Audio Engineering Society
Chicago
Meeting Review,
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Mr. Holman in informal discussion with Mr Holman presented the history of
surround sound as an Opera in many acts, with each era of surround sound
being an act.� Mr. Holman traced the
history of surround sound from its beginnings centuries ago in antiphonal
choirs and organs.� He described the
history of multi-channel reproduction systems, from the 1933 Mr. Holman outlined the technical
capabilities of past film sound formats, including Fantasound,
Cinerama, Cinemascope, Todd AO, and several analog Dolby formats on 35 and 70
mm film.� He provided informative and
often amusing descriptions of the rise and fall of these formats.� He described the rationale behind the
selection of 5.1 discreet channels for digital film audio, and how this has
been extended to 6.1 and 7.1 channels through the use of matrixing.� He also described the history of
multi-channel sound for home, from early 4 channel analog matrixed
sound on LP to current surround sound digital formats available on DVD. He then went on to describe the
rationale behind expanding the number of channels beyond the currently
popular 5.1 format.� He explained that
using additional bits to increase the bandwidth, sample rate or the number of
bits per channel beyond current standards provides little or no demonstrable
improvement in audio quality.� However,
using these same extra bits to increase the number of channels makes an
easily perceptible improvement, even to untrained listeners.� Mr. Holman explained that it is nearly
impossible to ever have enough channels for full transparency.� Further increases in the number of channels
will continue to provide improvements in realism.� Specific shortcomings of the existing
5.1 channel system include poor side images, poor sense of envelopment -
especially at low frequencies, poor rear center imaging, and no vertical
information.� A system with more
channels would address these problems, but could still be down-mixed to be
compatible with current systems having fewer channels.� Data to control the down mix can be
included with the music data, resulting in a scalable system. The thorough presentation was followed both with a brief question and answer session for the full group and then many small group informal discussions. |
