DAMNATION ALLEY: Sound 360

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Wunlow

Senior Member
Since 2002/2003
Joined
Aug 7, 2003
Messages
214
This is a 1977 movie just announced for DVD and BluRay. Slightly off topic here, but given SOUND 360 was launched at the end of the quad era, I thought it still fit-- Select showing of this feature were in discrete "360 sound". If I recall correctly- 4 chanel sound, but layed out as a diamond format in theaters.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c4/Damnation_Alley_1977.jpg


It will be interesting if the original discrete 4.0 tracks still survive, and if they are formatted correctly (at least as a secondary audio option) on the upcoming video release.
 
I have an article from 20th Century Fox about "Sound 360" - and yes, all it is is a diamond layout - one mono center front, two speakers on either side-wall and a single Center Back. Damien The Omen II is also a Sound 360 mix and the DVD contains the mix - - try playing it with PL-II Music mode Panorama on and dimension all the way to the back.

For Damnation Alley, they installed huge Altec speakers on the side-walls and had a big rack of equipment from Kintek and dbx.
 
A disappointing update, if this Wiki update is correct:

"The original "Sound 360" audio mix will not be featured on the DVD and Blu-ray, as the original elements were too damaged to salvage."
 
I have an article from 20th Century Fox about "Sound 360" - and yes, all it is is a diamond layout - one mono center front, two speakers on either side-wall and a single Center Back. Damien The Omen II is also a Sound 360 mix and the DVD contains the mix - - try playing it with PL-II Music mode Panorama on and dimension all the way to the back.

For Damnation Alley, they installed huge Altec speakers on the side-walls and had a big rack of equipment from Kintek and dbx.
I was one of the projectionists at the Hyatt Theater in Burlingame, California when "Damnation Alley" opened there. This house was equipped with dual Century projectors and soundheads for use with either 70mm or 35mm film so it had the speakers necessary for 6 track reproduction. Fox sent a representative out to setup the sound system for "Sound 360" but the conclusion reached was that it would take too much effort to make the needed changes. No modifications were made to the theater. So, we ran it like any other 35mm 4-track magnetic print. This meant that the two side surround tracks played through the right and left speakers behind the screen and the rear track supplied sound to rear and side surround speakers. If I remember correctly most of the audio simply came from the center track anyway, with the other channels coming into play during a few action sequences.

I wonder how many theaters really played it in a diamond formatted "Sound 360" setup?
 
I was one of the projectionists at the Hyatt Theater in Burlingame, California when "Damnation Alley" opened there. This house was equipped with dual Century projectors and soundheads for use with either 70mm or 35mm film so it had the speakers necessary for 6 track reproduction. Fox sent a representative out to setup the sound system for "Sound 360" but the conclusion reached was that it would take too much effort to make the needed changes. No modifications were made to the theater. So, we ran it like any other 35mm 4-track magnetic print. This meant that the two side surround tracks played through the right and left speakers behind the screen and the rear track supplied sound to rear and side surround speakers. If I remember correctly most of the audio simply came from the center track anyway, with the other channels coming into play during a few action sequences.

I wonder how many theaters really played it in a diamond formatted "Sound 360" setup?

Quite a few theaters did have the Sound 360 set up, although nowhere near as many as played Sensurround, which, by the time "Midway" was released, had 800 theaters set up for Sensurround. "Damien: The Omen II" was also mixed for Sound 360, but not released that way - the Sound 360 mix is what is on the current DVD, although as a 2 channel Dolby Surround mix.
 
Quite a few theaters did have the Sound 360 set up, although nowhere near as many as played Sensurround, which, by the time "Midway" was released, had 800 theaters set up for Sensurround. "Damien: The Omen II" was also mixed for Sound 360, but not released that way - the Sound 360 mix is what is on the current DVD, although as a 2 channel Dolby Surround mix.
Have you seen a source that actually validates that quite a few theaters were set up for Sound 360? The Hyatt Theater advertised the film as being in Sound 360 but it was not in fact the case. I would guess that perhaps a handful of theaters actually re-installed their old penthouses and amps to play the multiple soundtracks, and may have re-wired their speakers properly, but I would also guess that many did just what was done at the Hyatt. That same theater only had 4-channel reproduction for "Tommy" instead of the advertised Dolby Quintaphonic. The surrounds all carried the same track and no Dolby gear was installed at all.

At the time we were told that Fox had decided to simply shelf "Damnation Alley" the year before but with "Star Wars" such a run-away success they dusted it off and put into release. The engineer who came to the Hyatt said that the soundtrack had been re-engineered in a hurry from a mono track in an attempt to pump up the film's appeal. It didn't work in our location and the film tanked rather quickly. I think that Sound 360 was probably concocted since people were making quite a big deal about the stereo in "Star Wars" and it was actually faster and easier to pull out some effects tracks to place in surrounds than try to retro engineer a true stereo master.

Sensurround on the other hand would not work without a real setup. I was paid by Universal Studios for a day when I assisted a sound engineer from the studio to install it for "Earthquake" in the Belmont Theater in Belmont, Ca. This fed off an optical soundtrack but the system would trigger when a low frequency signal was "detected" by the processor. Our non-sync music for intermissions was supplied by an 8-track deck in 1974 and when the head switched tracks it would sometimes pulse a burst of rumble in the auditorium. I could manually simulate Sensurround by using a card to interrupt the light beam scanning the soundtrack fairly rapidly with my hand.

"Midway" benefited from a more sophisticated version of Sensurround, that could turn the low-frequency blasts on either in the front or back.
 
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