<font color='#000000'>The Future of Cinema: Malco Develops 10.2 System with Klipsch
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by Sarah Knight
Some passions run deep. For Salvatore “Toto” Di Vitto, the main character in the film Cinema Paradiso, his love affair with movies blossomed at an early age then spanned decades without ever losing intensity. His fascination with film was not only for sounds and images, but also for the magical process of give and take with an audience.
Malco Theatres elicits the same type of enthusiasm with its latest and highly advanced theater complex.
Postwar Sicily is the setting, and in the small town of Giancaldo, Italy, no one was more star struck with the town’s only theater, Cinema Paradiso, than young Toto. He would hide in the lobby and peek through the doorway to watch each week’s film in its entirety. If given the opportunity, he would risk a beating from his mother and spend the family’s milk money on a matinee ticket.
Toto was raised by Hollywood legends. His birth father missing since the war ended, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin became his father figures. Toto befriended the Paradiso’s projectionist, and through extreme persistence, became his young apprentice. It was an experience that later in life helped Toto to become a famous film producer.
The film Cinema Paradiso celebrates the film-going experience. The theater depicted in the movie serves as more than just a motion-picture house – it represents the community by bringing together the town’s various personalities and eccentricities.
Cinema Paradiso’s heartwarming and nostalgic look at early movie-going was the inspiration for Malco Theatres’ new multiplex theater – The Paradiso in Memphis, Tenn. To honor the film, Malco featured this touching 1988 motion picture directed by Giuseppe Tornatore during opening week.
Malco designed the 14-screen Paradiso with an Italian-theme. The theater’s lobby features a large authentic Italian fountain and a concrete floor design borrowed from the Piazza San Marco in Venice.
Mike Thomson, Malco’s vice president of operations and technology, said the company went to great lengths to capture the true essence of Italy.
The Paradiso offers virtually every amenity a guest could want. All 14 auditoriums use state-of-the-art sight and sound equipment and feature comfortable stadium rocking chair seating with lots of elbowroom. While waiting for a movie to begin, guests can enjoy wine and imported beer in the theater’s Café Tuscana or visit the expansive game room with wireless Internet connections and game stations.
Not only does the Paradiso have a unique Italian flair and amiable services, it also features a 42 feet by 62 feet large format screen in one of its auditoriums that has performance capabilities unlike any other theater in the country.
“This large format auditorium has a sound system that is the strongest, most dynamic of any commercial theater venue in the world,” said Thomson.
Most importantly, this theater is one of only two houses in the world that serves as a technological prototype for presenting the new 10.2 surround sound system concept developed by Tomlinson Holman and his TMH Corporation. With a distinguished career in audio, video and film that spans over 33 years, Holman is best known for his 15 years at Lucasfilm Ltd where he developed the THX® Sound System and its companions the Theater Alignment Program, Home THX®, and the THX® Digital Mastering program.
While working for Lucasfilm, Holman was inspired by George Lucas’ interest in upgrading film presentation standards in the industry. Holman discovered theater audiences were not hearing what was recorded in the film studio, as many of the subtle sounds were missing. His innovative approach was to consolidate existing performance standards into a new system, which included theater acoustics as well as sound equipment. Through the creation of THX®, Holman and Lucas revolutionized the cinema experience by allowing audiences to experience films just as the director intended.
While still in experimental stages of development, the 10.2 design can be considered the most advanced, state-of-the-art surround system available today. It creates a smoother transition between channels and efficiently localizes sound. The 10.2 system represents a huge leap in technology and requires a showcase of expertise to get it working properly. With 63,000 watts of QSC power, this large format auditorium sound system can extend as low as 17Hz.
In order to achieve this phenomenal level of sound quality, Thomson chose Klipsch professional stage and screen loudspeakers.
“I prefer Klipsch because they are considerably more efficient than the competition without the sacrifice of frequency response,” said Thomson.
The 10.2 system utilizes eight Klipsch KPT-MCM-4-T Grand loudspeakers, the world’s first and only fully horn-loaded, THX®-Approved four-way cinema sound system, offering the ultimate in audio performance. For extended bass response and controlled coverage, the theater features 20 KPT-1201 THX®-Certified surround speakers used in an array configuration. A series of three-way KPT-250s are being utilized as point-source surrounds in the 10.2 system and provide high power handling, extreme efficiency, extended bass response and exceptional control. For overhead effects, a pair of KI-362 three-way speakers are mounted to the 50-foot ceiling and have the ability to produce 116 decibels of sound. They provide approximately 100 degrees of square dispersion and cover the entire seating area. An additional KI-362 is utilized as a point-source rear center for 10.2 presentations only. Two hybrid KPT-415-LFs, featuring KPT-402-MF horns on top, handle the theater’s left and right surround content for large format and 10.2 presentations.
“The best way to describe this configuration is if you hit a ping pong ball around the room you would actually hear it bounce in every point that it could,” said Thomson.
The entire speaker complement actually has 18 discrete channels and different ones are used for different sound formats. Ultimately, Mike Thomson and Tomlinson Holman plan to further the experiment and use all 18 channels as a single system for demonstration purposes. Together, they plan to prove that 10.2 is the future of cinema audio for a more realistic, dramatic sound experience.
Naturally, this theater has the ability to play eight-channel Sony SDDS, conventional DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 and 6.1. All of these formats are capable of running in EX mode, which means there is an extra channel in the back of the theater. In fact, this auditorium is the second in the world to incorporate Dolby’s new ceiling array for the EX format. This new feature delivers exceptional, true-to-life sound that can trick audiences into believing a helicopter has landed in the theater or that the roof is caving in.
Guests are sure to enjoy the excitement, suspense and emotion of Hollywood inside this THX® approved auditorium that can play both 70mm film and 35mm film.
“This auditorium gives movie-goers the finest presentation in the world,” said Thomson. The Paradiso’s 13 other auditoriums feature a variety of Klipsch speakers to achieve the highest level of performance for the space and an ideal rotation of blockbuster films.
As with young Toto’s passion for showing movies in Cinema Paradiso, Malco elicits the same type of enthusiasm with its Paradiso Theatre. The company has taken its love of film and developed a unique atmosphere with astounding cosmetics and highly developed technology for others to enjoy.
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