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10/17/06
Meeting Highlights
by Nick Kettman
On October 17, members of the Chicago
section had the rare opportunity to meet the pioneer of surround sound at a
meeting entitled "An Evening with Peter Scheiber." Mr.
Scheiber, a life fellow of the AES, spoke of his
early career as a professional bassoonist and his subsequent work as the
developer of the first matrix surround-sound encoders and logic decoders, as
well as improvements recently incorporated in current surround
systems. For example, the 1977 "360-Degree Spatial Decoder"
[photo?] introduced continuously-variable-speed logic and two modes of
operation providing surround presentation of conventional stereo
program. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Scheiber
entertained questions from the audience. The meeting was moderated
by Bob Schulein, committee member of the Chicago section.
A graduate in music of Oberlin
College, Mr. Scheiber received a full scholarship to study with
first-chair players of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. At
22, he came to Chicago
to study with the first bassoonist of the Chicago Symphony and play first
chair in the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. As a professional
musician, he played in the Ottawa Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony
orchestras.
In 1969, after receiving publicity in Time Magazine, Stereo Review and other
publications, Mr. Scheiber gave private
demonstrations of "the four-channel disc" to industry leaders
including Ben Bauer of CBS Laboratories and Ray Dolby. Ultimately,
Dolby would sublicense every significant audio/video manufacturer in the
world under the Scheiber patents. In
1997, the Los Angeles
section held "An Afternoon with Peter Scheiber." In
2003, he received an Emmy Award "for development of surround sound for
television."
In conclusion, Mr. Scheiber talked briefly on his
thoughts about the future of multichannel
audio. He believes that convergence (including formats, media,
etc.) is the ongoing challenge. He is currently working toward
that goal.
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