Cinema Sound Playback Level and Audience Satisfaction

Over 25 years ago, loan Allen presented a paper asking, “Are Movies Too Loud?” He described the then-current situation, highlighting many issues and symptoms, including audience complaints, concerns reported in the press, theater operators playing films below Reference Level, trailer loudness wars, and excessive trailer loudness pushing down feature playback level. These issues remain decades later despite some progress (notably the Trailer Audio Standards Association [TASA] standard). Previous investigations focused on deriving objective loudness metrics (variations on weighted Leq) and associated thresholds. For this paper, we take a different approach; we use a subjective loudness metric and measure audience satisfaction to establish a Comfort Threshold for feature and trailer soundtracks. We present research in real-world and controlled environments to explore the causes and consequences of reduced playback levels and propose changes to current practice.