Seeing Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan at London’s Empire Leicester square cinema screen # 1 back on warm Sunday October 8th 1989 which was part of an all day Star Trek event which started at 11am in the morning with a packed out Empire was totally out of this world for sound presentation via the Dolby stereo six-track and the Lucasfilm THX crossover system which was accompanied by a huge JBL loudspeaker array delivering up close to 16KW of brut sound power of high fidelity had to be heard!
The first show stared off with 35mm Dolby stereo optical print of Star Trek the Motion Picture which for an optical track sounded great all the richness of the soundtracks sound elements where faithful reproduced without colourization of the sound it fitted the screen size perfectly.
The 70mm six-track Dolby stereo experience!
Star Trek II presented in 70mm went just that bit further in terms of sound the opening titles was deep from the moment the James Horner score started over a Paramount Pictures logo, it gradually builds up in layers where its presence started to vibrate the chair with certain parts of frequency range pressing on me!
One moment in the film that I thought was quite impressive was when Khan, lifted Pavel Chekov off the floor whoa, this was a quite ambient scene and where all that low came from I still haven’t the first clue thou I’m sure most of it is in the centre channel mix after playing the same scene on region 2 DVD. Now I have seen this many times projected in the cinema via several 35mm optical Dolby prints but never like this, yes this is how it should sound and feel with lots of drama that makes the audience gasp!
Its not easy to play a scene like this and then later where the U.S.S. Enterprise is being attacked by a vengefully disgruntled Khan why who could blame him, suddenly you reach for the volume as it seems too bright sounding in the high frequencies as the phasers fire from the fronts then pan to surrounds within milliseconds its all too much for the home.
Getting all to sound right in the home varies from home to home the type of loudspeakers amplifiers equalizers room acoustics how one might customized the sound system to have a unique difference over most its about how far one is willing to take it and make its conviction sound good without muddying up the sound.