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Question about the sound at Drive In Movie Theater
From April to October, I work at the Rustic Drive In in North Smithfield, Rhode Island, To listen to the sound, customers program their radio to a particular radio frequency. Sometimes the sound works and other times it doesn't work. Does anyone know of an App that can be downloaded on their phone to be able to listen to the sound? It's a question that we are always asked, but nobody ever has an answer to the question. Paul
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There is no way to listen to over the air broadcast AM or FM on a smart phone. You would have to stream the audio over the internet, and there are aps that could then play it. -
The problem would be that there is always a delay when you send data via the internet. You would never be able to sync the sound with the picture.
The delay is also so variable that you would never be able to determine a consistent offset.Comment
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Sennheiser has something that uses a phone application for low latency streaming audio. There are probably others. There are also applications that play downloaded audio and captions synchronized with auditorium audio, though this would not seem appropriate for a drive in.Comment
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Yeah there are bespoke industry ways of getting extremely low latency/delay audio over wifi. But i’ve not encountered something ready to go for your use case outside of giving everyone CCAP/HI/VI devices like Dolby’s new ones that use WiFi.
technologies that might be involved could be NDI, Dante over WiFi? Certainly possible to roll your own but would require a bit of know-how.
first I would try tackling your broadcast problems. If it happens to everyone at the same time the issue is certainly in the booth or with the transmitter.Comment
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If you wanted to experiment there is at least one published iOS app for monitoring NDI audio streams on your phone.
a technician tool though, not really a customer facing solution. (Also non-free).
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ndi-audio/id1463274908Comment
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I always liked the small mono speakers on a pole they had before. A speaker company Eprad came out with a small wide 3 speaker stereo box unit that gave a great stereo effect in the car but most DI owners never bothered to put them in I guess too expansive.
So people did not steal them some drive inns asked for a drivers license or credit card and gave you a numbered plug in stereo speaker at the car box office, after the film you could return the unit when leaving the movie lot. If the speaker got damaged or went missing you would be charged.
The car FM radio sound is ok but make sure your car battery is in good shape or you may need a jump start at the end of the movie and the wait time could be long.Comment
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Here is another vote for fixing the FM rather than looking for a pricey and latency-prone audio over wifi IP solution. I would start by checking that the audio output from the processor and/or whatever solution you use to downmix 5.1/7.1 to 2.0 to the transmitter is OK (if the processor is a CP750 you could have a level drop disease issue, for example), and then checking out the transmitter itself. Maybe play a test signal from the processor into it, then walk the field with a portable radio listening for problems? The transmission antennas can and do break, blow down, get attacked by birdies, etc., so that's another thing to look at.
Agreed with Terry on the major gotcha with FM to car radios, though. The drive-in I service regularly keeps a start cart for exactly that reason, and it is needed at the end of most shows.Comment
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These days with those small lithium-ion car battery boost/jump kits... a start cart could easily have enough kits to get 10 cars going at once!Originally posted by Leo Enticknap View Post
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About a dozen years ago I had to get my car boosted and the guy who boosted it just walked across the street carrying a little gadget that was looked just like a plastic briefcase.
That's all he needed to do it.Comment
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There is a big gotcha with the little lithium ion jump starters, which is that you have to discharge and then recharge them regularly, or the batteries in them will go stale and the units will become useless.
We found this out the hard way. About 3-4 years ago my wife's car battery suddenly and spontaneously died. No warning whatsoever: it started the car just fine first thing that morning, and then when she came to leave work, it barely had enough CCAs even to do anything to the starter motor (and yes, I did check the alternator: it was fine: that same alternator is still in the car). So in the aftermath of that I bought her a jump starter (similar to this one). The same thing happened about two years later, after she accidentally left the dome light on with the car parked for 3-4 days. The jump starter, which had been sitting in the trunk untouched during that time, was useless. It had no juice left in it at all, despite having been fully charged immediately after it arrived.
I did some looking around online, and quickly discovered that these things need to be discharged and recharged regularly - once every three months seems to be the consensus - in order to be of any use if you actually need them. I've now set a recurring Outlook reminder for every three months, at which point I check that the jump starter is able to turn the engine over with the car's main battery disconnected, then discharge it to 20% (by charging phones from it using its USB outlet), and recharge it again. But I would be willing to speculate that 99% of people who buy these gadgets don't bother to do that, and will likely find them to be useless if they ever try to use them on a car that won't start away from home.
I haven't seen the start cart at the drive-in I service close up (only its use from the booth, hundreds of feet away), but would guess that it contains a bunch of regular lead acid batteries.Comment
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As others have mentioned, I'd focus on getting the FM sound signal fixed before trying to find a smartphone solution. Drive-in sound isn't that hard. It's harder now than it was with 35mm optical sound, but it's not rocket science. We go from our GDC SR-1000 straight to the USL JSD-60 processor, then out to the transmitter (BW Broadcast TX-5). We have a couple of other components inserted in-between the processor and the transmitter, but its not required. We have a 6 channel audio mixer and a compressor / limiter in the chain between the processor and transmitter. Neither as necessary, but back in 2020 when we were doing live concerts, it gave us more control over the sound and it kept the concert sound guys from messing with the cinema sound.
Harold had mentioned the Sennheiser solution. I'm assuming he's referering to the Sennheiser Cinema Connect system. I've looked at documention for it before, and in theory it'll do exactly what you want. However, last I checked, the Cinema Connect solution was not available for purchase in the US. It uses the audio and closed caption feed from your server and sends it via Wifi to the customers device, that when using the associated Cinema Connect App can either play the audio file or scroll the closed caption text to the customers device.
Back in 2014, the US Department of Justice enacted enacted a new laws to be placed upon movie theatres to require them to provide "Closed Captioned" audio devices in each auditorium for patrons who are hearing impaired. Within the confines of an indoor theatre, the technology works perfect, however since there are so few drive-ins left in the country, there are currently no equipment manufacturers making closed caption devices for the drive-in theatre industry. In the rule making notice, the Department of Justice has EXEMPTED drive-in theatres in their definition of "movie theatre" because the technology simply does not exist, and it is doubtful that it ever will be.
In regards to "phone apps", I've always told customers that there is no app that would stream the audio to their phone because of the latency issue. Ironically, last Saturday night I had a college-aged couple come in late for the second feature (ELF). I was out in the lobby mopping the floor and the young guy who just arrived walks in with his phone in hand and asked what the radio station was for Screen 1. I told him and he immeadiately starts scrolling through something on his phone (IPHONE). I told him, "you can try, but there is no app that'll work with the movie sound." He flips his phone around and shows me the screen that shows "STARDUST DRIVE-IN Watertown, TN - 87.9FM". He asks, "Is this it? I stood there kinda dumbfounded, but the damn thing actually worked. I don't know what app he was using, and I know we don't have any RDS encoding to show the radio station identifier on a radio screen.
In regards to "jump boxes", we have two. Don't remember the brand names, but they're heavy as lead and will jump off even the biggest diesel trucks after 5 hours of movies. One thing to look for when buying a jump box is "reverse polarity protection". One of ours does NOT have that and will fry a master-link fuse in a millisecond if you hook it up backwards. Newer cars have a master-link fuse on the positive cable connector that protects it from reverse polarity. If you blow that fuse, that car is not going anywhere until the parts stores open the next day. It's only an $8 fuse, but it'll leave a car stranded if it blows.
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Continued at: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/eve...on-your-phone/You can get FM radio in your car, so how come you can't get it on your phone? Well, here's a news flash: You probably can.
Most smartphones include integrated chipsets that offer a variety of wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and FM radio. But until a few years ago, device manufacturers disabled the function -- often at the urging of wireless carriers that wanted customers to stream music and podcasts, and consume more data. An activated FM radio could give consumers a free alternative.
...You can easily turn your phone into an FM radio if it has an embedded chipset and the proper circuitry to connect that chip to an FM antenna. All you need is an app like NextRadio, which lets you tune into the signal, and something to act as an antenna, such as headphones or non-wireless speakers...
There are also apps for smartphones. NextRadio has been around for years:
I have a Samsung smartphone that has the FM chip. It is very handy in all those waiting rooms that don't have magazines or WiFi. It does not require cell phone service to work.Last edited by Ed Gordon; 11-22-2024, 03:14 PM.Comment
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Maybe one day Apple will let us use the nearly 100 year old FM technology! They are probably waiting for the actual 100th anniversary of FM. lol. ;-)Originally posted by Ed Gordon View Post
But to be fair, if the broadcast is the problem, unlikely tapping into it with a car radio versus FM on a phone is gonna change anything.
CinemaConnect indeed does not appear to be available in the US, at least I couldn't find the app. "MobileConnect" however is a related product (even at the hardware level), and does appear to be available in iOS store.
https://assets.sennheiser.com/global...de_03_2017.pdf
I would have thought the newer CCAP devices that rely on wifi would fair even better at drive ins than my balcony having theatre, given that wifi relies on line of sight. Of course being inside a car doesn't help much. But of course not every release supports CCAP/HI/VI in the true sense... and whatever is deployed at a drive-in has to work for all screenings.Comment
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Also here is a prior thread. Apparently a sennheiser employee chimed in, and in 2017 there were two US installs of the system in California. Weird that the app is no longer on iOS store though (though iOS app store search is abysmal).
http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f16/t003114.htmlComment
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