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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Connecticut looks to regulate sound levels at movie theaters
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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!
Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 03-05-2014 07:39 AM
There you have it...OSHA has the 90dB/8-Hour threshold. The typical move is 2-2.5 hours. While our nominal level is 85dBc/channel (note the 90dB above is 90dBa...which takes human hearing into account so it puts more emphasis on the frequencies in the 3KHz range than say the 60Hz range), we do have the potential to go higher than that but it is going to be for rather short intervals. The maximum SPL in a movie theatre is pretty well controlled so if it is unhealthy in Connecticut, it is unhealthy everywhere and proper legislation should be enacted on the movie making itself. However, I don't think that is the case. While I think movies are mixed way too loud (they ruin the illusion of reality by making it louder than reality), I don't favor legislation, particularly at the state/local level where people are reactionary to non-real problems.
Once upon a time, the studios knew how to mix a film such that dialog was ineligible and the music/effects did not strain the ears. That period seems to have passed. Not that there are not good examples where a film DOES have great dynamic range but one can come away without pain or fatigue. Larry Blake does an incredible job, in my opinion, of creating mixes that are very easy to listen to. There are films like Gravity that did an incredible job with the sound without hurting ones ears. However I don't think Hollywood, in general, gets it...people don't like their movies as loud as they are presently mixed, by and large. If nothing else, this process may wake Hollywood up a bit. Then again, it is likely to bring ridicule to the state of Connecticut instead (from a movie perspective).
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 03-05-2014 04:57 PM
quote: Scott Norwood
Plus, anyone who has ever worked in a theatre knows that different types and sizes of audiences have different expectations for movie sound: a sold-out evening show of an action movie patronized largely by adolescents needs to be louder than a sparsely attended matinee of a period drama patronized only by seniors.
Amen to that. Furthermore, anyone who has ever worked in a theatre will tweak their sound for the audience. If it's the 2pm show on a sunny Wednesday afternoon of whatever is the latest Jane Austen sh!te and with only 15 customers, with an average age of 70 and all of them in the front row, turn it down half a point; if it's sheeting down with rain on a Saturday night and you're showing Terminator 666: Megadeath Anhililation to a packed house of 16 year-olds, crank it up half a point (doing precisely that on the Dolby digital snipe at the start of these shows and looking down at everyone suddenly looking up was one of the perks of the job for me!).
Being serious for a moment, the big problem with this sort of regulation is that hearing damage caused by overexposure to amplified sound is a chronic issue, not an acute one. The odd evening in a nightclub isn't going to damage your hearing, and neither is hearing the odd massive explosion in a movie. But spending five evenings a week in a loud club probably will: in fact, I have a friend whose high frequency hearing is now pretty much shot, and even she admits that this is probably because she spent most of her 20s and 30s in clubs, where the ambient sound level was probably 110db plus.
But there are lots of things that if we do too much of, it'll cause us serious and/or permanent damage. Drinking a bottle of whisky a day doesn't make for a long and healthy life, either, but we don't ban whisky because of that.
As for Obamasound, the Affordable Audio Act does have sort of a ring to it!
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-05-2014 10:04 PM
These legislators in Connecticut are really showing their ignorance and their ass with this proposed law.
If these lawmakers are actually interested in preventing hearing damage they would be doing something about all the people listening to music on their iPods, smart phones and other devices with the music cranked up and blasting into their brains through various kinds of ear buds. That's where most of the hearing damage is happening these days.
What audio frequencies does this 85db level include? All of them? Yes? Well, hell, if the freaking theater's sound system isn't going to sound any more dynamic than the speakers built into my TV set and have the character of the crappy horn speakers on top of the high school gym's scoreboard I might as well stay at home and watch the movie there!
Most in this forum clearly understand the listener's perception of loudness, even painful loudness, is tied to more than just a flat decibel level. 85db is acceptable for dialog material. But it's wimpy as hell for bass and sub-bass frequencies. If the theater's sound system can handle it, audiences can listen to 20Hz sub-bass tones at more than 120db without it being painful. If you go to the other end of the audible range 120Hz in any sort of treble or high frequency area would be painful.
I don't know all of the frequency ranges that get hit with a round of real gunfire. I just know it seems loud in just about every register from punchy, air moving bass to shrill high end. I'll get the cotton in my ears feeling if I fire without wearing the goofy looking ear muffs. A movie's sound designer doesn't need to pass all of that along in the mix for an audience to hear. It's good to make a gunshot in the mix startling. But the listener shouldn't get his spine rattled either.
I don't think any theater operator deliberately wants to hurt customers' ears. But some theaters just don't know how to get their sound right. The same is true for whoever sets the volume levels in movie trailers. Some movie makers don't have their shit straight on what's acceptable either. But those are matters that need to be policed from within the movie industry and exhibition industry. The trouble is that just hasn't been happening. So now we're seeing this legislative nonsense.
quote: Brad Miller
The problem is hardly anyone seems to be able to tune a room these days. Also some rooms and choice of speakers are un-tune-able. Furthermore many theater's walls are so cheaply constructed, the rooms are intentionally mistuned as a blatantly wrong way to prevent sound bleed between auditoriums.
I think it's more of the latter. Cost cutting. Since the concepts behind THX seem to be a fading, distant memory I think a lot of big theater chains are feeling free to make any number of cost cutting compromises when designing movie theater structures and choosing the speakers and other equipment that will be installed inside.
I'll read stories about some special screening room built by Dolby or whoever. The room has walls with multiple sound deadening layers, it's built on some noise dampening rubber platform that's floating on a layer of extra virgin cold pressed olive oil or some craziness like that. It makes me kind of sad. One very tiny group of people are trying to perfect the sound quality in a screening room only a privileged small number of people will visit. Too many of the places where most people are hearing the movie are treating sound quality as an afterthought.
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