Saturday night I went to Along came a Spider and got my ears blasted off.
Sunday night I went to Autumn in New York and had to pay close attention into trying to listen to the speech.

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If a theater is weel calibrated to 7, 5 IMHO is more than "a little bit below" the recommended volume. I would turn down to 6 at maximum if there were big problems with a particular audience but only in particular situation!!!
Also, I think that if a movie is well recorded, 7 is ALWAYS the correct volume. If the film is intended for old people, it will not have sound effects and the dialogue's level will be perfect at 7.
After the last equalization (very good IMHO) I never had the need to turn the volume below my calibrated level and sound compliances were minimal.
I've projected Pearl Harbor in a THX theater. For my ears 7.5 was perfect but also 7 could be perfect. For many reasons we had to turn down the volume to 6. It was too low for my concept of "movie theater".

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When the standard was set up by dolby you had a lot of auditoriums that held 600 700 as well as more than a thousand people in them. A lot of these theaters were not accustically able to handle sound without some kind of loss in quality.

Speaker systems at the time were not what they are now. What we have now can produce better and more audible sound.

Better mixing and productions of soundtracks.

Higher quality amps to handle the power to run the channels.

The problem is not in what we are doing it is the fact that the standard fader setting is based on 1970's information and situations.

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Something I have been seeing a lot of as lately is improper balancing between the channels. I know of at least one tech who is quite old and has lost a substantial amount of his hearing (but of course won't admit it) and his complaints are that there is too much bass and the dialogue is buried in music and sound effects. What does he do? Why he adjusts the systems for HIS impaired hearing, of course! Check these SPL levels out after his calibration...

LEFT...85db
CENTER...93db
RIGHT...85db
LEFT SURR...79db
RIGHT SURR...79db
SUBWOOFER...74db

Anyone else care to comment on why these settings are horribly wrong? I would like to hear what other sound techs think of this. The systems are being played at 4.5 to 5 (because the level must be set upon dialogue) and they play like mono sound systems now.

But at the theatre I am at now, it is not due to incorrect EQ or SPL, it is because the people in that town complain for every little thing. Which in reality is probably only about 6 people. The other day I found Pearl set to 4.5 on the fader. At that level, what does it matter, you can barely hear it.

I recommend 20 lashings and a 7 year stint at a dollar house for that technician!!! Good God !!! I cant believe this volume thing seems to be such an ordeal.....from what ive seen the following is true....

-Proper calibration of microphones to be used for room B-chain.
-A multiplexing spectrum analyzer is recommended for best results.
-Proper speaker placement and positioning/aiming along with correct crossover/amplification is also a must!!
-Correct spl levels along with SMPTE/THX recommended frequency response.

Despite all of the correct procedures to setting your theater audio to be correspondent with the industry standards and to be representative of what one hears at the mixing studio....The volume is still turned down!!!! Sometimes you can get away with having the fader at 7.0 <like a starwars movie or the contender> but generally complaints keep em down. There is not much more to this volume dilema than just plain that. Until the industry figures out as a whole a true solution other than just testing trailers....i would venture to say that the volume "what r your faders set at?" dilema is here to stay.