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OPERATION OF SOUND EQUIPMENT 639
ing every moment of the show. If there be no observer, or one entrusted with other duties, while it is quite true that business may show no observable decrease or harm, a reputation for poor or unreal sound effects will always, if invisibly, be unfavorably reflected in box office receipts. The understanding manager — he who has that undefinable quality called "Showmanship" — knows this to be true and refuses to take chances on loss of business through defects that can be remedied.
Unfortunately it is a much too frequent occurrence for theatre patrons to be obliged to sit through a show where an unwise manager has made no adequate arrangements for sound monitoring. The projectionist, having nothing to guide him except a monitor speaker, \vhich is as unsuitable for the job as such a manager is for his job, cannot possibly help the sound running wild, blasting the ears at times and again straining them to distinguish dialogue.
Although it is difficult to make some theatre managers realize the value of high class projection, the thing is always perfectly obvious to him who will take a minute to get his whole mind off the matter of saving a few cents and concentrate upon making a few dollars added box office returns.
Unquestionably, lack of adequate sound monitoring in years past has cost theatres as a whole hundreds of thousands of dollars in business loss.
Too much volume is a more common, and always a much more serious fault, than too little. Audiences will soon complain if sound is too low. But not being sound experts they don't know that the intense discomfort they experience at other times is created partly by a too savage assault upon their eardrums and partly by excessive reverberation (caused by excessive volume) which makes sound difficult to understand. All they know is that they automatically, and very often subconsciously, associate the idea of that theatre with the idea of acute discomfort.
In some cases of poor volume control the trouble has been traced to the use of the wrong man for observer. Many persons have defective hearing and don't know it.