Credit Card Surcharge in Veezi

[Steve Guttag]

I did indeed say that the "value-add" of the cinema is the projection and sound quality. If your theatre doesn't do that, there is less value and less reason to go to "your" theatre. Not meeting standards would be a "value-subtract." Even the standards have a tolerance range and, in the case of commercial cinemas, a rather generous one in many respects. Seriously 14fL +/-3 fL. That is a full 11fL-17fL swing. It is nearly half of the target value. Sound too has its tolerances. Note as well, only some portions are specified and often in a means to attain a single-number notation that can be uniformly read. There is a lot more to image and sound than you can put into such a notation. I could, personally, set up three theatres that all measure the same and sound very different. Which is the "correct" one? Heck, I'll do you one better...back in the day, with Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace I set up three digital processors (Dolby, DTS and SDDS) on the same theatre, same, speakers, amps, same RTA used...they still sounded different...which is the correct one there? I also discovered that Sony's pink noise was a little deficient in the HF so if you used its internal PN, you'd tend to set an SDDS system a little "brighter." Heck, you could get into a whole lengthy discussion on pink noise itself and what is the "correct" one with what crest-factor.

There is plenty of room within a cinema to both meet standards and value-add the performance.

[Marcel Birgelen]

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Pink Elephants dreaming of the correct pink noise... apparently featuring pink elephants.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Quite a few years ago, SMPTE wrote a standard for pink noise (including an algorithm to generate it and some audio samples). As part of the standard process, they looked at several pink noise sources and found fairly substantial variation in the spectrum and crest factor. Hence the standard.

The issue of stuff measuring the same but sounding different is an issue. I think Steve's experiment with different sound processors in the same room with the same loudspeakers was a good experiment. Why did they sound different? Getting a measurement that reflects perception appears to be quite difficult. SMPTE currently has an "in situ" measurement group that is attempting to determine what measurement most closely reflects perceived sound quality. Even the perception of quality is not uniform (which is why radios have tone controls). How do we get a measurement that correlates with perception when perception is not uniform?

[Marcel Birgelen]

While I think it's good that there is some general research in how different people experience sound, a lot of it is so malleable that it really is just someone's individual imagination. This "malleable individual perception" is the reason why there are people paying thousands of dollars for Ethernet cables, only to connect them to their $50 internet router at the one end and some overpriced digital player, tasked to play MP3s at 96 kbit/s, at the other end...