What is surround sound?
Surround sound refers to the use of multiple audio tracks to envelop the movie watching or music listening audience, making them feel like they’re in the middle of the action or concert. The surround sound movie soundtrack allows the audience to hear sounds coming from all around them. Where does the sound come from? True surround sound formats rely on dedicated speakers that literally and physically surround the audience. There is a center speaker which carries most of the actors dialog, and part of the soundtrack. There are left and right front speakers that carry most of the soundtrack (music and sound effects), and may carry parts of the dialog (when the director wants to intentionally off-set the source of the dialog to either side, from its default dead-center screen location). Then there is a pair of surround sound speakers that are placed to the side (and slightly above) the audience to provide the surround sound and ambient effects. Finally, a subwoofer can be used to reproduc
First there was mono with the sound emanating from a single “point”. Then there was stereo with directional formation spread along a line in front of the listener. In real life, of course, sound reaches our ears from all directions. Surround sound attempts to improve the realism of the perceived sound by providing information from all directions, not just from in front of the listener. Surround sound can place you into the middle of an orchestra and there are many pieces of music staged this way. However, in the West, since the eighteenth century most music has been staged with the orchestra in front of he audience. Here, surround sound can be used to reproduce the “acoustic” of the recording venue. This is important because stereo will always be limited to creating the illusion of musicians playing in your living room – a “they are here” illusion. Only if the listener is surrounded with sound can there be any hope of creating the illusion that you have been transported into the record
========================== First there was mono with the sound emanating from a single “point”. Then there was stereo with directional information spread along a line in front of the listener. In real life, of course, sound reaches our ears from all directions. Surround sound attempts to improve the realism of the perceived sound by providing information from all directions, not just from in front of the listener. Surround sound can place you into the middle of an orchestra and there are many pieces of music staged this way. However, in the West, since the eighteenth century most music has been staged with the orchestra in front of the audience. Here, surround sound can be used to reproduce the “acoustic” of the recording venue. This is important because stereo will always be limited to creating the illusion of musicians playing in your living room – a “they are here” illusion. Only if the listener is surrounded with sound can there be any hope of creating the illusion that you have be
Dolby Digital™ Dolby Digital (also known as Dolby AC-3) is the de facto surround sound standard for DVD. Dolby Digital is a type of audio encoding built into the DVD disc. By using data-compression, the DVD can store all the audio information for a movie soundtrack with true CD-quality sound on one disc. Since the soundtrack is “encoded” into the disc, a decoder must be used to make it all come alive. Today, most home theater receivers will have the necessary decoder for Dolby Digital (they’ll have the Dolby Digital logo right on the front of the receiver). When a DVD is produced, the mixing studio can choose a number of Dolby Digital formats to work with, based on the number of channels of sound. Dolby Digital™ 5.1 This is the most common. Front left, Center, Right, and surround Left and Right, plus a subwoofer. (The .1 is the subwoofer. It’s only considered a fraction of a channel since it only plays the low bass portion of the audio signal.) Most new blockbuster-type movies will be
