Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I used to tune the speakers in movie theaters.
If it’s a Dolby certified theater there will be a chair that has a placard on it, that’s where the mic was placed to tune the theater. It will always be center, about 2/3rds of the way back. Most other certifications mirror this in some way.
We did THX certification and that was a little bit more broad, we wanted the “sweet spot” to be an area, not a single seat. This is why a THX certified room will look different than most other theater rooms, because it’s designed for maximum coverage. This also means we are sacrificing sound quality for sound consistency, making sure every seat sounds the same. With that being said we completely ignored the margins, they were called quarter margins and anything within 25% of the edge was disqualified from primary readings. We would take secondary readings from the edge, but that was just to verify that there were no glaring problems, not for actual certifications.
In short… central-ish is good for any movie theater.
thesohoriots@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This guy knows what’s up.
Question if you’ve been recently: is it just me or have they made movies really damn loud? Not in the sense that they’re trying to get a broader dynamic range, but the whole thing is just tinnitus-inducing the whole way through. Is the mix just bad, the tuning bad, or are the volumes just cranked?
Sequentialsilence@lemmy.world 1 day ago
They changed how they measured loudness a few years back on both the mixing side and the playback side. Back in the 00’s the measurements were based on peak volumes, so brick wall limiting was used to get the most volume that you were allowed to have in playback. This caused the dynamics to be essentially non existent. Filmmakers hated this, movie goers hated it, the only people who liked it were the lawyers because it meant lawsuits didn’t happen.
Laws were changed in the early 10’s that changed how loudness was measured. Now it’s measured as exposure over time. This has had many benefits in the production of both films and music, however the laws, at least in the USA and Canada, were written very broadly, and consider movie theaters and concert halls to both be performance venues. This means movie theaters have the same restrictions as concert halls.
Because the law measures exposure over time it allows the loud areas to be loud as long as there’s quiet areas to offset it. This means when you have someone who doesn’t understand yet how the new laws affect the audio mix, the dialogue will get buried to make the explosions more “impactful”. It has started to get better since the laws have been around for a while and people have gotten used to them.
As dumb as all this sounds the calculations themselves, are very well calculated and you are way less likely to get hearing damage these days from a concert or movie theater than you used to. Your ears get damaged from long term exposure easier than peak volumes, and with measurement stick now measuring long term exposure as opposed to peak volumes, you end up better protected. Because of the regulations you are more likely to get hearing damage from headphones than you are a concert or a movie theater.
AA5B@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Yea, the few times I remembered ear plugs, I had a more enjoyable experience