The Gloria Palast movie theatre in Munich is beefing up its D-Cinema equipment with a high-end sound system based on the established Dolby Surround 7.1 format. Kinoton, drawing on its decades of audio experience, supplied all of the components for the high-end sound system. The company's technicians then took care of professionally installing and adjusting all of the audio and event equipment and sizing it to fit the auditorium.
In recent years attention has mainly focused on D-Cinema projection, but now it is increasingly turning to sound quality. While analog film only holds audio data in compressed form, digital cinema servers provide discrete, virtually lossless tracks for all audio channels. In combination with a leading-edge sound system, this ensures superb sound reproduction for a perfect audio experience. Agreeable, clear-as-a-bell music, maximum speech intelligibility, and homogeneous volume levels throughout the auditorium are guaranteed.
The new "premium sound experience" in the Gloria is based on a custom-tailored solution involving state-of-the-art loudspeakers, crossover and power amplification technology, and a special program for designing and planning shows. The highlights are a Dolby CP750 digital sound processor, three powerful three-way full-range systems (JBL), an effect speaker system (JBL), a high-wattage subwoofer system (JBL), and a network-controlled and -monitored amplification system (Crown). In addition, Kinoton supplied and installed a Kinoton DCA system for automatically controlling all of the cinema equipment, including signal distribution to the various event components such as the audio control panel and microphones, as well as the voice amplification and feed systems.
The Gloria Palast, which experienced several decades of ups and downs after opening back in 1956, is now being transformed into a "premium cinema". Its seating capacity is being cut in half, dark leather armchairs are being installed, and up on the gallery an exclusive wood-paneled lounge accentuated in deep red is taking shape. The reopening is scheduled for January 2013. The Gloria Palast has been operated since 2007 by Kinopolis, which also owns the Mathäser Filmpalast in Munich. This makes it possible to very flexibly plan the Gloria's program. The corporate group has been run for over a hundred years by the Theile family, now in the fourth generation.
