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I emailed to a local Movie theatre and complained that some scenes of
Harry Potter film were painfully loud. My Wife had ringing in her ears after the movie. Is their anything movie theatres can do about it?
The movie theatre manager's response:
Dear Sir,
I'm sorry to hear that you had an unpleasant experience. As to your suggestion that we use a sound level meter, I would like to share some information with you. After the complete installation of our sound system, the technicians from Dolby Labs used some of the most sophisticated instrumentation available to calibrate the audio levels in the processors and on the amplifiers. These levels are not user assignable or changeable. We have a master volume knob only, and the individual studio recommends the volume level that is most appropriate for each of their features. We have NEVER run a movie above and it is rare indeed for us to run at the recommended level. We always run them below the recommended level. But, here is the rub: The volume cannot be set by the level of the loud scenes,
it must be set by the level of the quietest scene. It is imperative that the dialog can be understood, and so the volume is set so that all of the speech is understandable in the quietest scene. That sometimes causes the loud or battle scenes to be louder than some people would prefer them to be. Most of us sit at home with a remote and turn up the quiet scenes and down the loud ones, but that is not an option here. And, there would be many more complaints if customers could not understand the dialog. Additionally, the level of volume in any movie theater is no where near the damage threshold. As you probably know, the level of sound required to
cause discomfort is around 85dB. At 90dB there can be some hearing loss, but the level must be prolonged to do so. It is not until 120dB that sound begins to cause actual pain. The volume in our movie theater never goes above 80dB, even in the loudest battle-type scenes. In fact, it is generally more near the 60dB mark than anything else As you also probably know, Loudness is measured on a logarithmic scale (the decibel [dB] scale) wich means that every 10dB increase in loudness represents 10 TIMES that previous level's volume.
But, I digress. At any rate, I am sorry that you had a bad experience, but the sad fact is that you cannot please everyone all of the time. If I lower the volume, the quiet scenes are inaudible, and yet even as it is now, there are some people who complain that it is not loud enough.
Manager

Films/DVD Asylum

Movie Theatre response to Loudness Complaint