Movies had a consistent soft hiss in old theater audio

With his claim to have increased sales of Coca Cola and popcorn in a movie theatre through subliminal messages flashed on the screen, James Vicary rai…

The early Soviet period witnessed a number of experiments in ‘film psychotherapy’—the attempt to deploy the cinematic medium in hypnotherapeutic treatment. Exploring this pivotal, yet virtually unknown, moment in the history of cinema’s ...

But, in this case a piece of film-making so mesmerising and incantatory that it leaves viewers in a kind of trance? No, just a regular film. They hypnotise you before it starts.

To emphasize the academy’s preservation mission, all film clips were experienced exactly as originally seen–with pops, crackles, scratches, noise, splices and hiss all intact–and without digital restoration or clean-up.

The photoelectric sensor would interpret film grain and dust as pops and hiss, increasing the noise floor and reducing available dynamics. Though systems were devised to combat this, such as Western Electric Noiseless, the high noise floors left little room for dynamic content.

For many countries still struggling to bring film to rural areas, this technology was a miracle, allowing audio immersion only dreamt of before. But Ray Dolby knew better was possible. In 1966, the noise reduction system Dolby A became standard in the recording industry. It eliminated the hissing sound that came with earlier standardisation efforts.

Loudspeakers permitting, things could be recorded on the digital tracks much louder than before. For the first time, rock bands in the soundtracks could play almost at concert levels, and battle · scenes could be almost war-like. Many directors gradually began to exploit this historical · ‘headroom’ margin for longer-duration sounds, and the recorded levels crept upwards. The first phase of the so-called ‘Loudness Wars’ in cinema was initially marked only by an increase

NEW ZEALAND ACOUSTICS · Vol. 15, No. 2 · Noise Levels in Cinemas · Abstract · Over the last couple of years there · have been numerous media reports · about the potential risk posed to · personal hearing from watching · movies in cinemas. The reports · often describe noise levels that

For over five decades after the introduction of ‘talking movies’, the soundtracks of films were recorded in various types of analogue forms, such as variable-area optical film, variable-density optical film and magnetically-coated film. From the1920s to the early 1970s, the background noise (hiss) inherent in the recording processes limited the level to which the sound could be amplified before the noise became unpleasant and annoying.