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High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
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High Efficiency Speaker Asylum Need speakers that can rock with just one watt? You found da place. |
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In Reply to: Re: CV Sensurround Theatre Subs "Earthquake" posted by freddyi on January 8, 2003 at 08:44:19:
"The first film to be lavished with audio in MCA’s wondrous-at-the-time Sensurround process, Earthquake scored an Oscar for its sound and another one for the gimmick itself, which at the time was obviously seen as being important. Eventually only used on a handful of films (the second-last of them, Battlestar Galactica, is available on DVD with its Sensurround track included), the process was wonderfully simple. A bank of really, really big subwoofers was mounted at the front of the cinema, and a control box in the projection booth fed those speakers a low-frequency rumble at the required time - which of course, in the case of this movie, is during the quake sequences as well as a rushing-water sequence at the end.It sounds a bit lame now in this age of Dolby Digital and stomach-punching bass in your lounge room, but believe us, Sensurround worked as advertised; this was serious bass. In Melbourne, the only cinema equipped to screen Sensurround movies was the East End Cinema in Bourke Street (long demolished); even though the theatre itself was underground, the foyer walls shook every time a bass burst hit, accompanied by the expected “ooh†and “ahh†responses and nervous looks between those waiting for the next session. Films in Sensurround were preceded by a mock-serious warning trailer, cautioning the pregnant and those with heart disease; if you were sitting in the front row you were in serious danger of having your atoms rearranged by the sheer force of the sound. It was enormous fun, especially when all the other films were in tinny, scratchy old mono.
Now that everyone’s got the ability to play back giant bass at home, it makes sense when offering old Sensurround movies on DVD to use the LFE channel on the disc for the obvious; Universal did this with Battlestar Galactica, encoding the Sensurround audio in the .1 channel to great effect. With Earthquake, though, region 1 customers had to make do with a two-channel stereo soundtrack. But region 4 viewers, who’ve had to wait longer for this disc, get something much better - a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, with all the full-scale Sensurround rumble neatly stored in the LFE channel where it belongs. Now you too can invite structural engineers over and scare the crap out of them.
Don’t get too excited by the fact that it’s 5.1 - this is an old mono soundtrack that’s been reworked for the modern age, and it still sounds like an old, tinny soundtrack. The music score (by John Williams!) has been flown into the mix in stereo, but 99% of the dialogue and other noise is centre-channel based. The surrounds very quietly reproduce a delayed version of what’s in the left and right mains. And that Sensurround sound? Basically, it’s just a continuous low-frequency hum when it’s called upon, a practical application of what could easily be the mains hum from hell."
Magnetar
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Follow Ups
- More Info on the DVD soundtrack. - Magnetar 08:56:24 01/08/03 (0)
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