressure at one-minute intervals during the show.

I didn't have the chance to properly dissect their
method, the chart of level versus time showed something
like what you'd all expect: Most of the time the level
was well below the level the Environmental Health dept
had decided was safe, with a small number of short peaks
in excess of that.

To my knowledge, nothing happened as a result of this
investigation. I assumed that they had dismissed the
complaint because the loud peaks were infrequent and brief.

Perversely, I managed to contact the person who submitted
the complaint and was able to talk a little about how
Dolby sound systems provide such a great dynamic range
(compared the sound systems at the cinema I used to work
at, which was flattened some years after we moved out).
We keep in touch and agree that some people tolerate loud
sound better than others, and we agree not to fall out over
it.

Alex.

Posted by Ron Curran (Member # 3631) on 09-10-2006, 09:36 PM:

Ahh… dynamic range.
Back when Dolby SVA was introduced, we started to get complaints from the elderly. They usually listen to AM radio where the 1812 overture is compressed to the same level as the talk-show host.
Strange, I don’t remember complaints with 4-track mag at our cinema.
The loudest our system ever goes is when the techs are playing with their noise generators. We learned several decades ago that speaker cones had no problems with normal film playback with the faders set to BD (Below Deafenning) but they had to withstand the tech checks.
These days digital tracks seem to be uniform. Generally, we can leave the fader set at 40. Though Superman Returns had to go up to 44 (great track, too) and some Australian tracks need to come down to 38.

Posted by Alexander Smith (Member # 1769) on 09-11-2006, 11:31 AM:

I think what had happened here was a symptom of introducing
the local audiences to a proper Dolby sound system, when they
had only known either Westrex Mono, or Dolby A with knackered
speakers and amplifiers.

Opinion:
[Superman Returns: The opening credits, in particular,
generated a lot of complaints about the volume. Which was
a little bit daft as it left the audience struggling to hear
the dialogue later in the movie. I admit I'm biased to the
extent that I enjoy some of J. Williams' cinema scores, of
which the Superman Theme is one of my favourites and I believe
it is best experienced loud.]

Alex.

Posted by Wayne Keyser (Member # 2420) on 09-11-2006, 11:31 PM:

Those with hearing problems often interpret "I can't understand what I'm hearing" as "it must be too loud."

These people are not usually hearing things at lower levels than healthy people - instead, what they hear is buzzy, or muffled, or severely limited in frequency.

My father-in-law was hard of hearing due to working many years in an automobile plant - I was one of the few people he could understand because, when he visited, I turned off the stereo and the TV, looked straight at him, and enunciated (you gotta open your mouth, folks!) - but soundtracks? Forget it. He was never so happy as when closed captions arrived - there was no volume level which he could understand.

Nonetheless, old crotchety people frustrated with their inability (I should know, at 57 I'm severely upset when I find something else I can't do anymore, but I won't say that to anyone, I just get cranky) may just complain that it's too loud.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 09-12-2006, 02:59 AM:

Yeah, one of my things that makes me question my hopefully future carrer as a sound tech. is my hearing. I hear sounds, and music great, far better than most. However, with some people that have voices that resonate low, even if the most of their voice is higher, sound like they're mumbling, even if they're speaking loudly. However again, as soon as they fluctuate their voice higher slightly, I can hear them clearly. I pass all the beep tone tests at the hearing place, because I can hear tones and noises just fine. Maybe I just need to go and pay a real hearing specialist to check hearing in the speech area.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 09-27-2006, 09:03 PM:

The fact is that many theater (and especially live venue) sound levels are too loud. When the levels cross the threshold of pain, they're too damned loud. This isn't a matter of dynamic range - I'm talking about the whole track.

I've been in a lot of movies where I've had to hold my ears during sections that only had dialogue - no music or efx.

Part of this is the fault of mixers (or producers, who think their movies will have more impact if everything is loud when just the opposite is true) or sometimes some kid in the booth is grinding up the levels because it's "fun".

A recent survey indicated that something like 30% of U.S. High School kids are already experiencing hearing loss. More of this is probably from live concerts and iPod listening than movie theaters, but we should all take ridiculous sound levels and the associated hearing loss seriously.

We all know that sound systems will distort more at high levels and the simple fact is that many installed systems are not good enough to handle those high levels and dialogue intelligibility goes down. Besides, I'm tired of walking out of movies with a headache.

Having said all that, I don't remember any film in the last six months or so that I found too loud.

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 09-27-2006, 10:30 PM:

I had a problem with 'The Queen' reverting in to optical sound a while back, got some complaints but when I went in the sound seemed alright. Put the sound up a notch anyway, but I think because we've had the likes of Pirates and X-Men all summer, when it comes to a dialogue-based film people aren't used to the lack of sound.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 09-28-2006, 07:52 PM:

Yeah, I have a bit of hearing problems. I heard sounds fine, better then most. Pitches, tone, noises, all in a wide range. My hearing range is wider than most. Unfortunatly, from working as a pinsetter mechanic for so long, all those crashing pins seems to have foing just the area involving low speech. If you resonate low, and don't speak up, I won't understand a word you said. Mine isn't from loud music, or other things like that, from working a bowling alley mostly. Things aren't too quiet, they seem like the person is mubmling. And there's a very tight band, where no matter how loud they talk, they still sound like their mumbling, loudly. Really questioning the validity of me working to become a "Sound" technitian.

Posted by Martin Brooks (Member # 1269) on 09-28-2006, 10:11 PM:

People think when you lose hearing that you hear everything, but lower. That's not really what happens. What happens is that you lose threshold - the lowest volume that you can hear a particular sound. That's why when you go for a hearing test, they make the tone at each frequency lower and lower until you can't hear it. That's what they're charting.

The other thing to realize is that most hearing tests don't test high frequencies - they test the frequencies needed to hear speech - only up to about 5KHz. But that's almost like hearing only Academy Curve optical sound (which actually starts rolling off above 2KHz.)

Don't take your hearing for granted. If you travel on noisy trains or work at an airport or anywhere else where sound is loud, wear hearing protection. I can hear speech frequencies fine - I scored 100% on a recent test, but my high frequency hearing has rolled off and it bugs the hell out of me. I was always pretty careful, but obviously not careful enough. You can permanently damage your ears at just one loud rock concert.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 09-29-2006, 11:18 AM:

Yes, and since I still work 2 jobs, the one at the bowling alley too, I think I may need to get rid of that one if I'm to salvage my hearing for my other job. Ear protection isn't 100%, and often it can deprive you of other clues, and the big shooting range 1970's headphone sytle ear protectors get in the way when you're working in tight equipment, and always seem to get knocked off.

Posted by John Koutsoumis (Member # 1855) on 09-29-2006, 10:50 PM:

Sometimes loud can be good. In the last 3 years I have seen "Pink Floyd: The Wall" 2 times here at the Astor Theatre in 70mm & 6-track mag. When the track "In The Flesh" starts with a bang followed by the young rioters the sound level was far beyond 'loud'. The foundations would have being rocked. There is only one downside and that was when at least twice there was
the sound of glass shattering and that was painful (although I cannot hear the glass on the DVD) but level was where it should be for the kind of film that "The Wall" is. The sound was fantastic. My hair was raised and I had goosebumps all the way through. Pure Bliss. This was one damn loud film. Close to the level of a rock concert but with way better quality sound, so maybe that's why it's tolerable.

Last sunday I also saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" in 70mm 6 track mag (again at thr Astor Theatre) and level was between 7.5 and 8.0. Great sound!

And yet I remember coming out of a screening of "Resident Evil" at a Village Cinema with a massive headache. And from what I have being told their levels are hardly over 6.0.

Posted by Charles Greenlee (Member # 3856) on 10-01-2006, 02:11 AM:

I'm wondering if the sudios aren't mixing the sound as good. The meadi quality, and equipment maybe better, but they may be mixing it more dynamic, or harsher.