In my career I did a lot of theatrical feature film mixes as well as "mastering" or "finishing" jobs on lower budget projects, mostly premixed or prepared in small rooms.
In my opinion, there is much more involved than just listening levels:
- different room acoustics:
no small room bass node problems
longer reverb times (with lower levels)
speaker placement behind the screen/speaker angles.
- different speaker characteristics (horn loaded systems)
- different surround calibration (-3db)
- the surrounds sound much more diffuse with 20 and more speakers involved)
- and last but not least:
-
much larger picture size -
This does strongly affects the perception of sound.
So i think, although it´s possible to make a small room mix translate roughly to a theatre, you will hardly be able to use the full spectrum of theatrical sound possibilities when mixing in a small room.
Bernhard
www.DolbyMastering.com