The Early Days of Surround Sound Set Up

Woo hoo how are you?

Well don’t just sit there and ignore me. How are you?

Hopefully you answered good or even great or maybe even fabulous or should I say fabulicious.

Yes folks it’s your favorite home theater nut or clown whatever the heck you like to refer to me as. Hey don’t worry about offending me I’m thick skinned anyway and besides I’m doing so fabulicious right now nothing can stop me.

So enough of my self inflating comments I mean my head is big enough as it is with this damn hat on and it doesn’t need to get any bigger just yet so lets get on with it shall we?

Let’s take a look at surround sound and what it entails. I know this can be a wee bit of a confusing topic for many as we have come a long way since the late 1980’s early 1990’s when Dolby Pro Logic was the way to go.

The Origins of Surround Sound

Surround sound or Multi channel audio as it is sometimes referred to, has been around in different forms for longer than most of us would think. As I mentioned earlier one of my first experiences as far as home theater goes was Dolby Pro logic but in actual fact one of the very first attempts to create some sort of real life sound in a movie was done way back in the 1940’s for one of Disney’s classics “Fantasia”

Essentially what was done was different sections of the orchestra were recorded separately to one another and then they were mixed to produce 4 different audio tracks.

These audio tracks were then played through different speakers all around the theater at various intervals creating the feeling of being surrounded by the sound of the movie, hence the term surround sound or as it was known in those days as sound panning.

Sound panning is when the sound gradually fades from one audio channel while it gradually increases in another channel. Even stereo sound (two channels) is a form of surround sound and as things progressed through the 50’s and 60’s many different multi channel formats were experimented with but the technology was typically the same and was referred to as stereophonic sound or theater stereo.

Modern Sound Formats

I mentioned stereophonic sound used 4 channels one for the left, one for the right, one for the center and one for speakers along the sides and rear of the theater. Now the left, right and center channels were usually located behind the screen to give the effect that dialogue was actually coming from the actors on the screen in front of the audience which it was.

Nowadays we have many different audio formats available to us and I will cover these at a later time but for now lets go back to the 70’s just for a second or two.

Dolby Labs came up with a sound format based on the 4 channel approach also, it was known as Dolby Stereo and what it did was it used optical track technology (which wasn’t new) which gave more clarity when sound was played back but Dolby had also developed a noise reduction process which made the sound even clearer. This would enable film makers to create awesome sound effects and add background noise to enhance a scenes setting.

This technology was a bit of a breakthrough as far as movies were concerned and a young film maker by the name of George Lucas could see the value of it and thought it was perfect for the sound effects he wanted to portray in his film “Star Wars” which was one of the first films to be encoded Dolby Stereo.

Star Wars pretty much set the standard for movies that followed and later on down the road many theater owners added another channel to this system. It was the subwoofer which would cater to the low frequency signals that would enhance such sounds as explosions or earthquakes and so on this would also make the whole movie theater experience more realistic.

Fast forward to today and you will find that the original principals for sound effects in movie theaters or home theaters are still practiced the only difference would be the technology has got better, smaller and more affordable.

Summary

So from those early Disney days of Fantasia to Star Wars of the 70’s to today where we are able to have those same movie theater experiences at home. I think it’s safe to say that surround sound is continually evolving and the MaxMan has only scratched the surface here today.

Don’t venture to far cause you haven’t seen the last of me as far as sound options go.

So until next time Maxmaniacs

MaxMan Out.