On its recent move to larger premises, the French cinema image and lighting equipment hire group TSF planned for a large projection room that would be fully compatible with traditional film and high definition video, with no compromises. Le Cercle Rouge (as it is known) has an 11.2 metre screen and a 16 kW ShowMax sound reproduction system based on a Yamaha DME64N processor.
TSF is a French group (the initials stand for Thierry de Ségonzac France) that hires out production equipment for cinema and television and has a number of film sets around Paris and Marseille. The TSF group is the European leader in its field (with over 100 employees) and hires out to cinema production houses (or television channels) everything that they need for production, ranging from generating sets to cameras, projectors, lenses, metal structures and 2K, soon 4K as well, digital cameras and even lorries for transporting it all (their fleet is a couple of hundred strong). The site at La Plaine Saint-Denis, north of Paris, also has premises for production, ranging from offices to wardrobe storage, and there is even a "cinema shop" (the Cinéboutique)! However, TSF does not offer either sound equipment or postproduction. Seventeen of the films at Cannes this year were shot using TSF equipment.
In early 2007 TSF moved into a new, "customised" building. Right at the planning stage Thierry de Ségonzac decided to build a beautiful projection room, with no concessions, for 35 mm and 2K (soon to be 4K) projectors via a DCDM compatible Kodak DCI server. Indeed, the transition from traditional film to HD video is already well under way in France, both for television and for feature films in the cinema. It is estimated that today a good third of feature films, and almost half of all films for television, are shot on video.
Some people may find it paradoxical to build a projection room in a place where no postproduction work is done. Nevertheless, this room, named Le Cercle Rouge (after Jean-Pierre Melville’s 1970 film of the same name starring Alain Delon, Bourvil, Yves Montand and others), contributes to the pioneering image of TSF and attracts a large number of people who would never otherwise have come, since it is open to everyone (not just those already working at TSF). As TSF offers 2K cameras for hire (and will soon offer 4K), it is a natural consequence to offer the facility for viewing the rushes, for example, or to come and see high quality digital projection under the best possible conditions. In the United States this concept is called the DI room, for Digital Intermediate. Some laboratories in France already have this, but with a 5 or 6 metre screen diagonal (7 or 8 metres is the norm in the US). TSF has gone a lot further than this.
Le Cercle Rouge is rightly called a room "with no concessions". Located on the second floor of the TSF building, it has 126 "Club Class" seats in roughly 1500 cubic metres and a screen with a basic dimension of 11.2 metres (format 2.35:1). To obtain the best possible sound and image quality, Thierry de Ségonzac placed his trust in the ShowMax process approved by the acoustics engineer Pierre Vincent (in 2K digital cinema the image quality is already impressive, the audio channels do not suffer any reduction of data flow and the 4K format, at an even higher level, is on the horizon).
As you know, cinema screens are made of perforated sheet with millions of millimetre-sized holes so that the acoustic energy produced by the loudspeakers behind it can pass through (this is the only possible location for the speakers because the sound has to come from the picture). This system works well, but nevertheless has various disadvantages that become more noticeable as the quality of the projected image and the sound reproduction improve. First of all, seen from a distance the screen no longer looks really white but rather a very pale grey. This reduces the luminosity of the image and the sharpness of details. The same applies to the sound: a high proportion of the acoustic energy passes through the screen but the remainder is reflected from the back of it and then forwards again with a slight delay, producing interference which, though slight, is nonetheless real. High frequencies are particularly badly affected. This was tolerable at the time of monochrome 35 mm and the projectors of the fifties and sixties, but these days such compromises are becoming less acceptable.
Pierre Vincent devoted his attention to this question a few years ago, fully prepared to make major changes. As the holes in the screen are the problem, let's get rid of them! But if we do, how will the sound get through? If the acoustic energy of the high and medium frequencies radiates directly from the screen, the low frequencies can continue to be output from traditional enclosures because the radiated wavelengths are longer. Pierre Vincent therefore commissioned customised and special performance-optimised flat transducers (not unlike the NXT panels used as fixed installations for ceiling tiles, for example). These "satellites" are arranged halfway up the screen for the left, centre and right-hand channels. Below, for each of these, is an enclosure that reproduces the low frequencies of the channel concerned. The installation is completed with a subwoofer hidden at the base of the screen. To achieve a better sound "connection" between the left, centre and right satellites for the Surround channels, Pierre Vincent distributed them around the room via "customised" dipole enclosures fitted with top-of-the range Fostex coaxial monitors with 100°x 100°directivity.
Pierre Vincent has already installed ShowMax in a number of Paris locations – in particular the Club de l’Etoile, a cinema dedicated to press shows and special operations and the personal construction of Jean Goudier, one of the great soundtrack editors and sound designers in French cinema. It is also currently being installed in a Parisian cinema/video auditorium. A ShowMax system is already in use in Stockholm and other installations in Montreal and Los Angeles are in the pipeline. It is the first time that he has worked at the 11-metre scale for Le Cercle Rouge.
In a projection room for rushes, where it has to be possible to pinpoint the smallest fault down to the last defective pixel, ShowMax has two distinct advantages: since the screen has no holes in it, maximum radiant power is provided. The whites are white, not grey, and the details gained by high definition video formats are not spoiled by the small perforations. Moreover, the high and midrange frequencies radiate directly towards the viewers’ ears without the need to cross a perforated screen or rebound between the screen and the enclosure. Without interference there is a sensation of incomparable detail, particularly in dialogue, which is incomparably clear, and even an improved sense of space compared with standard solutions. Since the ten specific Surround enclosures are installed at more or less the same height as the screen satellites, a sound can travel around the room without breaking the spectral identity and this imparts greater realism to mixes where the sources of the sounds move about a lot.
The projection room at the Cercle Rouge is dominated by a 35 mm projector with a reading head suitable for Dolby digital (with its CP650 processor) and a 2K video projector connected to a server. Both projectors are mounted on rails. Projection is therefore always perfectly aligned with the screen, both vertically and horizontally, in order to prevent any geometrical distortion. For the sound, the heart of the installation is a Yamaha DME64N processor operating at 24 bits/96 kHz to guarantee uncompromising audio quality. "On my first systems I was using a different digital processor, of a highly respectable make – the DME32 was not up to the job at the time", explains Pierre Vincent. "But as soon as I changed to the DME64N the gain in audio quality was obvious. As far as I know it's the only HD compliant digital audio processor available today that's capable of processing 8 channels at 24/96 in accordance with the recommendations of the DCI, the Digital Cinema Initiative".
The DME64N at the Cercle Rouge works continuously at more than 90% of its capacity. It is responsible for 32x32 grid functions, room compensation (X curve), active three-way bass/midrange/treble filtering for all the front channels and the delay (essential for digital cinema). It is fitted with two digital input boards, i.e. 16 channels (one board is allotted to the digital server of the HD projector), and two analog input boards, i.e. 16 more channels (one of these boards receives the output from the Dolby Digital CP650 processor, which is analog for the moment for the 35 mm reading part).
The DME also manages 16 different outputs. This is because the room has to adapt to different standards of sound mixing: 5.1, 6.1 and so on. The front channels and the subwoofer do not change but the 10 Surround enclosures change their source according to the mixing format. Pierre Vincent has positioned 3 of these on the left-hand side of the room, 3 on the right, 2 at the back left and 2 at the back right. If a centre rear channel has to be produced, for example (as with Dolby EX), one of the rear left enclosures and one of the rear right enclosures are assigned to this channel and the others reproduce the left and right Surround signals. Thus the DME64N receives two digital output board that directly supply the digital amplifiers.
The power amplifiers are four Powersoft Q4002 four-channel amplifiers with 1000 W per channel. The subwoofer uses a 56 cm boomer loaded by an exponential cone and placed in an enormous 600 kg enclosure 3 m high and 4 m wide. It has a power of 2000 W and its response curve goes down to 16 Hz at -3 dB. The channels are arranged as follows: low/mid/high left + left Surround for amp no. 1, low/mid/high centre and induction loop (for the hard of hearing) for amp no. 2, low/mid/high right + right Surround for amp no. 3, rear left Surround and rear right Surround + 2 bridged channels for the sub for amp no. 4. Pierre Vincent has measured a maximum sound level of 114 dB SPL at the back of the room. This is ample dynamic reserve when compared with that required by the cinema standard, namely 85 dB SPL per channel for 0 dB VU.
The DME memories correspond to the principal typical examples: for example, a 5.1 Dolby Digital position from the cinema projector, a 5.1 input for any external reader, a 7 digital channel position, an EX position and a "conference" position (the room is also sometimes used for this purpose). Pierre Vincent has also provided a control for the overall sound level in the room via the DME knob.
All this tells us that the sound reproduction in the room is amazing, far better than in many a commercial cinema. The bass seems to be unlimited, dialogues have a rare precision and intelligibility and the spatialisation is faultless. Even so, Pierre Vincent has more ideas for improvement. "First of all, install an AES digital output board in the Dolby CP650 processor. This is still analog and you can therefore hear a slight hiss in the silence when projecting in Dolby Digital: with digital projections we have become used to complete silence with no hiss. I am also testing Yamaha amps in the Tn range, which are said to be particularly suitable for this type of installation".
www.tsf.fr
www.cineboutique.fr
www.showmax.com
