Loudspeakers and Digital Immersion - Text 2
Much more effective immersion was achieved in Cinerama movie theatres from September 1952. Seven sound tracks made it possible to make audiences experience the movement of vehicles or horses, for example, across a curved screen. The film was projected onto this immense screen by three 35 mm projectors. There were five speakers behind the screen and two to the side and at the back of the hall. During the screening a sound engineer channelled the tracks to different speakers based on a precise script.
At the same time, in a few movie theatres so equipped, 3D films were also being shown with stereo sound. In 1951, at the Festival of Britain, the Telecinema movie theatre in London showed short stereoscopic and stereophonic films (four magnetic tracks).[1] The effect of immersion in the image was coupled during this period of 3D’s success (1953-55) with an effect of depth in the sound field. This was the case with Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney, 1953), House of Wax (André de Toth, 1953), It Came from Outer Space (Jack Arnold, 1953), Inferno (Roy Ward Baker, 1953) and others. In total, a thousand movie theatres in the United States in 1954 were equipped to play stereo sound.[2]
