Audience Noise as a Limitation to the Permissible Volume Range of Dialog in Sound Motion Pictures

A series of noise measurements were made in theaters to determine the cause of low intelligibility of dialog recordings of wide volume range. Audience noise level was found to be a serious restriction, because it averages 8 db louder than film noise level and reduces the useful volume range by that amount. Audience noise is an extremely variable factor, as measurements made in the same theater showed it to be as low as the film noise in one instance and later to rise 14 db above this value. To secure good intelligibility, the volume range of the dialog must be compressed so that the softest-spoken words never are so low in level as to be seriously masked by audience noise.

Print ISSN

0097-5834

Published

1940-07

Content type

Original Research

DOI

10.5594/J10068