# What do I have? Studio or Cinema



## trifidmaster (Nov 18, 2006)

In another thread:
http://www.proaudioshack.com/forums/home-studios/19657-question-about-mixing-room-treatment.html
Bryan Pape helped me to treat acoustically my studio - see details in above mentioned thread.

I am composing, mixing in this room. Mastering I do very little.

Yesterday (unfortunately) our DVD player broke down in the middle of a movie.
And my wife really wanted to watch a DVD, so I agreed to watch it further in my studio.

And my wife said:
Ohhh we are in the cinema! The sound is like in the cinema.

I said:
No, we are in my acoustically treated studio. This is not a cinema.

...and a movie was rolling further, and at a very impressive dramatic moment, the orchestral music was full with lows. My wife again was repeating: you see/hear, we are in the cinema...

...well, I did not argued further.

So, I checked my studio with other soundtracks. In fact my studio SOUNDS like a cinema (I have never tested it with finished movie soundtracks before).
Is this OK? Should a mixing room sound like a cinema?


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

In a way yes because the audio tracks were mastered in a studio, The music and soundtrack are recorded just like you would when your mixing and mastering in your own studio and thus you should get very good results when playing them back in your own space. 
I would also think that its possible that your normal movie watching space is not acoustically treated and maybe does not have the quality speaker system that your studio has?


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## maikol (Nov 7, 2008)

A cinema actually IS an acoustically treated space, with a very dead sound.

Also, the sound system in a cinema is usually calibrated with EQs to a wanted reference, the idea being to reproduce as well as possible what the director/mixer was hearing while mixing (the mixing rooms are actually nothing else that very good movie theatres, with the same sound systems, and of course huge mixing desks).

There are lots of infos about this on Dolby's website, if anyone is interested.

So, if your monitoring system has a pretty flat frequency response (1/3 octave smoothing), down to the extreme low end, and if your room is pretty dead, it should not be very far from the sound of a good movie theatre (if not better in the high end frequencies, as dome textile tweeters are more precise than the horns they use for high SPL in theatres).

The only thing you'll have a hard time to reproduce, is the impact and big power impression that those big high efficiency systems can produce.

One last thing : the mix of a movie is often not the same on a DVD than in the theatre (precisely because nobody has systems at home that can reproduce wide dynamic ranges like high efficiency system can), so the mixes are often redone with less dynamics for DVDs, with less impact in the low frequencies (and careful attention that dialogs are always easily audible, which means that they usually end up louder).

Hope this helps!


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## tonyvdb (Sep 5, 2007)

maikol said:


> One last thing : the mix of a movie is often not the same on a DVD than in the theatre (precisely because nobody has systems at home that can reproduce wide dynamic ranges like high efficiency system can), so the mixes are often redone with less dynamics for DVDs, with less impact in the low frequencies (and careful attention that dialogs are always easily audible, which means that they usually end up louder).


I will have to disagree with this. Movies for home use are recorded from the master digitally and maintain the dynamics that they originally had as a matter of fact most recent movies are actually mastered with BluRay uncompressed audio in mind and I can guarantee that my theater space in my home is far better in reproducing the dynamics than most big box theaters do. I get frequencies down into the 10Hz range at around 90dbs as well as can reach reference levels without breaking a sweat. I know many others that do far better than that in their home theaters, Sonnie being one of them.


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## chonc (Jun 9, 2009)

I agree: 

The stage where the mix of a film is done is a very precisely tuned room. These stages are often used to even mix the music of a film, and I've witnessed that even the stereo master for the CD soundtrack is done at the same time (anything done by Tomas Newman mixed by Dennis Sands). So you can infer that you could actually mix a CD in a dubbing stage.

On the other hand, the best theaters try to emulate that same environment for playback (specially with the THX standards). So your wife is right... if the theater you usually go to is built to these standards then it probably sounds like a studio too.

At the dawn of tape (VHS) and the beginning of DVD it was usual to make a new mix intended for home viewing. This has become more and more obsolete with the advent of better sound systems (even the ones built right into the TV). My guess is that since 2002 there is hardly any a re-mix of a soundtrack for home viewing purposes.


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## maikol (Nov 7, 2008)

Interesting.

Maybe it's different here, but my good friend who mixes movies as his main job told me that he always has to do a stereo TV mix. He said that when he has enough time he uses the main stems as a source, compressing more heavily the dialogs and generally reducing the dynamic range. And that when time is too short (very small budget movies), he at least compresses the main mix to reduce the dynamic range with the least artefact as possible. He also said that this TV version was often used for the DVD stereo version (as it often is the one used by people who do NOT have a home theatre).

For the Bluray, yes I guess the surround version at least is the same as the theatre mixdown.


Now, of course it is possible to have very good (if not better) listening conditions at home than in a theatre.
In a movie theatre you have to keep in mind that there really isn't a "sweet spot", because you have to have wide coverage of the whole audience, which of course means at least less precise imaging and far from perfect frequency response. It also means horns for HF, to control dispersion and to have enough efficiency.

On the contrary, in a home theatre, you're able to tune your system to make it sound the best it can at that small sweet spot. Moreover, you'll have much less speakers in a smaller room, ie less imaging problems.

BTW, even if the idea is to tune movie theatres to sound similarly, not two of them are equal, and the movie mixing rooms are often better sounding than theatres. I know pretty well one of them near Paris where I go from time to time to finalize (ie encoding to Dolby Digital/ SR )documentaries/short movies I sometimes work on, and I find it sounds better than most music mixing room I've heard! OTOH, most movie theatres are far from sounding that good!


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## fractile (Mar 15, 2009)

I think there's difference in THX and whatever Dolby Digital decoding capabilities in modern AV receivers. THX decoding is for home theaters set up to be THX compliant, with the dynamic range the same as a commercial theater. It don't know all the numbers and forgot all the protocol terms. From what I do recall, Dolby Digital is designed to collapse (fold down) gracefully from 7.1 to 5.1 to 3.1 to stereo to mono.

I think also that THX is calibrated at 87dB SPL, while Dolby is 85 or something. Just throwing out some numbers.

To respond obliquely to the question, I think a theater is similar to a studio, that the sound coming out greatly (hopefully) overpowers the signature of the room.`And then maybe your wife heard the signature of your studio and the expanse reminded her of a theater. There is a distance between the speakers and the ears in the room.

This reminds me of how well I could hear the sound of the room in a mastering room by standing next to one of the head-high speaker boxes and looking back into the room. I think that way you hear mostly the room response over the sound of the speaker output. The only treatment in that room I recall was a slowly waved baffle plane hung from the ceiling. I'm guessing now it is a bass trap, since the curves had a large radius of about a meter or so. It wasn't a big room, maybe 16x20 feet.

To continue, the studio I'm building is equal audio, video and sound for picture (yes it's a lowest common denominator realization of a studio). These days I don't think there should be any difference.

Maybe I am naive, but I think there is going to be a 'sound' to any studio built. Something to get used to. I think the main objective is comprehending how to tame that sound toward something you want.


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## chonc (Jun 9, 2009)

maikol, you're right even though during printmaster of a film you also generate a LtRt (stereo) master, if the budget allows it you can generate a stereo more compressed mix for TV, which also will have more weight on the dialog. More and more broadcasters support AC3 encoding (dolby digital) so making the stereo TV mix is not crucial anymore. The broadcaster can also use the stereo mixdown provided with the program audio tracks. It usually works well but sometimes the mix does suffer and the dialog turns out muddy, even unintelligible. 
For the DVD is more common to use the original stereo tracks because the audio decoders of a DVD player are, for the most part, more than adequate. Also you don't have the limiter at the output like a broadcast signal does, and is a direct connection with the TV (sometimes even in the digital realm).

The audio of a DVD should be almost always exactly the same as the audio of the theater, the film version and the DVD version use Dolby Digital AC3 format, with the same data compression ratio that the DVD use (might have to check that for DTS). Yes, Dolby Digital is a lossy compression standard...

Some Blu-Ray discs, on the other hand, offer the possibility of using an uncompressed audio track which should come (if properly authored) from the original printmaster done at the stage. So, in theory, Blu-ray is capable of better sound than a theater.

THX is not an encoding system such as Dolby Digital, DTS or SDDS. It is a set of standards designed by a company owned by George Lucas (THX) so that the theater experience (and home theater in case of the THX pm3 standard) is as close as possible as the experience of the mixing stage. THX has also developed projection standards to have the best image quality possible in a theater. To have the complete THX experience you're supposed to do the mix in a THX certified facility and do the mastering process with all the standards provided. Then, you have to watch the movie in a theater that has gone through THX's set of standards also (and payed their fee). The company also helps you design the room, tells you what equipment to buy and also helps with the setup, at the end a THX engineer comes and do some measurements and gives your facility the authorization (after you pay the fee hehe). A THX engineer is supposed to go to your facility at least once a year to check you still meet the standards of THX (and to collect the fee....).
So, no matter what your encoding method was (DD, DTS, SDDS) you may or may not be THX-certified.

Hope that was not too cofusing.


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## maikol (Nov 7, 2008)

Chonc that was a very informative post! :T

You should write an article summarizing all that!

Yeah that LtRt (Left total/ Right total IIRC, meaning that it is an stereo matriced version of the LCRS mixdown, that can be decoded by a Dolby surround decoder) is the stereo version that they often use, and also the one my friend told me he uses (and compresses) as TVmix if there is not enough time to remix from the stems.


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## fractile (Mar 15, 2009)

maikol said:


> Chonc that was a very informative post! :T
> 
> You should write an article summarizing all that!
> 
> Yeah that LtRt (Left total/ Right total IIRC, meaning that it is an stereo matriced version of the LCRS mixdown, that can be decoded by a Dolby surround decoder) is the stereo version that they often use, and also the one my friend told me he uses (and compresses) as TVmix if there is not enough time to remix from the stems.


Doing some review, Dolby TrueHD used in BluRay displaces the AC-3 Dolby Digital (Surround, ProLogic). According to the Wiki, DTS-HD Master Audio © is gaining popularity over TrueHD. These two seem to me to be very similar, yet I don't know if DTS supports the Dial-Norm (dialog normalization) or Dynamic Range Compression that TrueHD does. For me these are important to allow the individual to adjust these on their own rather than rely on the original or supplemental mix on a disk or the processing of a broadcaster.









http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio


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## chonc (Jun 9, 2009)

fractile said:


> Doing some review, Dolby TrueHD used in BluRay displaces the AC-3 Dolby Digital (Surround, ProLogic). According to the Wiki, DTS-HD Master Audio © is gaining popularity over TrueHD. These two seem to me to be very similar, yet I don't know if DTS supports the Dial-Norm (dialog normalization) or Dynamic Range Compression that TrueHD does. For me these are important to allow the individual to adjust these on their own rather than rely on the original or supplemental mix on a disk or the processing of a broadcaster.
> 
> Dolby Pro Logic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> Dolby TrueHD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio


Dolby True HD is the uncompressed AC3 which is superior to Dolby Digital, but difficult to implement in 35mm projectors. With digital projectors, on the other hand, you get 2k image with dolby true HD (or DTS-HD) because you can get big chunks of audio on the digital file. As far as I know, DTS does have a dianorm setting, what I don't know is if the DTS format is suitable for broadcast... let's keep researching:T

I really like how this thread has evolved!! :bigsmile:


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## fractile (Mar 15, 2009)

It is a good time to invest in research. The way media technology has progressed the past decade and more I think, so far as audio anyway may be settling down into a viable standard. For mainstream audio it looks like 5.1 channels at 96kHz, nominal. And this still needs to get better integration into the video substrate of DVD and broadcast. It's jarring to have the commercials 12dB louder than the program.

And I focus primarily on HD audio and video. The web and iPhones have that variety of resolutions and I guess that's fine for transmission/delivery options, but content creation I think should adhere to optimal production standard, because you wouldn't want to play a bunch of noise into the hi-fi system of tomorrow. Remastering 30ips tapes is one thing; upconverting an MP3 to 192kHz is another.

It reminds me of Korg's whitepaper, _Future Proof Recording Explained_. They recommend archiving audio at 5.6MHz 1-bit recordings. Back in the 80's I calculated in my head that digital audio should be at least 1 or 2Mhz. Instead of 2x I was thinking 10x, maybe the three orders of magnitude scientific precision.

The transmission pipeline has about reached a good place; now if we can get the chaotic production pipe into shape. :drive: :meter:


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