Home AVR used in a commercial theater for audio decoding?

You can feed analog 8 channel to a consumer receiver, the problem is for film the pre processor has to have an 84 ms delay.

The latest revisions of the digital cinema servers have up to 100ms delays.

Those have a 8 or 16 channel aes ebu digital output. There are many 8 channel dacs for these, that could be used with consumer receivers/prepros. For example the Hotel rearpro screenig room system I am pitching wil have a doremi cp-2000 and 8 channel adacs feeding the new Onkyo pro preprocessor, the necessary 84 millisecond delay in the server now allows this, early last year you could not have done that.

No its not and like Cineramax has said, you need allot more delay than a HT unit normally provides due to distance from screen to seating.

I did hear a furby once from a Yamaha dealer claiming the same thing, that Yamaha was the processor used in a Dolby equipped cinema. To which I informed him, Dolby would actually make their own commercial processors and license the decoder chip to manufactures like Yamaha for HT products. I think I burst his bubble that day.

While a home theater processor will work ( analog decoding ) it cannot deliver the same sonic benefits of a true cinema processor which were designed to decode specific cinema sound formats applying the proper NR and eq curves needed for Spectral Recording (SR) & Dolby Stereo.

On another note as good as we think Home Cinema audio is to commercial Cinema they are in fact two completely different mixes. If you had the opportunity to listen to both in our Home Theater rooms you would be surprised how different the Cinema mix is. Im betting most would clearly prefer a Cinema analog track to BDs DD and never know it was not digital.
The Cinema mix delivers very hard lefts and rights and surround information. The separation is very distinct even in our small rooms compared to our home theater mix ( BDs etc ) which seam intended to deliver a blended sound field.

The cinema sound system is broken into 2 parts called chains. The A chain is the gear in cinema projection booth and the B chain is the cinema auditorium. If there is going to be a "weak link" it will be in the B chain. The processing is as good as it can get, damaged speakers and bad acoustics will just let that down.


Most members here think that the soundtracks we get on DVD/BD are the same as the cinema release. They are not. There is a commercial version and a consumer version. The consumer version has the surrounds attenuated by 3dB and LFE is mixed into the L and R fronts at -10dB. This is done for the fact that many HTs lack so far as what is required to play back at undistorted peaks of 105dB per channel.

I agree with Alan, sometimes a soundtrack does sound quite different at home (content wise) to what I've heard in the cinema. Again I would say that this is done due to the limiting factors of many HTs.

TRANSFORMERS was one soundtrack I was able to hear in both a commercial cinema and at home in the same 24 hour period. Whilst I was impressed that "mixes" sounded the same, there was still differences due to the arrays of the cinema verses diffuse speakers I used at home.

Mark glad you've heard some differences.
I had the pleasure of comparing a Dolby analog track 35mm side by side with BD DD in the same screening room. In one scene a door closed off screen stage left. Analog/film gave you a solid left slam with nothing coming from any other speaker. It was intense and no mistake it came from left stage. The BD blended that same scene across the other speakers. Yes the left speaker was louder but you still heard it from center as well. Not sure why they do that.
You will be disappointed once you hear the difference.
We are stuck with an inferior audio mix as we are also limited to 8bit video.

I'll go out on a limb and say that perhaps the HAAS effect changes our perception more on environment than the other.

Alan is right though with what he said because any soundtrack mixed for playback on a SDDS 8CH system will have sound effects panned to another channel for 5.1 playback, and not always just the centre speaker.

Take a close listen to a part of MEN IN BLACK when Will Smith's character fires his gun to bust the locked door during the run and down chase sequence and note where the sound effect comes from. It should be LC (SDDS has 5 screen channels) yet I don't think it is a simple phantom between L and C in the 5.1 mix.

Actually what I have heard compared side by side in the same room has been films analog track which is basically stereo pro logic. The steering is far superior to anything including blue ray audio Ive heard. Very impressive. Bill might be on to something as to the reason for this different mix after all a small cinema screen might start at 30 to 40 feet wide, our home cinema screens are postage size in comparison. This difference in ambiance is quite large making sense a different audio mix requirement for both would make sense.

Alan,
What you are hearing is a Dolby SR encoded Lt/Rt. The steering
is not superior to the Blu Ray. You have it backwards.
The Optical SR is limited. Most Blu Ray Lt/Rt tracks are not limited to
the same specs at the Film tracks. You are probably hearing steering
issues which it bleeds into the surrounds or other speakers.
I know this as I am a Re-Recording Mixer for Films.

dr.sound always nice to hear from someone in the industry.
No disputing your comment stereo analog matrix not being superior to multi channel digital.
Im thinking the additional digital channels allows for a busier mix.
It really stands out when listening to the analog track on film the hard lefts and rights, it hits you in the face. Something I do not hear on BD as if it is intentionally blended across other channels. It is quit common to hear people in the room comment saying "did you hear that" when playing a film. Could it be the limitation when listening to film and its analog stereo track that results in a dryer mix hence what I perceive as superior separation across the front.
Thanks for your comments.