Watching/listening to
The Peacemaker (1997) (again)
Dolby Digital 5.1 / Lucasfilm Ltd THX sound system / JBL professional
Scene of sounding interest is where the Russian train leaves the train station carrying nuclear warheads for dismantlement . When seeing the film few times at the Bournemouth ABC screen 1 back around mid 1998 when the cinema installed a Dolby DA20 for its Dolby CP200 processor in the early 1998 the ABC ran few past Dolby SR-D films to start off its opening using Dolby Digital.
Found an old picture of how the auditorium used to look with the original surrounds on the back wall and circled in red is where I and the projectionist was standing while the Peacemaker was playing talking softly during the loudness of the opening so no one else would hear us.
While standing at the back of the audiatuim chatting with one of the senior projectionists and about the film. During the scene where the train leaves the train station. I happened to notice it and so did the projectionist and we both at the same time said. "its should have sounded below us" As the train leaves the camera moves upwards and the train is seeing moving off screen from a below angle and made no sounding sense to hear it above us on one of the many six original surrounds that as mounted on the back-wall of the auditorium.
Its been bothering me for many years when I had the film on DVD but very little I could do at the time to get the sound of the train to be heard below me or below the seating so I can look downwards.
The Dolby EX uses the centre back surround for the rear back surrounds that have always been in place in cinemas with arrays along the sidewalls and the sound of the surrounds divided up into left-half right-half groups one for sidewall the other half for back wall.
When I had the idea around 1989 while listening to the odd few 70mm six-track Dolby Stereo films that often screened at the ABC screen 1, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and seeing it 4 times before seeing it at the Empire Leicester Square in 70mm (THX sound system) it stuck me that the sound of the surrounds thou good and better sounding with whole sound reproduction playback in THX than the ABC. The surrounds was often making me think? "Disorientated" is the word I'm looking for. As the surrounds carry a middle sound or centre phantom image.
The idea reminded in my head for about 9 years and even owning a Laserdisc player for few years and was about to buy a Millennium, no not Falcon,
Millennium dts 2.4.6 decoder at reduced price and I suddenly realized I could try out my idea to see if it works or not? Of course it worked.
Once getting the processor home and trying centre back surround with one my Yamaha DSR70Pro, pro-logic decoders connected to the stereo surrounds and after pink noise balancing the levels with matched speakers that came out of shopping centre that closed down the PA announcement type with voltage transformer on them, five speakers on the back wall and two on each sidewall.
I was startled with how GoldenEye (1995) sounded, making me duck and flinch a few times due to the way the sound arrived at my listening position and ears.
I even spoke to Dolby labs New York offices about the idea 1998 only few days after having it set up and the person I was speaking to seemed very interested and even curious why I'm running five speakers for back wall, even thou I knew commonly it would be six on the back wall (even today with Atmos it may be common to see eight or more on the back wall now).
A year later reading in a home cinema magazine "home cinema choice" I was quite red faced angry, knowing they have borrowed on my idea and tuned it into what they called "Dolby surround-EX". of course when the consumer version was released not soon after it could only do, Left surround, Back surround and Right surround. While the professional version same as my Yamaha DSR70Pro could do...
Left surround
Right surround
Centre back surround
with an extra channel that uses the - negitave anti phase, out-of-phase signal
Plus the low pass sub output.
The Dolby SA10 or rather the Dolby CP45 that was stripped down with few modifications and new front face plate and the back of it even changed didn't have the SW low pass sub filter on it, thou maybe inside the decoder it may still remain but on the back panel which was basic left-sur, centre sur, left sur and "extra" that is the rear matrix surround if used the other way around like common Dolby Stereo matrix 4.2.4 film mixes are created for optical 35mm 4 channel.
I really don't care much anymore that Dolby labs taken my idea and cooked up a story that Skywalker sound came up with the idea.
So I use a matrix front centre or Dolby CP45 on the side surrounds to decode extract the centre phantom signal or any other signal that may have some steerable sound in the matrix rear surround that at present using it above for middle surrounds, while the centre output is underneath the cinema seats and the sound of the Train passes underneath below surround and even some other scenes in the early part of the film when the other Russian hijackers bump off all the other comrades, while climbing up on top of the train carriage the sound of the surrounds with train has the train sounding below me as the camera moves upwards with hijacker, it sounded like standing on top of the train.
There are other scenes in the film that have helicopters and some of the sound to picture doesn't match to where the helicopters appear both on screen to off screen with some passing visually on screen at an overhead angle as it leaves the screen then its heard commonly on the surrounds trends to dip downwards into my "Below Surround".
If even SDDS think bit harder back around the time they could have had 3 formats with SDDS being used for
Front Left
Front Centre
Front Right
Surround Left
Surround Right
Matrix a centre back surround to be used with matrix decoder for back surrounds.
The left-centre right-centre could have been used if the processor had been designed to have extra format codes to use a ...
Upper height mono surround
Below underneath seating mono surround
Okay wouldn't be perfect but least would have been a start in the right direction to push Below surround.
Not really using the Dolby DSU for The Peacemaker (1997) that much after listening only to how the train leaves with DSU no steam passing from the trains funnel overhead a different sound of ambiance.
The DSU removes the sound funnel sound from the side surrounds and its re-positioned same as Dolby PLIIx places it centre back but the sound positioning is all wrong least for the train.
Just not enough quick and fast format modes to easily select. Must I do everything myself.
When it comes to surround listening I am the surround guru.
