State-of-the-art projection, sound, and curated programming are the three things that we think keep movie theaters thriving. That was what led to our decision of going with Meyer Sound.”
Sean PrattManaging Director, Santa Barbara International Film Festival
When the Santa Barbara International Film Festival opened the McHurley Film Center, it opened with something the cinema world hadn’t seen before: a five-screen complex outfitted entirely with Meyer Sound, anchored by ASTRYA cinema loudspeakers in its three Dolby Atmos auditoriums. For the festival, which has operated its single-screen Riviera Theatre with Meyer Sound for a decade, the decision was never in doubt. “State-of-the-art projection, sound, and curated programming are the three things that we think keep movie theaters thriving. That was what led to our decision of going with Meyer Sound,” says SBIFF Managing Director Sean Pratt.
The McHurley Film Center is SBIFF’s permanent home for year-round screenings, filmmaker events, and education—a five-auditorium expansion of a mission that began with the Riviera acquisition ten years ago. The building, a former Metropolitan Theatres multiplex, was fully gutted and rebuilt over nine months at a cost of approximately $20 million, with Dolby Vision projection, Dolby Atmos in three of its five auditoriums, and Meyer Sound throughout.
Systems were designed and installed by Southern California Cinetech, whose principal, Michael Golin, has worked with SBIFF since the Riviera project. The brief, he says, was direct: “They wanted the best.”
Acoustic Surprises
The first order of business was optimizing the venue’s acoustics. The team performed studies and applied treatments to eliminate bleed between theaters. But gutting the former multiplex revealed the site’s defining constraint almost immediately. Built beneath a parking structure, the theaters had limited overhead clearance. An acoustic isolation lid installed across the full ceiling to manage sound transmission from the parking deck above reduced that margin further—with direct consequences for height speaker selection in the Atmos rooms.
The wide-coverage Meyer Sound ULTRA‑X23XP loudspeaker was the ideal solution, fitting within the remaining clearance without breaking the projection plane. “We have almost no room to play with from the top of the projection image to the ceiling,” Golin says. “The ULTRA‑X20 series are the only speaker of that size with that kind of power that will work in an Atmos installation. If a speaker was bigger, it would be interfering with the image.” All ULTRA-X20 loudspeakers feature wide 110-degree horizontal coverage and measure only 7.44 inches (189 mm) in height when oriented horizontally.
The three Atmos auditoriums are anchored by ASTRYA‑140 screen channel loudspeakers with ULTRA-X23XP overhead arrays and HMS‑10 side surrounds; the two 7.1 rooms feature Acheron® Studio screen loudspeakers and HMS‑5 surrounds. Clusters of X-800C high-power cinema subwoofers serve all five screens; USW‑210P compact narrow subwoofers provide bass management in the Atmos rooms.
An Artistic Responsibility
For SBIFF, the investment runs deeper than audience experience. “It’s not just about the attendees’ experience—it’s about the filmmakers’ art that you’re showing,” Pratt says. “If they’re putting their blood, sweat, tears, and money into it, shouldn’t the exhibitor do the same?”
That commitment has earned SBIFF a new place in the industry. “Studios we’ve never booked with are knocking on our doors,” Pratt says. Filmmakers now come not just for the festival but to present independent films for theatrical runs—drawn by the programming, and by the rooms themselves.
With six screens now operating across Santa Barbara, SBIFF has built the infrastructure to match its ambitions—and a sound system designed to present every film the way its makers intended.