> I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics
This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written.
Here's more:
> Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades:
>> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor.
> The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1]
> "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'"
> When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward:
> "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that."
There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet.
[1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.