That addition came in 1987 when a French engineer added support for a sixth bass-only channel to his custom mixing board at the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret in Paris.įrom that point forward, Hollywood adopted systems from both Dolby and Digital Theater Systems (DTS) to both encode and decode 5.1- and eventually 7.1-channel soundtracks from films. At the time it was called “Stereo Surround”, and there was no separate LFE channel. The main audio track was stereo, and the center channel was extracted from signals that were in-phase in both the left and right channels, while the rear channel was extracted from the out-of-phase information in the left and right channels. The first use of Dolby Surround in a feature film was in 1979’s Apocalypse Now which employed three channels in front and two in back for a 5.0 configuration. One can only imagine the labor involved in setting the levels, eq and phase for so many transducers, not to mention the cabling nightmare! That initial concept called for three discrete audio channels reproduced by fifty-four speakers. Unfortunately his experiment didn’t make into the final release of the film, but the die was cast. He was inspired by Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee and hatched the idea of having an onscreen bumblebee sound as if it were flying around the theater.
The idea of surrounding movie viewers with sound was first conceived, not surprisingly, by Walt Disney when he was working on the film Fantasia in 1940. What hardware will you need? How much might it cost? And most importantly, what content is available? Let’s take a look. In addition to talking about how each mixing method works, I’ll discuss the realities of putting Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D in your home. However, today’s article will cover that format too. Unfortunately they only devoted a single room to it and I wasn’t able to attend the demo due to the very long wait times.
There was another competing technology at CEDIA as well, Auro 3D. There were at least fifteen demos available in different configurations, ranging from a simple living-room setup to a full-blown cinema with eleven speakers and two subs. From the earliest days of surround sound to today’s massive installations of multiple speakers, subs and electronics Dolby has always been looking for, and apparently finding, the next big thing in theater sound.Īt CEDIA Expo 2014, Kris Deering, Robert Kozel, and I experienced Dolby Atmos for the first time. No organization has worked harder and done more to enhance the theater experience than they. One company that fully embraces that axiom is Dolby. The result is a far more immersive and impactful experience than I would ever have achieved by simply buying a super-expensive projector. As I’ve upgraded my theater over the years, I put more resources into better electronics, separate amplification and better speakers. I know from personal experience that this is extremely hard to do but it’s also the right advice. One of the most important, and least-followed rules about home theater design is that one should spend at least twice as much money on audio as on video. Introduction to the Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D: The Technology and The Reality Despite these challenges, what I’ve heard so far sounds really good with greater impact than traditional 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound.The speaker layouts are different, requiring either a choice or a compromise for the user.At present, no single product supports both technologies.
At a minimum, users will have to install additional speakers and upgrade their AVR or surround processor to support the new codecs.
Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D allow sound engineers to add height information at the creation stage using object-oriented software tools.The demos were cool but also brought up some hard questions: How much will it cost to add this shiny new tech to an existing home theater? How widely supported are the new codecs? Is there the possibility of a new format war between Dolby and Auro? I’ll explore those issues here today.ĭolby Atmos and Auro 3D: The Technology and The Reality Highlights Summary It’s the first time we’ve seen height and overhead information added at the creation stage rather than just extrapolated from a traditional 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack. Secrets’ writers watched at least fifteen demos of Atmos and one of Auro 3D and came away impressed. Up Next Don't let the Upgrade Bug bite you in the “Bum”: Be happy with what you have and Enjoy the Musicĭolby Atmos and Auro 3D: The Technology and The Reality HighlightsĬEDIA 2014 was the first major showing of both Dolby Atmos and Auro 3D surround sound technologies.