Audiography and Sound Engineering

TOPIC: Mono, Stereo & Surround

Mono or Monaural Sound:

In this chapter we will take a close look at audio signals of all
kinds. These may be speech or music programs in mono, stereo or
multichannel. The term channel is often used to describe an audio
program path intended for final delivery to the consumer. It may
be a radio signal, TV audio signal, or a signal intended for a home
audio playback medium. We can also think of channel groups,
such as stereo or surround sound, where a number of channels are
intended for simultaneous playback. For now, we'll consider a
single, or monophonic, channel. (The term mono is normally used
instead of monophonic). Mono or monaural sound only uses one
channel when converting a signal into a sound. Monophonic
(mono) sound is a single-channel, unidirectional type of sound
reproduction. All elements of the sound recording are directed
using one amplifier and speaker combination. No matter where
you stand in a room you hear all the elements of the sound equally
(except for room acoustic variations). To the ear, all the elements
of the sound, voice, instruments, and effects appear to originate from the same point in space. It is as if
everything is "funneled" to a single point "in front" of the listener. If you connect two speakers to a
monophonic amplifier, the sound will appear to originate at a point equidistant between the two speakers,
creating a "phantom" channel.

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Stereo or Stereophonic Sound:
Stereophonic (stereo) sound is a more open type of sound reproduction that lets the listener
experiences the correct sound staging of a performance. Through left and right speaker channels, it gives the
impression of sound coming from all directions around the listener, rather than just a single point.
Stereophonic sound or, more commonly, stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a
multi-directional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two or more independent audio
channels through a configuration of two or more loudspeakers in such a way as to create the impression of
sound heard from various directions, as in natural hearing.
The main aspect of stereophonic sound is the division of sounds across two channels. The recorded
sounds are mixed in such a way that some elements are channeled to the left part of the soundstage, and
others to the right. One positive result of stereo sound is that listeners experience the correct sound staging of
symphony orchestra recordings, where sounds from the various instruments more naturally emanate from
different parts of the stage. However, monophonic elements are often still included. By mixing the sound
from a lead vocalist in a band, into both channels, the vocalist appears to be singing from the "phantom"
center channel, between the left and right channels.

A Very Brief History of Mono to Stereo:

 In the late 1930s’ and during the 1940s’, music recordings, releases and technologies like early record
players, sound in movies etc., were all done and configured in mono.
 By the 1960s’ records were mass-produced and released in stereo.
 From here, stereo became the standard, carrying on to cassettes, stereo playback systems and into the
modern digital era.
 However, stereo, as a concept, was realised in the late 19th century and stereo technology was around
during the early 20th century. The reason mono stuck around for so long was that technology
companies and radio broadcasters of the time weren’t ready to give up their mono systems.
 Alan Blumlein is the man responsible for your listening experience. He developed and patented the
stereo recording and production systems we use today. In the 1930s and his technology was
experimented with ‘behind the scenes’ until it eventually became mainstream.

Surround Sound:
To many people, the term surround implies that something new has been added to a stereo audio signal
something requiring more than two speakers for reproduction. Although most consumers look upon surround
sound as a relatively new technology, the very first surround sound experiments date back to the 1930s. The
technology really came into its own in 1940, when legendary entertainment innovator Walt Disney released
his revolutionary film Fantasia. Disney tasked his sound engineers with the development of an audio system
that would totally immerse the film-going audience in much the same way that Fantasia was designed to
immerse the audience in vibrant visuals. The result was Fantasound – the very first application of surround
sound in the commercial arena.

The 1940s: Fantasia:

In many ways, Walt Disney can be considered the inventor of surround sound. When the groundbreaking
movie Fantasia was still in development, Disney met with conductor Leopold Stokowski to discuss the film's
classical music score. Stokowski suggested that Disney contact the engineers at Bell Labs, who were
working on a nascent multiple-microphone stereo recording technology. Intrigued by the technology, Disney
thought it would be wonderful if, during the movie's "Flight of the Bumblebee" segment, the musical sound
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of the bumblebee could be heard flying all around the audience, not just in front of them. Disney put his
engineers to work on the challenge, with the result that Fantasia, released in 1941, became the very first film
to incorporate surround sound. Disney employed the proprietary Fantasound technology to create a surround
sound field with left front, center front, right front, left rear, and right rear channels. The main soundtrack
incorporated only the front three channels; the two rear channels were recorded on a separate reel of film,
and "steered in" separately when needed. Unfortunately, the additional equipment necessary to reproduce
Fantasound was too costly to roll out on a widespread basis. Only two Fantasound systems were sold to
theaters: New York's Broadway Theater and the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles. These installations
cost $85,000 apiece and included 54 speakers placed throughout the auditorium. Disney also produced two
scaled-back road show versions of the Fantasound system, at $45,000 each, although these traveling versions
didn't include the surround speakers.

Fig: 70 mm prints provided six channels recorded on four magnetic stripes

Unfortunately, the additional equipment necessary to reproduce Fantasound was too costly to roll out
on a widespread basis. Only two Fantasound systems were sold to theaters: New York's Broadway Theater
and the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles. These installations cost $85,000 apiece and included 54
speakers placed throughout the auditorium. Disney also produced two scaled-back road show versions of the
Fantasound system, at $45,000 each, although these traveling versions didn't include the surround speakers.
The first commercially successful multichannel sound formats were developed in the early 1950s for
the cinema. At the time, stereophonic sound, as it was called, was heavily promoted along with new wide-
screen formats by a film industry feeling threatened by the rapid growth of television. Unlike the two-
channel format later adopted for home use because of limitations imposed by the phonograph record, film
stereo sound started out with, and continues to use, a minimum of four channels.
With such film formats as four-track Cinemascope (35 mm) and six-track Todd-AO (70 mm),
multiple sound channels were recorded magnetically on stripes of oxide material applied to each release
print. To play these prints, projectors were fitted with magnetic playback heads like those on a tape recorder
(only much larger), and cinemas were equipped with additional amplifiers and loudspeaker systems.
From the outset, multichannel film sound featured several channels across the front, plus at least one
channel played over loudspeakers towards the rear of the cinema. At first the latter was known as the effects
channel, and was reserved for the occasional dramatic effect—ethereal voices in religious epics, for
example. Some formats even switched this channel off by means of trigger tones when it wasn’t needed
because the magnetic track on the film was particularly narrow, and thus very hissy.
As time went on, sound mixers continued to experiment with the effects channel. In particular,
because six-track 70 mm magnetic provided consistent signal-to-noise ratios on all channels, mixers began to
use the effects channel to envelop the audience in continuous low-level ambient sounds. This expanded,
more naturalistic application came to be known as surround sound, and the effects channel as the surround
Channel. 70 mm six-track magnetic was regarded by the film industry as the supreme audio format until the

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advent of multichannel digital in the early 1990s. Shown is the format as it evolved in the late 1970s, with
tracks 2 and 4 carrying supplemental bass information.

Fig: Todd-AO (70 mm) Magnetic Soundtrack & Speaker Arrangements

Surround Sound in Live Performance:

In 1967, the rock group Pink Floyd performed the first-ever surround sound concert at "Games for
May", a lavish affair at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall where the band debuted its custom made
quadraphonic speaker system. The control device they had made, the Azimuth Co-ordinator, is now
displayed at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, as part of their Theatre Collections gallery.

Surround from Optical Soundtracks:

Under the best conditions, the multichannel magnetic- stripe formats provided superb sound, way beyond
anything the home listener could experience, and it was widely adopted in the 1950s. By the1970s, however,
the expense of magnetic release prints, their comparatively short life compared to those with traditional
optical soundtracks, and the high cost of maintaining the playback equipment led to a massive reduction in
the number of magnetic releases and cinemas capable of playing them. Magnetic sound came to be reserved
for only a handful of first-run engagements of big releases each year.

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 As a result, by the mid-1970s, most films were being released with
only low fidelity, mono-optical soundtracks, a technology that had hardly
improved since the late 1930s. Then, in 1975, came a new breakthrough: the
introduction by Dolby Laboratories of a highly practical 35 mm
multichannel optical release print format originally identified as Dolby
Stereo.
In the space allotted to the conventional mono optical soundtrack are
two soundtracks that not only carry left and right information as in home
stereo sound, but are also matrix encoded with a third center-screen channel
and—most notably—a fourth surround channel for ambient sound and
special effects. The matrix process in essence “folds” four channels down to
two tracks on the film, and “unfolds” them in the theater by means of a
sound processor-decoder (a common industry term for the process is 4:2:4)
This format not only enabled multichannel sound from optical
soundtracks, but higher-quality sound as well, thanks to such techniques as
noise reduction and loudspeaker equalization. The result was multichannel
capability on easily manufactured, compatible 35 mm optical prints that
rivaled that of four-track 35 mm magnetic, which soon became obsolete. The multichannel optical format
proved so practical that within a decade of its introduction, virtually all major releases could be heard in most
local cinemas in four-channel surround sound.
It was dramatically improved in 1987 by the application of spectral recording (SR), a new recording
process developed by Dolby Laboratories that both lowered optical track noise still further and increased
headroom, making it possible to record loud sounds with wider frequency response and lower distortion.
Today, virtually all 35 mm movie prints, including those with digital soundtracks, feature a matrix-
encoded, four-channel SR analog optical soundtrack. The SR track makes it possible for the print to play in
any theater in the world, and also acts as a backup on digital prints in case there are problems with the digital
track(s).

Surround Sound:
Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using
multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels). Prior to surround
sound, theater sound systems commonly had three "screen channels" of sound, from loudspeakers located in
front of the audience at the left, center, and right. Surround sound adds one or more channels from
loudspeakers behind the listener, able to create the sensation of
sound coming from any horizontal direction 360° around the
listener. Surround sound formats vary in reproduction and
recording methods along with the number and positioning of
additional channels.
Stereophonic Sound was a breakthrough for consumers of
the '50s and '60s but it does have limitations. Back then, some
recordings resulted in a "ping-pong" effect in which the mixing
emphasized the difference in the left and right channels too much,
with not enough mixing of elements in the "phantom" center
channel. Therefore two developments occurred in the late '60s and
early '70s that attempted to address limitations of stereo: four-
channel discrete and quadraphonic sound.

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Four-Channel Discrete Sound:
With four-channel discrete, four identical amplifiers (or two stereo amps) are needed to reproduce a
sound. While this made for rich and impressive sound reproduction, it was extremely expensive in the days
of tubes and transistors, rather than integrated circuits and chips. Also, such sound reproduction was really
only available through broadcast means—that is, two FM stations each broadcasting two channels of a
program simultaneously. That means you would need two tuners to receive it in full, as well as four-channel
reel-to-reel audio decks, which were also expensive. In addition, vinyl LPs and turntables could not handle
playback of four-channel discrete recordings.

Quadraphonic 4.0 Surround:

Taking a more realistic and affordable approach to surround sound reproduction, Quadraphonic 4.0
Surround, or ‘Quadraphonic Sound’ introduced in the early 1970’s, was the first popular format to introduce
audiences to the three dimensional world of sound. It used four speakers, equidistant from one another,
placed in a square shape around the listener. This was the first surround speaker array of its kind, creating an
immersive surround sound experience for the consumer. Although Quadraphonic Surround had great
promise, the technology never had a standardized four channel system. the quadraphonic format consisted of
matrix encoding of four channels of information within a two-channel recording. The practical result is that
ambient or effects sounds could be embedded in a two-channel recording that could be retrieved by a normal
phono stylus and passed through to a receiver or amplifier with a quadraphonic decoder. In essence, quad
was the forerunner of today's Dolby Surround.

Matrix Decoding:
Matrix decoding is an audio technology where a small number of discrete audio channels (e.g., 2)
are decoded into a larger number of channels on play back (e.g., 5). The channels are generally, but not
always, arranged for transmission or recording by an encoder, and decoded for playback by a decoder.

The Emergence Of Dolby Surround:

In the mid-70's Dolby Labs—with breakthrough film soundtracks such as Tommy, Star Wars,
and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—unveiled a new surround sound process in the film history.
The name Dolby is a classic eponym like sandwich, Celcius or, more gruesomely, guillotine – all
names we commonly use derived from a person. When one hears the name Dolby, one automatically thinks
of multi-channel surround sound systems. But before the American engineer and inventor from Portland
Oregon revolutionized cinema sound, he developed way of improving technologies that have themselves
passed into obsolescence such as Dolby Type B noise reduction for compact cassette tapes. Just because we
no longer use these inventions doesn’t make them any less remarkable, especially since they led to the
development of current sound technologies.
Dolby Labs started moving towards what would become a major invention for them: Surround sound.
First experienced by movie audiences in the 1976 release A Star is Born, Dolby Stereo had four channels.
This was in and of itself not a breakthrough. After all, in the 1950s, Cinerama and Cinemascope offered
stereo sound, but the technology was magnetic, not optical like the picture part of the film, and many
cinemas simply didn’t have the technology to play it back. For this reason, most cinemas continued to use
mono optical soundtracks. Ray Dolby’s great breakthrough was to find a way to not just play back stereo
sound; through clever use of matrix decoding technology, he gave cinemas a way to generate surround sound
on stereo systems from the same optical print on which the picture was
recorded.
Dolby stereo technology was easy to use and cost effective. But
would audience like it enough to make it the new cinema standard?
While the musical drama A Star is Born didn’t actually showcase the full
benefits of this new sound technology, a film released the very next year
did. 1977 Star Wars made such good use multi-channel sound effects
that audience and theatre owners alike were won over. Those theaters

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who did not yet own the necessary speakers placed around the cinema soon kitted out their theaters for Dolby
Stereo.
The Dolby Stereo:
In addition to noise reduction, Dolby was looking at other means of improving the sound quality heard in
cinema films. In 1978 Dolby introduced Dolby Stereo (also referred to as Dolby Surround or Dolby MP) for
35mm films, based on optical sound-track technology, a technology used to place monaural sound on film
since the 1930s. As shown in Figure, Dolby Stereo involved the use of four loudspeakers and basically
changed the Quadraphonic rectangular configuration consisting of front-left, front-right, rear-left and rear-
right into a diamond shape where the speakers were now left, center, right and surround (L, C, R and S
respectively), or in other words, three frontal loudspeakers and one “surround” loudspeaker. The surround
sound system consisting of three frontal loudspeakers
provided good localization for frontal sounds and for
people seated to the left or right of the screen. The
surround channel was used to provide greater overall
audio realism (e.g. “surround the listener”). Its purpose
was to deliver background sounds in order to convey
environmental context such as reverberation and other
spatial sound effects. Given that many theaters were
only equipped for monaural or stereo playback, they
could not support Dolby stereo. Building on and
improving the matrixing techniques introduced for
Quadraphonic systems, Dolby introduced their own
encoder/decoder pair allowing their Dolby Stereo
format to be encoded into the traditional two-channel
stereo format and to be played back as stereo or
monaural or with suitable equipment available,
decoded back into a four-channel format.

Figure: Dolby Stereo loudspeaker setup.

The Limits of Dolby Stereo:
Dolby Surround does have its limitations, however. With the rear channel being basically passive, it
lacks precise directionality. Also, the overall separation between channels is much less than a typical stereo
recording.

Dolby Pro Logic:

Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby’s second generation of surround sound was introduced following the original
Dolby Stereo system. Dolby Pro Logic addresses the limitations of standard Dolby Surround by adding
firmware and hardware elements to the decoding chip that emphasizes directional cues. In other words, the
decoding chip will add emphasis to directional sounds by increasing the output of the directional sounds in
their respective channels. With greater separation between channels, it adds more accuracy to sounds effects
such as explosions, gunfire, airplanes, and other sounds. As with Dolby Surround, Pro Logic consists of four
channels, left (L), center (C), right (R) and surround (S) and in fact, uses the identical encoding matrix.
However, Pro Logic differs with respect to the decoding stage only.

The Limits Of Dolby Pro Logic:

Although Dolby Pro-Logic is an excellent refinement of Dolby Surround, its effects are derived
strictly from the reproduction process. Even though the rear surround channel employs two speakers, they are
still passing a mono signal, limiting rear-to-front and side-to-front motion and sound placement cues.

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Digital and 5.1 Surround:

In the 1980s, as the success of the compact disc

established with consumers the idea that digital sound
meant better sound, the film industry began to investigate
what it wanted by way of digital sound in the cinema.
While not defining how it would be achieved, the
industry agreed on several objectives, including fully
discrete channels providing better channel separation
than matrixing, wider dynamic range, and what became
known as the 5.1-channel configuration. The 5.1
configuration provides fully discrete left, center, right,
left surround, and Right Surround channels. A sixth
channel, intended for reproduction by subwoofers,
carries low-frequency effects (LFE), and became known
as a .1 channel because it covers only a tenth of the
audible spectrum. 5.1 has its roots in the 70 mm six-track
magnetic format. Originally the six-track configuration called for five full-range screen channels and one
surround channel. As the average cinema screen became smaller in the 1970s, however, the need for five
full-range screen channels and elaborately panned dialogue lessened. Dolby therefore proposed that the extra
two screen loudspeakers, often referred to as half-left and half-right, and could be used more effectively for
bass reinforcement, with the correlating tracks on the film carrying only bass information. This technique,
which was adopted by the industry and earned the nickname “baby boom,” was the precursor of the .1
channel and its attendant subwoofers in today’s digital formats. The use of two surround channels was also a
70 mm contribution, beginning with some experimental 70 mm prints of the film Superman in 1978. What
the industry came to call stereo or split surrounds was first heard by the public late in 1979 in fifteen
specially equipped theaters showing 70 mm prints of Apocalypse Now.

The first 5.1-channel digital format was cinema digital sound (CDS), introduced in 1990 by Optical
Radiation Corp. and developed in conjunction with Kodak. The CDS format placed a digital optical
soundtrack on 70 mm prints in lieu of analog magnetic tracks, and experiments with 35 mm prints were
underway when the venture failed.

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 The CDS format placed a digital optical soundtrack on 70 mm prints in lieu of analog magnetic
tracks, and experiments with 35 mm prints were underway when the venture failed. Soon thereafter,
beginning in 1992, came the three competing 35 mm digital film sound formats that have survived with
varying degrees of success: Dolby Digital, Digital Theater Sound (DTS), and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound
(SDDS). The three digital formats differ more in how they deliver their respective digital soundtracks than in
their actual performance. Both Dolby and SDDS use optical digital soundtracks on the print, the Dolby
Digital track between the sprocket holes down one side, and redundant SDDS tracks down both outer edges.
DTS supplies the digital soundtrack separately on a CD-ROM disk that plays in sync with the picture by
means of an optical time-code track adjacent to the analog soundtrack on the film. To insure playback in any
theater, many release prints provide for all three digital formats plus analog playback, giving rise to the
nickname quad Print.

Dolby Digital:
Dolby Digital, the newest “sound innovation” from Dolby, was first introduced in 1992 with the film
Batman Returns. Dolby Digital is often referred to as a 5.1 channel system. However, it must be noted that
the term "Dolby Digital" refers to the digital encoding of the audio signal, not how many channels it has. In
other words, Dolby Digital can be Monophonic, 2-channel, 4-channel, 5.1 channels, or 6.1 channels.
However, in its most common applications, Dolby Digital 5.1 and 6.1 is simply referred to as "Dolby
Digital."
It is based on the Dolby AC-3 method (a method of storing and transmitting multi-channel audio in a
fraction of the space needed for standard audio signals) and allows for high flexibility with respect to several
operating parameters (e.g. bit rate, number of channels). As with analog Dolby Stereo systems, Dolby Digital
includes three front speakers, the left, center and right channels (L, C, R respectively) however, rather than a
single surround channel, as with Dolby Stereo, Dolby Digital includes one or more independent surround
channels, on each side of the listener in addition to a subwoofer used for the playback of low frequency
effects (LFE) (this configuration is known as 5.1). The two independent surround channels allow for “true
stereo surround effects” leading to a greater sense of depth, localization and overall realism. Dolby Digital
employs Dolby noise reduction to reduce noise levels when no audio signal is present.
Dolby Digital is the standard multi channel surround sound format used in digital TV broadcasts in
the United States, digital cable and satellite transmissions. Furthermore, it is the standard audio format for
DVD in countries which employ the NTSC television standard. In addition, Dolby Digital offers great
flexibility with respect to decoding, allowing the signal to be decoded depending on the listener’s preference,
budget and listening space. This permits a Dolby encoded soundtrack to be heard on a monaural, two-
channel stereo, four-channel Dolby Surround or Dolby Digital Surround configurations.
Dolby 5.1:
To many, the term “5.1” has become synonymous for and is often used to define surround sound systems.
However, 5.1 simply refers to one of the many possible (although the most widely used and most famous),
surround sound system loudspeaker configurations. It certainly does not define surround sound. The 5.1
configuration consists of six discrete channels, was defined in 1987 and became commercially available in
1993 by Dolby Laboratories after several studies by film industry groups found a six speaker configuration
produced “satisfying results” in a cinema. The 5.1 configuration (Figure) consists of five discrete full
bandwidth channels, (hence the 5 in “5.1”), left (L), center (C), right (R), left surround (LS) and right
surround (RS), each capable of conveying signals in the range of 20Hz to 20kHz and a sixth, low frequency
channel drives a sub-woofer in order to convey low frequency effects (LFE) such as explosions and operates
in the frequency range of approximately 5Hz to 120Hz. Since this LFE channel requires a fraction of the full
range channel bandwidth, it is known as the “.1” channel and, hence, when combined with the five full range
channels, we have 5.1. Placement of the five, full range loudspeakers, according to the International
Telecommunications Union specification (ITU-R BS 775-1) is illustrated in Figure. Since humans cannot
localize such low frequency sounds, the sub-woofer may be placed anywhere in the room.

The Benefits of Dolby Digital 5.1:

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Dolby Digital 5.1 adds both accuracy and flexibility by adding stereo rear surround channels. It allows
sounds to emanate from more directions, as well as a dedicated subwoofer channel to provide more emphasis
on bass-heavy or low-frequency effects. The subwoofer channel is where the .1 designation comes from.
Also, unlike Dolby Pro Logic, which requires a rear channel of only minimal power and limited frequency
response, Dolby Digital encoding and decoding require the same power output and frequency range as the
main channels. Dolby Digital encoding began on laser discs and migrated to DVD and satellite
programming, which has solidified this format in the marketplace. Since Dolby Digital involves its own
encoding process, you will need to have a Dolby Digital receiver or amplifier to accurately decode the signal.
The signal is transferred from a component, such as a DVD player, through either a digital optical or digital
coaxial connection.
Dolby Digital Surround EX 6.1 & 7.1:
Dolby Digital EX is based on the technology already developed for Dolby Digital 5.1. Dolby EX extends
Dolby 5:1 by providing an additional surround loudspeaker, placed directly in back of the listener between
the existing left and right surround channels, as shown in Figure (a). The rear surround channel is encoded
onto the left and right surround channels as it does not contain its own (discrete) channel. This ensures
backward compatibility with the 5:1 format. The addition of this rear surround channel provides greater
localization over the three surround channels, allowing for better effects, in cinema settings. This
configuration is known as 6:1. Adding yet another rear surround speaker yields a 7:1 system. As shown in
Figure (b), the additional two loudspeakers are placed between the two original surround loudspeakers of the
5:1 configuration.

What Is the Benefit Of Dolby Digital EX:

In Dolby Digital, much of the surround sound effects move
towards the listener from the front or sides. However, the sound loses some directionality as it moves along
the sides to the rear, making it difficult to impart a precise directional sense of sounds moving or panning
across the room. By placing a new channel directly behind the listener, panning and positioning of sounds
emanating from the sides to the rear are much more precise. Also, with the additional rear channel, it is
possible to situate rear sounds and effects more precisely. This has the effect of placing the listener in the
center of the action.
Dolby Digital EX Compatibility:
Dolby Digital EX is completely compatible with Dolby Digital 5.1. Since the Surround EX signals are
matrixed within the Dolby Digital 5.1 signal, software titles encoded with EX can still be played on existing
DVD players with Dolby Digital outputs and decoded in 5.1 on existing Dolby Digital receivers.
Dolby Pro Logic II:
Dolby Pro Logic II transforms traditional stereo audio into 5.1-channel surround sound for a seamless
listening experience full of presence and depth.
Although the previously outlined Dolby surround sound formats are designed to decode sound that is
already encoded on DVDs or other material, there are thousands of CDs, VHS tapes, laserdiscs, and
television broadcasts that contain simple analog two-channel stereo or Dolby Surround encoding. Also, with

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surround schemes such as Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital-EX primarily designed for movie viewing, there
is a lack of an effective surround process for music listening. In fact, many discriminating audiophiles reject
much of the surround sound schemes, including the new SACD(Super Audio CD) and DVD-Audio multi-
channel audio formats, in favor of traditional two-channel stereo playback.
With this in mind, Dolby Labs has come to the rescue with an enhancement to its original Dolby Pro-
Logic technology that can create a "simulated" 5.1 channel surround environment from a 4-Channel Dolby
Surround signal (dubbed Pro Logic II). Although not a discrete format, such as Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS, in
which each channel goes through its own encoding/decoding process, Pro Logic II makes effective use of
matrixing to deliver an adequate 5.1 representation of a film or music soundtrack. With advancements in
technology since the original Pro-Logic scheme was developed over 10 years ago, channel separation is more
distinct, giving Pro Logic II the character of a discrete 5.1 channel scheme.
Dolby Pro Logic ll benefits:
 Stereo to surround
Dolby Pro Logic II uses hidden audio cues that already exist in stereo content to create realistic surround
sound with five full-range channels: Left, Right, Center, Left Surround, and Right Surround.
 Hear the details
With its full-range performance, Dolby Pro Logic II lets you hear all the details and subtleties in movie
content, music, games, and other entertainment.
Dolby Pro Logic IIx:
A more recent variant of Dolby Pro Logic II is Dolby
Pro Logic IIx, which expands the extracting capabilities
of Dolby Pro Logic II, including its preference settings,
to 6.1 or 7.1 channel of Dolby Pro Logic IIx-equipped
receivers and preamps. Dolby Pro Logic IIx serves to
deliver the listening experience to a greater number of
channels without having to remix or reissue the original
source material. This makes your record and CD
collection easily adaptable to the latest listening
environments
Dolby Pro Logic IIz:
Dolby Prologic IIz processing is an enhancement that
extends surround sound vertically. Dolby Prologic IIz
offers the option of adding two more front speakers that
are placed above the left and right main speakers. This
feature adds a "vertical" or overhead component to the
surround sound field, which is great for rain, helicopter, or plane flyover effects. Dolby Prologic IIz can be
added to either a 5.1 channel or 7.1 channel setup.

Digital Theater Systems (DTS):

DTS, Inc. (originally Digital Theater Systems) is an American company that makes multichannel
audio technologies for consumer and commercial applications as well as theatrical purposes based in
Calabasas, California. DTS, Digital Theater Systems was founded in 1993 to compete with Dolby Labs for
surround sound supremacy. The company got its big break when Steven Spielberg chose DTS for his dino-
romp, Jurassic Park. In 1996, DTS began cropping up in consumer hardware. The company might not be as
well known as its main rival, but many purists believe that DTS offers better sound quality.
DTS Digital Surround is a 5:1 channel surround format. It is very similar to Dolby Digital, consisting
of up to five full bandwidth loudspeakers (front left (L), front center (C), front right (R), surround left (LS)
and surround right (RS)) and a sixth low frequency effects channel (LFE). As with Dolby, it also employs
perceptual coding, using the characteristics of human hearing to reduce noise in order to produce a high
quality audio output and to also reduce the amount of data necessary to both transmit and store 5:1 channels
of information.

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 Similar to Dolby AC-3, DTS also has stereo surround channels, which are mono, two-channel stereo,
three-channel stereo, two-channel stereo with mono surround, three-channel stereo with mono surround,
four-channel quadraphonic and five-channel surround. Digital Theater Sound has different variants like DTS
70mm, DTS-ES, DTS Neo 6, DTS Neo X, DTS 96/24, DTS Connect, DTS-HD Master Audio, etc. In the
case of DTS soundtrack, the audio is recorded at a high bit rate but is not stored directly on the film strip.
Instead, it is stored in a compressed form on CD-ROM. The track also has a modified time code, which helps
in synchronizing the image with the sound audio track.
Difference between DTS and Dolby Digital:
The main difference between DTS and Dolby Digital is with respect to the supported encoding data rates.
DTS supports a much higher data rate (1:5Mbit/s), almost four times the rate of Dolby Digital (448kbit/s).
DTS also employs less audio compression than Dolby Digital. Compared to the Dolby Digital standard, DTS
uses four times less compression and digitizes audio sounds at 20 bits instead of 16 bits, leads to, according
to many home theater enthusiasts and industry experts, superior sound quality and clarity, far greater than
Dolby Digital". However, DTS is certainly not as popular as Dolby Digital and the available soundtracks and
movie titles supporting this format are actually much smaller than its counterpart.

DTS-ES:
In competition with Dolby Digital EX, the DTS format has also been extended to allow an additional
surround channel. It has come up with its own 6.1 channel systems referred to as DTS Extended Surround
(DTS ES) is a 6:1 format, which is similar to Dolby 6:1 includes an additional channel for a surround
loudspeaker placed directly in back of the listener.
There are two version of DTS Extended Surround. The DTS Extended Surround Matrix is simply a
5:1 channel format with the rear surround channel being encoded into the left and right surround channels
(e.g. there is no independent rear surround channel). The other format, DTS Extended Discrete 6:1, allocates
an independent (discrete) channel for the rear surround loudspeaker. This format allows for greater sound
localization over the three surround channels. Finally, a DTS ES soundtrack can be played back on a DTS
5:1 setup (e.g. it is backward compatible). The rear surround is simply ignored by the 5:1 format decoder.

DTS Neo 6:
DTS Neo: 6, functions in a similar fashion to Dolby Prologic II and IIx. With receivers and preamps that
have DTS Neo: 6 decoders, it will extract a 6.1 channel surround field from existing analog two-channel
material.

Dolby Atmos:
With Dolby Atmos, sound comes alive from all directions, including overhead. The format combines a
channel-based audio bed with object-oriented sound to place and move specific effects around the theater,
creating a breathtakingly realistic and captivating sonic atmosphere.
Atmos is, in Dolby's own words, "the most significant development in cinema audio since surround-
sound."
Sound designers and artists are free to mix in a 3D space, steering effects through surround channels
and adding a seamless overhead dimension with discrete height channels.
The very first Dolby Atmos installation was in the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles (for the June 2012
premiere of the Disney/Pixar animated film Brave), Dolby Atmos has transitioned from the "future of home
cinema audio" to very much the here and now.
Dolby has also developed Dolby Atmos Music Tracks, which add a whole new dimension to music
listening, and London's Dean St. Studios has recently unveiled a new state-of-the-art PMC loudspeaker
system for Dolby Atmos Music projects, the first at an independent recording facility in the UK.
Atmos might not be a part of every cinema experience, but it is available in an increasing number of
cinemas worldwide – there are over 6,100 locations as of 2021.
Atmos is a surround-sound technology that was originally developed in 2012. It expands upon the
existing 5.1 and 7.1 surround-sound set-ups with surround channels coming from overhead.

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Speakers have been placed along walls (at all heights) and even behind the screen itself, but the crucial point
about Atmos is that you can place speakers in the ceiling, enveloping the audience in a dome of sound. In
commercial theaters, it supports up to 128 audio tracks and 64 unique speaker feeds.

Building a New Sonic Reality with Dolby Atmos:

The Audio Bed:
The Audio Bed is made up of standard surround sound configuration.
Traditional channel-based audio
contains static elements such as
bass and other sonic textures. This
audio forms the “bed” upon which
directional and localized sounds are
built.

Sound Objects:
In-ceiling speakers or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers.
“Object-oriented” sounds can be localized in a specific speaker or panned around and above you in a
multidimensional sound field.

Dolby Atmos:
The Audio Bed AND Sound Objects
Together, the audio bed and mixed
object-oriented effects convincingly
simulate the sounds you might hear if
you were in the film, not merely observing
it. Effects move around the room just as
they would in real life.

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Dolby Atmos Speaker Setup:
There are a few ways to bring the overhead sound of Dolby Atmos into your home:
 Ceiling speakers
 Speakers enabled with Dolby Atmos.
 A soundbar enabled with Dolby Atmos.

Dolby Atmos Enabled Speakers:

Dolby Atmos enabled speakers. Employing a combination of unique physical speaker design and special
signal processing, Dolby Atmos enabled speakers allow you to experience overhead sounds from speakers
that are placed at the same level as traditional speakers or slightly above. These new speakers direct sound
upward to reflect off the ceiling, as Figure shows, to create a faithful reproduction of audio coming from
above.

5.1 layout including Dolby Atmos-enabled front and surround speakers or add-on speaker:

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7.1 layout with two pair in-ceiling height speakers:

7.1 layouts including Dolby Atmos-enabled front and surround speakers or add-on speaker:

9.1 layout with one pair in-ceiling height speakers:

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9.1 layout including Dolby Atmos-enabled front speakers or add-on speaker modules:

Auro 3D:

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Between Dolby and DTS, there are many surround sound formats you can take advantage of in most home
theater setups. However, there is an alternative to consider that provides an immersive surround sound
experience that's Auro 3D Audio.
Auro 3D Audio is a consumer version of the Barco Auro 11.1 channel surround sound playback
system used in some cinemas. Auro 3D Audio is a competitor to the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X immersive
surround sound formats. Still, it has its own characteristics.
For listening, Auro 3D Audio starts with a traditional 5.1 channel speaker layer and subwoofer. Surrounding
the listening room (above the listening position) is another set of front and surround speakers (that means a
two-layer speaker layout). More specifically, the layout looks like this:
 Level 1: 5.1 channels—front left, center, front right, left surround, right surround, and subwoofer.
 Level 2: Height layer—front left, front right, left surround, right surround. This results in a 9.1
channel speaker setup.
 Level 3 (Optional): Top layer—If you go for the full 10.1 channel option, place one ceiling-mounted
speaker directly above the listening position. This is referred to as the VOG (Voice of God) channel.

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