Boxoffice-Febuary.1998

SPECIAL REPORT: Cinema Sound 1998
w:
AND THE WRITING ON THE WALL
New Developments in Cinema Sound
one thinks of cinema's two most
When
important elements, one thinks of
sight and sound. It's always put that
way—sound coming second, just as it did in
the medium's history. And sight certainly remains
one of the industry's most vigorous
fields, with such developments as 3-D IMAX
presentations, curved screens and electronic
transmission among the buzz topics. But the
sound field is equally energetic, the most
prominent example being the continuing
worldwide growth of the three digital formats.
But there's action elsewhere, as the following
roundup of four recent developments indicates.
It's meant only as a sampling of what's
happening, and readers of BOXOFFICE can
expect more stories on more advances and
evolutions in future issues.
BOWING THE RIBBON
Perhaps it makes sense that a speaker company
is based in Hoom, the Netherlands.
Formed in 1977 and known for its studio,
discotheque, playhouse and concert hall installations.
Stage Accompany four years ago entered
the overseas cinema market. Its products
can be heard at the UFA Savoy in Dusseldorf,
Germany; the Multicines Fuenlabrada in Madrid,
Spain; and, most prominently, at Pathe's
renovated and expanded Taschinksi complex
in downtown Amsterdam. Now, the Dutch
concern is joumeying stateside.
Headed by president Marcel Vantuyn and
based in Bay Ridge. New York, Stage Accompany
USA landed its first American contract
after a demon.stration for executives from four
circuits held last summer at General Cinema's
by Kim Williamson
Boston-area Framingham 14. Eager to expand
SA's presence, Vantuyn this January is planning
to install a full system in a new Connecticut
theatre, hung parallel with an
eight-channel system, for several weeks for
another demonstration for theatre circuits.
Of course, given the general high quality of
many lines, one might think a speaker is a
speaker is a speaker. But Stage Accompany's
S 26 and S 27 units have a look-ma difference:
no horns. In place of the traditional compression
driver, SA uses what it calls a ribbon
compact driver—a mid/high-frequency transducer
that, according to company literature, is
"the world's first and only driver permitting
truly-pure sound reproduction."
"When people think of a ribbon, they think
of a straight strand. But this zigzags up and
down, so the word 'ribbon' is the closest name
for it;" Vantuyn says of the technology.
"In a compression driver, sound is generated
and then projected—a voice coil generates
forces that are transmitted to a dome-shaped
diaphragm," Vantuyn says. "Because it's two
pieces, at certain frequencies the diaphragm
can't keep up with the coil, and you get distortion."
SA's 8535 ribbon driver "creates the
sound and transmits it directly to the ambience."
Not only is there negligible distortion
but also significant savings in cabinet weight
and depth (which is only nine inches).
"This is not the ribbon that came out in the
'50s," Vantuyn says of an earlier generation of
loudspeakers that, though they also produced
dramatically clear sound, couldn't handle
movie sound loads. "Our ribbon driver peaks
at 1 42 dB and handles up to 1 ,000 watts, so it's
more durable even than compression drivers."
RIDING THE WAVE
In October, projection technician and sometime
boogie boarder Jonathan Bodge of Sandy
Hook, Conn, wrote us to extol the work of
Elwood Norris. Norris' company, San Diegobased
American Technology Corp., has a patent
on hypersonic sound equipment, which
Bodge—who's "always looking for the perfect
wave"—expects will "change the way we listen
to reproduced sound."
The technology involves an ultrasonic emitter,
whose transducer sends two 200,000 Hzrange
emissions of slightly different frequencies
at a reflective surface—for example,
a movie screen. After mixing of the two frequencies,
the frequency produced by the difference
of the two inaudible signals is in
humans' audible range. I.e., it becomes sound
(or, as Bodge puts it, "the perfect wave").
Even greaterdetail in sound placement, special
effects and music will be possible using
hypersonic sound. Bodge reports. "An actor's
voice will be able to emit directly from his
mouth and follow as he walks across the
screen." Norris' work, though still in relative
infancy, won the 1997 Discover award for
technical innovation in sound.
FEELING AURAS
You might say that it all began with Ronald
Reagan.
Touting it as "the worid's first tactile bass
enhancement system designed for today's
movie theatre sound systems," AuraSound
Cinema at last year's ShoWest unveiled Aura
Virtual Sound. AuraSound's defense contrac-
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