Is there even such a thing as analog sound in theaters these days?

[Poya]

I know there's still the big debate on whether celluloid or digital is the best way to film a motion picture but no one really talks about sound.

Back then, correct me if I'm wrong, when talkies were invented, all sound was mono, 1 channel. Disney tried to invent a new tech, which had 3 channels for surround but that was too impractical at the time, so films remained in mono. However, with cinescope emerging, it had its own sound format, which had 4 channels for it, thanks to its magnetic sound, which were better than the commonly used optical sound but, again, was impractical. Then came another film format: 70mm, where the sound had 6 channels for it. Dolby went and made their own format of sound reduction for 70mm, where they gave another channel to a subwoofer, creating analog 5.1. After that, stereo was invented, 2 channels, and that became the wildly used format.

And so digital sound was created, Batman Returns being the first to be released with it, 5.1 became more wildly used, and the rest is history, with Dolby and Datasat (DTS) competing to whether which one is better.

My questions are: is analog sound better than digital sound for films and are there any films that are mixed in analog rather than digital, and if so, can they be released in that format?

[Dubstar]

For Dolby 70mm they actually took away the two front channels - left center and right center and repurposed the sound for extra bass hence the brief 'baby boom' releases that started with "Close Encounters"

70mm magnetic analog sound has been compared to the vinyl versus CD debate - in that many state the former has more of a warmth sound to it - I tend to agree

I think all dialogue ADR work is 100% digital. Sound effects are all digital except with some older catalogued sounds having been originally recorded in analog but digitized for editing purposes. Interestingly I think music has more leeway in terms of how it's recorded. Don't quote me but I seem to recall that "Inside Llewyn Davis" soundtrack was recorded in analog to replicate the warmth sound that I had mentioned about.

[8traxrule]

Analog 2-channel sound was, with very few exceptions, always played with matrix decoding for center and surround channels- the same technology called Pro-Logic in the home. The big advantage of magnetic sound was that it was discrete, and digital sound carried that over into the modern era. I don't think there's any matrix decoding in digital (non-film) projection equipment, but I've never actually played with that.

[stonesfan129]

Don't you get a more accurate recording digitally? And isn't it easier to work with in the mixing stages?

[Zhorik]

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

Don't you get a more accurate recording digitally? And isn't it easier to work with in the mixing stages?

48khz 24bit is more than enough for human hearing. So, yes digital recording is accurate. You would parallel record in analog if you want to color the sound in a certain way as indicated by Dubstar above.

There have been a couple of Bollywood productions with all sounds recorded and tracked at 96khz 24bit and down-sampled prior to printing. Don't know what benefit it offered as plugins do use oversampling.

[ZoetMB]

There's no analog sound possible with digital presentation. A theatre still equipped for 35mm could playback an old analog optical soundtrack, but pre-Dolby analog optical soundtracks had very limited frequency response and Dolby optical soundtracks were better, but still had a lesser frequency response and more distortion than magnetic soundtracks and digital soundtracks.

There are no new prints with magnetic soundtracks. The binder used in mag striping is an environmental hazard and it was very expensive to stripe a print. All new 70mm prints use a DTS soundtrack. There are no 35mm mag prints being made at all.

In the 1950's and 60's, 70mm films had up to 6 discrete tracks. They WERE NOT 5.1. They had five screen channels (Left, Left-Center, Center, Right-Center and Right) and one mono surround channel.

However, the studios got cheap and started using the 4-track mix for 70mm spreading Left and Center to Left-Center and Center and Right to Right-Center, thereby destroying separation and localization. When Dolby came along and developed 70mm Dolby for "Star Wars" in 1977, they developed the "Baby Boom" format to make better use of channels 2 and 4. Channels 2 and 4 (Left-Center and Right-Center) were used for low-frequency effects only, but these were not subwoofers. An optional subwoofer could also be attached, but it was derived via a filter, it was not its own channel as it is today. Dolby analog optical was 4 channels encoded as 2 channels. The format was L-C-R-Surround, but there was very little separation between adjacent channels.

With "Apocalypse Now", Dolby developed "Split-Surround" in order to have stereo surround. They added high frequencies to channels 2 and 4 and fed those to the stereo surrounds. Low frequencies for the surrounds were recorded (in mono) on track 6. Low frequencies on channels 2 and 4 continued to be sent to the screen effects channels.

Mixing in analog was quite complex because each separate set of sounds was put onto a separate piece of 35mm mag film on a "dubber" and played back in sync. Every time a mixer would re-do a section, all those dubbers would get wound back and then punched-in. Now it's all done in Pro-Tools and changes are quite easy.

Digital sound actually started with CDS (Cinema Digital Sound) which was a joint venture of Kodak and the Optical Radiation Corporation. The system was not compatible with a standard optical track and when there was a failure during a showing of Dick Tracy, it was the end of the system. DTS came next and then Dolby with SR-D and Sony with the SDDS system. DTS had the disadvantage of only placing a timecode onto the film and used separate CD-ROM discs, but the CD-ROMs were frequently not included when a film was sent from one theater to another in which case the theater had to revert to Dolby Optical. Eventually, the "quad print" was developed, which had a standard analog optical track usually Dolby SR encoded, a Dolby Digital track, a DTS timecode and a Sony SDDS track. SDDS could be 5.1 or 7.1, which Sony marketed as "8-track". But when it didn't dominate, Sony gave up on the system and stopped supporting it.

When digital presentation came along, the digital formats were expanded to be optionally 7.1. And today, there are the immersive formats like Dolby Atmos which are object oriented.

Personally, a well mixed and mastered 70mm Dolby Encoded mag track played back in a superior theater still sounded better to me than most digital audio today, but how much of that is the difference between analog and digital and how much is the quality of the mixing and mastering electronics (tubes vs. solid state) and the quality of the B-chain in a theater is open to question (as well as the quality of my hearing, which was obviously far better back in the days of analog). But I feel like there was a refinement to the mixes and overall sound back then that's missing today.

[BMill]

Answers from my mastering engineer friend...

Originally Posted by Poya

My questions are: is analog sound better than digital sound for films and are there any films that are mixed in analog rather than digital, and if so, can they be released in that format?

Yes, not current Hollywood films, and technically yes as Zoet explained. The closest to analog sound you will get is some music recorded to tape, or if someone wanted to rerecord to tape, before going back to digital. Even a lot of vinyl released today has seen a digital stage.

Originally Posted by stonesfan129

Don't you get a more accurate recording digitally? And isn't it easier to work with in the mixing stages?

Yes and no. Digital is capable of greater dynamics, has a flatter frequency response over the audible region, and does not degrade. However, digital is made up of samples, rather than analogous to the signal like analog. Digital suffers from jitter, dithering noise, and noise shaping. Digital distortion is more grating. Digital hard clips, while analog has soft clipping and saturation at peak levels.

Easier to mix, digital is hands down easier, and when recording.