Center Channel Speakers In A Movie Theater?

Mitch4t, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING BY POKING AROUND WHERE YOU HAD NO BUSINESS POKING to begin with?!!! - LOL!
If you ask me, you got what you had coming!...lol!..LOL!:)
Hey come on. Look at it this way...if someone told you to jump off a bridge, whould you do it? That's all I'm sayin..

I've jumped off a few in my lifetime.....

Avogorund, don't you know, there's only a little white haired man pulling levers back there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZR64EF3OpA

Ok, someone please answer the following queation: Where are the speakers in a commercial cinema theater typically located in relation to the audience(besides the consideration that there are usually more of them in the sides and rears, typically), and how does that differ from how speakers are typically layed out in a home theater setup?

The LCR set of speakers is behind the screen in all cinema systems except the non perforated Taurus screens that AMC uses (not sure if they still do) Non perforated screens require speakers be mounted above the screens, and you can tell that the sound is not from behind. Subs are typically below the screen in cinema systems.

Surrounds are strung along the sides, all from from one left and one right channel. There is no delay in use.

Different cinema chains supported different manufacturers. For example, Edwards, Harkins, Mann always bought JBL. AMC bought EV. I doubt there is an easy way to figure out who is who.

The era the theater was built in sort of determined the quality. In 1991 or so I attended Jurrasic Park premier with DTS (and JBL speakers), the first of the 5.1 cinema sound systems. At that time, 95% of the cinemas were mono with a few stereo ones out in LA. A huge wave of theater building came then, and THX was supported in one room of a big complex, mostly in major markets.

In the case of JBL, the behind the screen speakers never changed much. It was a dual 15 with a 4 inch driver on a professional horn. Theaters built after 1993 or 1994 or so had the better 8340 JBL surround, which offered wider HF dispersion and higher dynamics, to handle better surround tracks.

THX was about dynamic range, room design (speaker dispersion ) and room isolation (less leakage from the room next door), and max SPL. It really helped convince theater owners, who only made money selling popcorn and candy, to embrace better audio playback. The competitiveness of the industry problem did more to get it going, as one owner would not want to be outdone by a competitor. You really could not compete with a mono theater against the draw of a 5.1 film properly supported.

I always felt like Edwards on the west coast did the best job with audio, their theaters generally sounded the best to me. And the bigger ones closer to Hollywood WERE better, I guess due to industry clientele would be more aggressive with their complaining. Complaints do seems to drive theaters to make adjustments.

Brad