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Old 05-13-2011, 11:24 AM
garnoil garnoil is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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Default Re: Dolby 7. Is everybody mixing at this level?

Quote:
Originally Posted by dr sound View Post
During last Thanksgiving weekend I had a Feature Film in the Theaters that I mixed called "Faster". I went to a Theater with all my family and when the opening credits came on the left speaker was out and the mix was real low.
I ran out and found the manager and ... then she told me we play our mixes at 4.5 on the Dolby Box...WTF?
Well I took my family to another Theater chain and saw a beautiful Christy Digital projection and the opening credits came up and ALL THE SPEAKERS WERE WORKING!! Then guess what, the level was low!
I ran out again and found the manager and she told me "we play all movies at 5 on the Dolby Box otherwise we will blow out our speakers"!!!
I told her your speakers will be fine then pleaded with her to play it at 7.
After 5 minutes of pleading she said she would play it at 6.5 not 7.
Went back into the theater and semi enjoyed a close to reference level playback.

There are Cinema Chains that play all movies between 4.5 and 5 no matter what. Well then I will ask for the movie to be played back at reference.
If they don't, I will watch the movie and then ask for a refund.
I'm not getting 100% of what the Director or Mixers created then why should they get 100% of the ticket price!!!
I have seen a similar issue and it sucked but my question is: Isn't it Dolby labs who establishes the volume standard and aligns each theatre to play at a given reference level (85dbC slow re:20dbfs pink). Why is the manager allowed to set the volume to their liking? and what is even worse (no offense DR Sound), if the manager of the theatre actually changes the volume up or down because a customer complains (even if that customer is the very knowlegable DR. Sound...again no offense) does this not say that there is really no standard as any "manager" (usually business people and not sound people) can set the level at whatever they want? So why is Dolby so picky about licensing studios that do not meet the 85dbC, or are too small, or have speakers that do not go down to 40Hz. All these technicalities that we have been adhering to seem kind of useless when they can drop the volume up and down at will.

Can someone tell me what it means in dbs to change the volume of the Theatre Dolby amplifier/processor from 7 to 4? What is each notch represent in terms of dbs...from what Dr, Sound implies it appears that each number represents at least a 3 db increment. So, if they are usually playing at volume 7 and they drop to 4 that would equal a 12 db drop in film volume (assuming each number notch is 3db). That is a huge volume change that would certainly account for an extreme loss of bass information simply because of the non-linearity of ear on a soundtrack dropped 12 dbs from normalized mixed. If one mixes at 85dbC and then one drops the volume to 73dbC (a 12 db SPL drop) the mix will sound completely different.
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