Here's the situation...
Today, someone comes out of Frequency and politely (yeah right) informs me that there is no sound. I peak in the auditorium on my way to the booth and the DTS is booming away. The man mumbles something like, "Well, it WASN'T working... and we missed like two minutes of important stuff!" I paused to feel the man's pain, then headed to the booth, where everything was perfectly normal... reader was reading, disks were blinking their proper cadence, etc.
I pay my dues by watching things for a few minutes, then return to the concession stand. Two minutes later a different person emerges, this one even more "polite" than the first. I repeat my procedure, but this time I'm able to personally witness the lack of sound in the auditorium. "Yup, that's a problem," I say as I bolt for the booth. The person kindly informs me that I'm right, it IS a problem, "and especially because this is an action, suspense movie." Like she would want to watch a romantic comedy without any sound! Anyway, when I reach the booth, I notice that everything looks fine still. Instinctively, I punch the SR button, to appease the maddening crowd.
So anyway, that's my story. What get's me is that it didn't switch to SR if there was a problem with the DTS. In the past, that's what has happened. But it stayed on DTS, pumping silence into the auditorium.

So I'm at a loss. And please, I'd appreciate it if your answers were dumbed down a bit. I've learned everything I know by trial and error and I'm just starting to fiddle with some of the sound stuff but I don't know anything about. Even stuff like cards and processors bring a blank look to my face, so if there's a simple explanation for what happened, I'd love to hear it. If a more technical explanation is necessary, fire away but I'll be giving my computer that blank stare, guaranteed.

And again, remember... we've had perfect showings of Frequency before and after this incident.

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Scott A. Magie

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"And the monkey flips the switch."
- Major Don West, "Lost In Space"

Tell us what kind of projector the DTS reader is mounted on, if there are any other digital readers mounted on top of it as well as the DTS one, what order (from top to bottom) the digital readers are mounted, what kind of platter is handling the film, what kind of sound processor you are using (Dolby, Ultra Stereo, SMART, etc and the model number), and finally, do you have a 2 drive or a 3 drive DTS unit? Also, please let us know if the cd rom drives are the originals. All of these things can cause the problem you described and are generally easily remedied.

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Are you referring to the Cat. 410? If so, it isn't a pulse stretcher but a time-constant contractor!

It places a smaller value resistor in parallel to the debounce resistor to allow it to switch faster to format 05 so as to minimize the "pop" and no sound time.

Whom ever thought it was a good idea to wait until the very last bit left the processor before sending the "fallback" signal (ie go to SR) should be taken out back and beaten sensless. When you KNOW you are going to lose digital signal (and with the Dolby digital system, it knows it is going to lose digital when the buffer isn't full up to the sync delay) why wait to the last bit...switch .5 sec early, it really doesn't matter since you are not going to switch back and forth in the .5 second (or you shouldn't if you don't want to call attention to the problem).

Steve

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Sorry for the sketchy details. This is my new theater and I've been too busy cleaning 1/2 inch of coagulated peanut oil off of the popper to memorize what I have in my booths yet. I'll check on model numbers, etc. and post again Tuesday night.

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Scott A. Magie

scoooot@hotmail.com
"Anybody wanna peanut?"
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ps- The reader is not dirty. I've seen very dirty readers working fine and this one was freshly cleaned days ago.