|
|
Toronto AES BulletinSeptember 1996Meeting Review |
The Toronto Section got an early start to their 96/97 season on Tuesday, September 3rd. About 65 members and guests gathered for a presentation entitled "Surround Sound for The Toronto International Film Festival at Roy Thomson Hall: How to Turn a 3000-Seat Concert Hall into a Surround Sound Movie Theatre".
This year's chair, Peter Cook, began the meeting by thanking the outgoing chair, Earl McCluskie, for his great work over the past few years and expressed the hope that Earl would continue to contribute his considerable energies to the Toronto Section executive.
Each year the Toronto International Film Festival attracts the stars, directors, and hangers-on from the world of film to our city. For the second year in a row the Gala screenings for TIFF were held at Roy Thomson Hall. RTH is usually the home of the Toronto Symphony so it's conversion to a cinema with capability for four main surround sound formats made for an interesting project!
Neil Muncy was responsible for the overall audio installation. Neil described how the overall reverberation time for the hall had been cut in half to bring it within the outer limit of the Dolby specification for a room of that size. This was accomplished by strategic placement of about 65,000 square feet of black velour around the hall. After giving an overview of the installation Neil played Reel 2 from Independence Day so that everyone could hear (and see) the system in action.
Next up Keith Vanderklay from Contact Distribution described the loudspeaker installation. Behind the screen were three two-way EAW loudspeakers with a specially designed horn high frequency unit. These speakers were biamped with about 10 killowatts of Carver power amplifiers. The subwoofers were 2 double 18 inch units. There were seven EAW's around the lip of the first balcony for surround. The rest of the hall was covered by 32 PSB dipoles. A stereo surround was employed and 4 different delay zones were required to cover the hall properly.
A tour of the installation followed with a detailed look at the speakers and amplifier equipment behind the screen and the various playback systems installed in the projection booth.
David Grainger of Best Theatre Supply played two versions of film trailers, the first in optical and the next in DTS. Ben Ing of Sony Cinema Products talked about Sony's SDDS system and played a reel of Independence Day.
Finally Brad Hohle of Dolby Laboratories discussed the Dolby Digital format. Brad rolled the same reel of Independance Day and for the next 20 minutes switched between Dolby analogue SR and the three digital formats. When the audience was asked for comments on what they had heard the most common response was "They are all very loud!" Playback at RTH had been set for the industry standard and many in the audience wondered why playback levels had to be so high.
A good discussion followed with particularly thoughtful comments from Ben Ing who works on the mixing stages in California. Producers want their films to be the loudest; mixers are being asked to mix at very high levels; at least one company is buying hearing protection for their mixers (!) so that they don't deafen their staff in a very short period. It is a significant problem for the industry as a whole. In particular there is a race to make the hottest "trailer" so that companies get the audiences attention before the movie starts. The problem is that the theatre operators, on hearing the trailers turn down the overall level and the following movie is played at too low a level.
The meeting wrapped up almost three hours after it began but discussions spilled out onto the parking lot and continued into the wee hours at a pub near RTH. Two days later The Toronto International Film Festival held the world premiere of Carroll Ballard's Fly Away Home at the Opening Night Gala Presentation of the 21st annual Toronto International Film Festival at Roy Thomson Hall.
Thanks to Earl McCluskie and Peter Cook for organizing this meeting.
Review by Peter Cook
| Preview of this Meeting | Back to the October 96 Bulletin |
| Toronto AES Home | Current Bulletin | Future Meetings | Back Issues | Search |