Why are movie previews so loud?

Y bueno, boludo, por algo será. No te enbronques tanto que te va a pegar un infarto. Tomáte un vinito y pensá en la Kirchner.

 

I like Starship Troopers, I think it was a fun movie. Klipsch makes great theater speaker systems.



Their pro-audio line is pretty awesome.

This is a guy who is selling his personal Klipsch MCM 1900 theater speakers.



"Klipsch has always had a professional application for live stage and screen environments. In 1977 Klipsch & Associates beefed up its professional speaker line with the 500-pound MCM speaker. Designed for touring sound and cinema applications, the MCM delivers enough power to rock the house down.The low frequency punch is provided by a KPT-MWM dual 15-inch high efficiency horn-loaded woofer enclosure aided by a separate single 12-inch Tractrix Horn-loaded mid-bass device the KPT-XII. High frequencies are effortlessly reproduced by the KPT-941-HF Tractrix Horn and KDE-75-8P titanium compression driver. The MCM Grand is ultra efficient and in correct multi-channel configuration can yield absolutely even sound coverage to every seat in the house.The MCM Grand is just an example of Klipsch professional technologies that have been used throughout the Klipsch family of speaker ranges through to current day."



The guy who did the restoration and mods on my Altec A7's and Klipsch La Scala's has a commercial Klipsch theater speaker system.

Here is his Klipsch MCM theater system, along with my A7's, before he shipped them out to me. Notice how small the A7's look when compared to the MCM's!



Funny little story. Back several years ago, one of my frequent motel guests would spend time with me in my listening room and he got to understand about the Altec A7's.

One evening, he was sitting on the other sofa with his Apple tablet and he was looking up photos on the Internet of A7 speakers.

He was showing me the different A7 photos that he had come up with, using his finger to flip through each photo.

As he was flipping through the photos with me, there was a photo of just the Altec 828 bass cabinets, without the HF horns. I noticed that they were sitting on top of an ornamental carpet, which looked familiar to me. I said, "Mark, those are my Altec's". The photo was taken in California back during their restoration. I thought that it was a funny coincidence, that he was just randomly doing an image search and one of the photos was the same set of A7's that he was sitting in the room with.

 

All that I can say is that is very unfortunate! Standing in front of P.A. speaker cabinets at concerts is definitely NOT a recommended thing to be doing.

Growing up, I attended to many rock concerts, mostly in outdoor venues back then. They would have the large speaker towers on each side of the stage. Though they would not allow anyone to stop and stand, they would allow people to go from one side of the raised stage across the front, in order to get to the other side.

I would purposely walk from one side to the other to hear what that speakers sounded like up close. The sound pressure level was very loud, directly in front of the speaker cabinets. But, because there were multiple drivers, up close, the sound was completely out of phase and all you could hear was sound, it was not clear but very muddled together.

I know people who used to like to stand directly in front of P.A. cabinets, but as much as I liked loud music, I derived no pleasure myself, in doing so. The sound was so garbled, that it was not listenable.

I have always had large commercial speakers and loved to play thm loud. But, I would always sit beside the volume control and after playing them really loud, I would turn them back down to a lower volume. When you listen to long at too loud of a volume, all you get is ending up with hearing fatigue.

Here was my HT back in 2014 with my custom commercial La Scala cabinets.



This is the same room, several years later, with Polk towers as the front HT mains. The Altec Lansing, Voice of the Theater, A7' cabinets are on the right side of the room along with a commercial sub woofer driven by a 1,600-Watt Crown amplifier.

You can listen to music loud, but you have to be careful how loud and how long.



The problems that you have today, is that amplifiers are more powerful than they were years ago and P.A. speakers can take more power than they could, way back when.

I attended a live performance of the Trans Siberian Orchestra back in December of 2012 and it was in a large local hockey arena. The P.A. system was so loud, that the narration hurt my ears. If you have never heard them live, they have a DVD out and you can find them used very reasonable on eBay, the show is about 45-minutes long and is titled, The Ghosts Of Christmas Eve (2001). It is also available for viewing by Amazon Prime members. This is Christmas Music like you have never heard it played before, loud, rock and roll style.

It is also available on YouTube for free. It features Jewell and Michael Crawford (Who starred in Phantom of the Opera on Broadway).



But you are about half my age and you should not have incurred the hearing damage that you apparently have at your age.

It is imperative that you obtain and use hearing protection anywhere and everywhere you go where there is loud music or other loud noise!

Hearing damage is NOT reversible and you have a long life in front of you. Best protect what hearing that you can, as you don't want to be where you can not understand anything that someone is saying, in another ten short years.

Plus, you alway want to be able to listen and enjoy your music!

Take Care!

SandAndGlass

 

Great stories and I agree that younger folks are terrible at listening to parents and anyone who speaks common sense. There are probably many people of my generation with hearing issues since most of us grew up in both the discman and iPod eras. I've probably racked up many thousands of hours of headphone listening in my lifetime and much of it throughout my teen and young adult years was at higher levels to compensate for ambient noises or simply because we probably just liked it loud and were too foolish to turn it down. Doing that day after day without giving the ear time to heal was likely a bad move. And I certainly regret standing too close and for too long at concerts.

 

You are absolutely correct with regard to the earphone listening. So many people who have never even attended a loud rock concert are going to experience severe hearing issues just owing to listening to music via earpieces stuck in their heads.

But so many of these same people really won't have that much to worry about hearing wise, because at the end of the day, their incredibly bad junk (fast) food diets will have done them in long before their ears have the chance fail them.

 

Did anyone else see Uncut Gems and find it way too loud? Saw it earlier and it was nearly disorienting how loud it seemed. There were times where I was thinking of walking out but I was really enjoying the story.

 

It's forbidden here in Belgium.

 

It was very disorienting... the opening scenes had so much going on and people talking all at once. It was like you were dropped into the middle of all this chaos and had to adapt to it quick. Perhaps that was the filmmaker's intention. And it was on the loud side. Great flick though, I'm glad I stuck it out.

 

And the annoying Chevy commercials that are shown, at least at the theater i go to. And the PSA's about no talking, shutting off your phone, fire exits, etc. And having to sit through previews for horrible upcoming movies. And the 7.1 sound demonstration, and the popcorn and soda ad. Drives me nuts, I tell ya!!
Timing it just right and missing all that is key. For me anyway. (Although some previews can be interesting)

 

Lucky you!

 

I literally cupped my hand over my ears when the trailer for Cats blasted out of the theater speakers.

 

Yes, but you can cook french fries properly there...unlike here in the U.S.A. or in Canada!

 

OK, I understand the PSA's, with hope it will at least remind people to shut of their smartphones and no taking or texting. Though, I don't usually find this as much of a problem as it used to be. But then, there is always a couple, who feel that going to a movie experience would not be complete, it they didn't talk to each other throughout the entire movie.

I expect those soda and popcorn ads, at least they are related to the theater and have been around forever. You can even see the dancing hot dog in the movie Grease, when they are at the drive-in.

I grew up in the Rock era, complete with Led Zeppelin and all. I have owned really large theater speakers for a good part of my adult life, as well as other large home tower speakers and big amplifiers, (some of which, I have pictured above) but the volume of the previews drives my insane.

There is just no earthly reason for them to be as loud as most of them are.

The one thing that I have absolutely zero tolerance for is regular commercial advertising, like Chevy commercials in any movie theater.

I stopped listening to FM radio in my car long ago, due to those awful Toyata-thon commercials.

Prior to retiring at the end of 2018, I operated a small motel on the Beach area. I would provide my guests with Satellite TV from DirecTV, where I had the Ultimate Package, which is the premium package that is available for the home, plus HBO and Cinemax channels.

I walked completely away from commercial TV back in the 90's (in favor of collecting video tapes) and even with having free DirecTV, I never connected a Satellite box to either my previous 60" rear projection TV of the new 65" 4k TV, movies on media only.

I refuse to watch commercials, period.

Fortunately (for them), the Florida movie theaters that I went to and the ones I have visited in Tennessee, where I am visiting now, do not play outside commercials.

WFT? I am going to pay for a movie experience and be subjected to GD commercials? No way!

While I am OK with previews, in Florida they would play 6-7 previews, typically lasting 20-minutes or more, which is absolutely ridiculous! So, I would book my reservation online and wait until the movie's official starting time, before I would leave for the theater, which was close by.

Even then, I would sometimes catch 2-3 of the last previews, but I was OK with that.

The two theaters that I have attended in Tennessee, both have limited the previews to a few upcoming movies and have been played at perfectly normal volume levels, so there is at least some semblance of sanity left int the world.

 

All it takes is a little common sense, making french fries isn't exactly rocket science here either.

I love excellent french fries, to me they are practically a food group. Something that I can eat almost every day, the problem is, as you indicate, finding decent french fries.

 

I would imagine there are specific guidelines for volume there should be.

 

the worse offenders are the ones you can't skip on DVD & BD!

 

I would imagine too. @Vidiot posted a link not that long ago to them, but I don't get the impression that all that many theaters are listening.

 

I complained recently to a cineplex manager about having to watch commercials by car manufacturers and local businesses before the feature film for which I paid the full price of admission. Her response was to advise me to not enter the auditorium until just before the feature film was to begin. The ushers / ticket takers apparently know the exact start time of every film.
Yes, I know...utter bulls**t. But these are the times in which we live.

 

All the movies I have seen in XDX theaters with Dolby Atmos sound are always loud including the previews. I should wear some ear plugs to preserve my hearing.

 

The reality is that many U.S. movie theaters are barely breaking even, and several major theater chains have gone bankrupt or been sold in the last few years. There's not nearly much money in running a theater as people might believe, and they're desperately doing everything they can to bring in more cash... like selling ads, charging more for deluxe seats, having a fully-stocked bar, and other amenities.

 

The secret to the 'magic' of Belgian french fries is the use of horse tallow (rather than beef tallow or vegetable oil) as the frying agent.
This is frowned upon here in a country that grew up on My Friend Flicka, National Velvet, and Mr. Ed.

 

That I couldn't tell you about, but in this country, the food police make a big deal out of any restaurant that uses beef tallow, so they all use vegetable oil, which is highly processed soy bean oil and more likely to be worse for you, health wise. Some restaurants do however use peanut oil.

Unfortunately most restaurants use frozen and not fresh french fries.

I use cold pressed avocado oil at home and precook the fries, before giving them a final cook, in my small countertop commercial fryer.

 

So called french fries ...

According to local Belgian lore, poor villagers living in Meuse Valley often ate small fried fish they caught in the river. During the winter months the river would freeze over — making fishing impossible and forcing the villagers to find other sources of food.

Enter the potato. The villagers turned to the root plant, slicing and frying it much in the same way they prepared the fish. And just like that, the earliest French fries were born.

American soldiers stationed in Belgium were first introduced to French fries during World War I. As the official language of the Belgian army was French, soldiers nicknamed the delicious fried potatoes “French fries." The name stuck, and decades later we're still giving credit to the wrong country.

 

I find movie theaters to be ridiculously loud. The last two movies I saw: Star Wars (Ep 7) and Start Trek, were so loud I was uncomfortable throughout the whole movie, and couldn't wait for it to end.

I don't know if this is true or not, but my hunch is they are played back at "reference level" which is the 85db mentioned previously. This is ridiculously loud, and has peaks in the action moments much higher then 85.

As others have said, I put together a home theater, and just don't go to the movies any more. I like blu-ray at home. And even that I find can be too loud in the action scenes, too quiet in the dialog. There is a fix though! I turn on some light compression through my Marantz receiver, and it makes the movies super enjoyable - some rumble in the action scenes, but I can still hear all the dialog. I typically play movies around 53.