cinema rear speaker calibration level for DCP

[garnoil]

Are the rear speaker in a cinema still calibrated 3 db down from the front speakers even for DCP? I did a film and at the theater the rear sounded a bit too low (small festival, private theater, so no telling if the playback system was calibrated and playing at the correct volume...it all sounded a bit too low).

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by garnoil

Are the rear speaker in a cinema still calibrated 3 db down from the front speakers even for DCP?

Yes. And so is the mixing theatre.

Frank.

[garnoil]

Originally Posted by Frank Kruse

Yes. And so is the mixing theatre.

Frank.

Thank you for confirming this:)

[mr.armadillo]

Originally Posted by garnoil

Are the rear speaker in a cinema still calibrated 3 db down from the front speakers even for DCP? I did a film and at the theater the rear sounded a bit too low (small festival, private theater, so no telling if the playback system was calibrated and playing at the correct volume...it all sounded a bit too low).

If there weren't calibrated 3dB down, the rears would have sounded 3dB hotter, not softer. Did you mix with rears calibrated 3dB down?

[garnoil]

Originally Posted by mr.armadillo

If there weren't calibrated 3dB down, the rears would have sounded 3dB hotter, not softer. Did you mix with rears calibrated 3dB down?

Yes, my room is calibrated 83 at the front 80 at the rears - my room is about 4500 cubic feet so it is medium sized and NOT a dub theater- but there was obviously something wrong with the either the play back or most likely (the more I think about it) what happened to the master 5.1 stem after it left my studio (to put the sound to picture). More and more I find that low budget films are making their own DCP, encoding their own blu rays, and even changing audio levels while they do this. Often this home made DCPs and blu rays are made by the colorist or the video editor and usually they are not experienced or have the knowledge or equipment to it properly. A few years ago I had a video editor that was doing one of these 'home made' dcp laybacks raise the volume so that the -20 dbfs 1K tone matched 'his' 0dbfs of his video edit suite...!

Not an issue, better films get real DCP and better festivals have better venues. I just wanted to make sure that there had not been a change in specifications that I may have missed. Thank you for chiming in

[Kuba Pietrzak]

You need to do several test to achieve the right settings. This is because the surround arrays work different, than discrete rears. A size of a room also does matter in terms of front - rear balance. If you have a good sounding dubbing stage nearby, just do some tests, so you realize how a particular level of surrounds from your room translate well in the theater. I had to use different number than 3 to have a good translation. But now it works.

regards,
Kuba