The last 70mm that I ran was "True Lies", and I watched it in the Theatre, then I saw it again in 35mm DTS in the same house about a week later to compare. The DTS was much harsher than the 70mm SR sound, and we were playing the digital back about 6db under the level that we played the mag at.

IMHO, even though more care is needed to maintain the mag sound, it was much better than it's digital counterpart.

Would like know how others out there feel.

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The most direct comparison I had, between mag sound and Dolby digital was when I was working as the head projectionist for United Artists in Denver. We got one of the survey screenings of Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. It tuned out to be the final audio mix and was finished in LA at 3:00AM and flown to Denver on a privet jet. They had a swarm of technicians to hook up the dubber unit and to do a new b-chain on our big house. I watched the run-through of the film and the sound was amazing. It was a 4-channel SR mag mix. The show was a success that evening with Francis Ford Coppola and a few of the actors in attendance.

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I once alternated between 35mm prints of 2001 with 4track and 2001 with SR optical and even though this was not 70mm, the stereo soundfield with the mag was so much more distinct and opened. And of course, that little auditory game Dolby plays with "matrixed" surround is a joke compaired to the discrete surround track on a mag print.

In defense of digital, I do think a lot of the problems we hear are that many of the theatre systems don't have the necessary headroom, be it in the amps or speakers, to keep loud passages clean and distortion free. And we all know that when D/A processors and transistor amps distort, even by the smallest margins, it is a VERY nasty sound, not like tube distortion. It also may be a psychological factor....the manager just installed an $8,000 digital reader and he wants it to be noticed. So he has the projectionst goose up the volume. They always used to do this with the surround channel in the early days of Dolby stereo. Hey....we just put up all those walls speakers, let's make sure we hear them. And then you would get all that dialogue and crappy out-of-phase crappy dirt noise bleading all over the theatre.

I went to an SMPTE chapter meeting when Dolby was demonstrating their then new digital system. They ran a reel of THE FUGITIVE in analog SR. It was the reel where the train crashes. The Dolby guy explained to us how the matrix does fine with sounds that are predominantly in one or two channels, but if it tries to reproduce distinct sounds equally in all 4 channels, it can't handle complex waveforms like that and the stereo image simply collapes to the middle of the theatre, practically becoming mono. With discrete systems, all the sounds stay in their locations (I am thinking, "yah, like MAG SOUND, dufus"). Then they put on the Dolby digital reel. Yeah, the sounds stayed in their respective locations, but the screaching of the metal as the train twisted in the crash was so loud and what seemed like double the high-end energy that we just heard in the SR version, that it actually was painful. I had to hold both my ears. THIS was what they were using as a demo to sell us on Dolby Digital?!!

I walked out telling everyone, "we need to go back to mag.....honest."

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Frank Angel,
Brooklyn Center Cinema

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Worst, though, is that it seems DTS 70mm is dead also.

Consiter: 99% of people can't hear the difference between magnetic and digital. Studios are not going to pay the significant cost increase to make that 1% happy.

Also, I think that it is generally accepted that a properly run 35mm presentation is better than a properly run E-cinema presentation. Yet, studios have _already_ accepted E-cinema (they are just waiting for the price to go down, which it surely will.)

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Just what WERE you expecting? ;-) Is it a DTS-6AD or a DTS-6D through, say, a SMART processor?

Steve

We have a DTS-6D with a SMART Mod-2C and five SMART TA2050 amps. It rocks for the most part but the speakers are not the best, or are the amps. Not what I would have chosen but you make do with what you have. So far the sound is pretty damn good but I think it needs a better speaker array.

So forget the amplification, what about speakers.. what would you all say would be the best to go with?