Have I just heard Enya in fidelity better than the CD555, NAC552, NAP500 setup - and you can too??!

He's proper bo as James Bond as well.

I saw the movie too. The Enya bit was too short for me to draw any conclusions about its true fidelity. Nevertheless, it did sound good. The impression they were trying to create was that it was being played on an expensive system (source purportedly a reel-to-reel). The same house also featured some B&O Beolab 5 speakers like these....

Whatever the mastering of the soundtrack, I have never been lucky enough to find a cinema that offered audio facilities that seemed very close to good. Sometimes they are terrible.

Of course there is always the tantilizing possibility that the record companies will eventually issue their recordings in Hi-def, so that we have the chance to make the best of replay, but it seems unlikely as copying digital files is so very easy these days, and as soon as something indistinguishable from the master recording is issued as consumer product the recording company looses control of the master material to a very real degree.

Years ago EMI pointed this out and stated that they would not be releasing significant [and expensive to make] recordings this way as the bootlegs would become as good as the masters.

ATB from George

If it is a large cinema you would be listening to a very large HORN speaker system witha sensitivity of about 105-110dbw with a maximum unclipped loudness of over 120db.

No way will a typical domestic system get anywhere near this.

Also the film soundtrack will be a very high quality one.

David

Jon, Having read your post properly, if as winky suggests, the idea was to give the impression of a high quality sound system, then that's what you've heard - an impression of a high quality sound system. Not so much to do with the source of the Enya track, per se. Of course, having a decent sound system in the cinema will help here.

Big-budget Hollywood films are much smarter than they might seem at first sight, even the dumbest of blockbusters. All directors aspire to be 'auteurs', and everything you'll see and hear is there for a reason, not only to tell the (superficial) plot, but also to promote the wider themes of the film. Jaws, for instance, isn't really just about a shark that eats people, of course. There's way more going on underneath the surface.

Back to the sound of the Enya track you heard, the EQ will simply have been tweaked by the sound engineers to make it seem high fidelity and 'nice', such refinement adding to the obvious contrast with the violent images onscreen in a pivotal scene. I say obvious, as it's a trick that's almost certainly also used as a homage to earlier examples of precisely the same juxtaposition - see American Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, Reservoir Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, and so on.

I recently took the kids to see an unremarkable movie at the local Showcase (Puss 'n' Boots, seeing as you ask).

The Cinema was all about pushing the new comfortable chairs. With drinks holders!!! Not a word about...

...The picture was truly fantastic and the sound quality like nothing I've heard in a cinema before. Clearly the whole thing has been ripped out and re-equipped. I can't believe they were pushing the new chairs but not a word about the quality of the presentation.

Genuinely made me interested in going to the movies again after years of total apathy...The chairs were alright mind. And the drinks holders did hold the drinks.

I love movie sound. I love the volume. I love the exaggerated  sounds of somebody walking on snow or gravel. I love feeling explosions beneath my feet. I love hearing sounds running up one side of the theatre and back down the other. It's so spectacular and over the top and that's what I want from a movie. But it's not real. It's not hifi and it's not what I want at home.

Well said. The best movie sound I ever heard was Rage Against The Machine's "Calm Like a Bomb" played over the closing credits of the second Matrix movie. One, because it is a great track and two, because that dreadful movie was finally over!

I think it's something to do with reel to reel in movies. I remember the same from Pulp Fiction. (was it Dusty?).

Yep. "Son of a Preacher Man". Not just reel-to-reel I also remember Charlie Sheen having a (then pretty new) CD player in Wall Street. Angelina Jolie's Michel Gyrodec in Tombraider, too.

Maybe it was run through "Burwen Bobcat"!