
DATE: Friday, August 1, 1997                TAG: 9708010680

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MIKE ABRAMS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   81 lines

FEEL THE THUMB! A BEACH THEATER OPENS TODAY USING A LOCAL FIRM'S SOUND TECHNOLOGY.

Regal Cinemas officials hope to thump thousands of people in the chest this weekend at their newest theater.

The company suits won't hit moviegoers themselves. They've paid a small Virginia Beach company to do it for them.

Sound Related Technologies Inc. - which holds two patents and has applied for others - bills itself as a maker of ``thump-in-the-chest'' bass equipment.

The company's sound equipment, which uses water to help create the ``thump'' sensation, will make itself heard today when the new Strawbridge Marketplace Cinema 12 in Virginia Beach opens to the public.

SRT researches and develops devices that play rich, strong sounds from music, television and movies, the company says. Because of the cutting-edge technology the company says it employs, audiences might notice a physical sensation of being touched by the sound.

Anyone who saw last year's ``Twister,'' this summer's ``Men in Black'' or Harrison Ford's latest, ``Air Force One,'' probably has an idea of the power of cinematic bass. On the right equipment, storms growl, guns rage and planes roar.

The people at Regal and SRT say their system makes already impressive sounds bigger and more consistent from the front of a theater to the back. SRT's product debuted in Charlottesville last summer and has begun to enter Hampton Roads theaters this year.

``I wanted to create a device to involve and stimulate the audience, to make them be there,'' inventor John Alton, 43, said before an invitation-only screening Wednesday night. ``I did that.''

He taught himself to work with the technology and began to develop the present-day speaker some eight years ago.

Roughly 1,000 people, mostly business leaders, attended the special shows in Regal's 12-auditorium complex at General Booth Boulevard and London Bridge Road.

Alton shook hands with guests and explained his creation, the ``hydro-acoustic coupling,'' to anyone who would listen.

His simple explanation: The device moves sound through water instead of air, as traditional bass speakers do.

``We sandwich the sound wave,'' he said. ``We use pressure and water to send it out.''

Audiences won't likely see the equipment. Baltic birch wood cabinets protect the materials and sit beneath the screens behind curtains.

In addition, each auditorium features one of the industry's major surround-sound systems.

Tennessee-based Regal, the nation's sixth-largest movie exhibitor, began 1997 with five theaters in Hampton Roads. The company built a complex in Hampton and another in Gloucester County. The newest dozen screens will join the more than 1,400 nationwide.

Don Fisher, SRT's chief operating officer, said one big benefit of his company's bass system is that people in an auditorium next door won't hear as many sound-effects through the walls. And people in every seat in an auditorium will hear the same sounds at the same volume.

Fisher said the company recorded about $250,000 in sales in the past year, at least partially on the strength of deals with several of the country's biggest theater chains.

Next up: SRT will compete to outfit a planned Disney theater in Orlando, Fla., later this year. Closer to home, the technology soon may appear in automobiles and home theaters.

For now, though, company officials want to make their initials - SRT - a theater staple by thumping on as many chests as possible.

``The viewer wants to be put into as much as a virtual reality scenario as possible,'' Fisher said. ``We're not blowing the eardrums out of people on the front row just to get the person in the back row his money's worth.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]

TING-LI WANG

The Virginian-Pilot

John Alton, the inventor of a sound system that renders

low-frequency bass, sits in a new Beach theater equipped with the

technology.

SRT'S SPEAKER

GRAPHIC

The Virginian-Pilot

SOURCE: Sound Related Technologies, Inc.

[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]