Seminar Report Digital Surround Sound

ABSRACT

Sound, one of the five senses, plays an important role in

entertainment especially in the movie industry. With the
advances made in special effects and the film projection
techniques, the need for better sound technologies was felt. the
necessitated the development of the surround sound system
capable of giving a feeling of “Being there”. The advent of
digital signal processing added momentum to efforts in this
direction, resulting in the evolution of digital surround sound
systems. In this seminar I cover the history of surround sound,
existing technologies, and present digital surround sound
technology. Finally a comparison is provided as well as a look
into the future.

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CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION

• WHAT IS SURROUND SOUND?

• EARLY SOUND

• DYNAMIC DOLBY

• FOUR FROM TWO

• ACCESSING THE SURROUND CHANNEL

• DTS SURROUND

• SDDS

• CONCLUSION

• REFERENCE

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INTRODUCTION

Going to the movies today is a very different experience

from going to the movies 70 years ago -- the picture is clearer,
most of the movies are in color, and the admission price is a lot
higher. But the biggest change is probably the sound experience.
In movie theaters of the 1930s, the entire soundtrack was played
on a single speaker or collection of speakers positioned behind
the movie screen. Today, theater audiences expect to hear sound
coming from every direction.

We’ll take a look at the surround-sound systems that have

become standard movie theater equipment. We'll also look at
home theater surround-sound setups and get you started building
your own.

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WHAT IS SURROUND SOUND?

There are many ways to make and present a sound

recording. The simplest method, and the one used in the earliest
sound movies, is called monaural or simply mono. Mono means
that all the sound is recorded onto one audio track or channel (a
single spiraled groove in a record, for example, or a single
magnetic track on tape), which is typically played on one
speaker.

Two-channel recordings, in which sound is played on

speakers on either side of the listener, are often referred to as
stereo. This isn't entirely accurate, as stereo (or stereophonic)
actual refers to a wider range of multi-channel recordings. Two-
channel sound is the standard format for home stereo receivers,
television and FM radio broadcasts. The simplest two-channel
recordings, known as binaural recordings, are produced with
two microphones at a live event (a concert for example) to take
the place of a human's two ears When you listen to these two
channels on separate speakers, it recreates the experience of
being present at the event.

Surround recordings take this idea a step further, adding

more audio channels so sound comes from three or more
directions. While the term "surround sound" technically refers to
specific multi-channel systems designed by Dolby Laboratories,

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it is more commonly used as a generic term for theater and home
theater multi-channel sound systems. In this article, we'll use it in
this generic sense.

There are special microphones that will record surround

sound (by picking up sound in three or more directions), but this
is not the standard way to produce a surround soundtrack. Almost
all movie surround soundtracks are created in a mixing studio.
Sound editors and mixers take a number of different audio
recordings -- dialogue recorded on the movie set, sound effects
recorded in a dubbing studio or created on a computer, a musical
score -- and decide which audio channel or channels to put them
on.

In the next section, we'll learn a little bit about how

surround sound was created and see how it was configured in
older theaters.

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EARLY SOUNDS

Over the years, there have many different approaches to

surround sound. Walt Disney's "Fantasia" (1941), one of the
earliest surround-sound movies, immersed the audiences in
classical music. Disney sound engineer William Garity took
separate recordings of each orchestra section and mixed them to
produce four distinct audio tracks, which were recorded as
optical tracks a separate reel of film.The four tracks drove
different speakers positioned around the theater. In an equipped
theater, the music seemed to move around the auditorium, an
effect achieved by sound panning. Panning involves fading a
sound (a violin melody, for example) from one audio channel
while building it on another.

To show "Fantasia" in surround sound, a theater needed an

additional projector to play just the soundtrack, as well as an
expensive receiver and speaker assembly. This surround-sound
system didn't catch on (the necessary equipment was
prohibitively expensive), but by the late 1950s, many Hollywood
movies were encoded with simpler multi-channel formats.
Several different theater setups emerged in this era, including the
famous Cinerama and Cinemascope, but most of them used the
same basic sound technology. As a whole, these systems were
referred to as stereophonic sound, or simply theater stereo.

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Stereophonic sound used four or more analog magnetic
audio tracks and the edges of the film. Magnetic tracks could not
produce as clear a sound as the conventional optical audio tracks,
and they tended to fade over time, but they took up a lot less
space on the film. The standard film format did not have enough
room for more than two optical tracks, but it was possible to
squeeze as many as six magnetic tracks around the film frame

Typical layout for stereophonic sound

In the stereophonic system, three to five channels drove

speakers behind the movie screen. The popular four-channel
system included one channel driving a speaker on the left, one
channel driving a speaker on the right, one channel driving a
center speaker and one channel driving surround speakers along
the sides and back of the theater. Some systems boasted five
separate channels behind the screen and one surround channel.

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In these movies, most of the sound is recorded on the front

channels so that the words seem to come from the screen. When
an actor speaks on the left side of the screen, the dialogue sound
comes from the left speakers. When an actor speaks on the right
side, the sound comes from the right speakers. Most dialogue is
also channeled to the center speakers, which serves to anchor, or
focus, the sound on the screen. The rear track (or tracks) are
typically reserved for "effect sounds," such as ambient
background noise or a voice coming from off-screen.

In the 1970s, Dolby Laboratories introduced a new sound

format based on this same configuration. In the next section, we'll
see what made this system the new standard for theater sound.

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DYNAMICDOLBY

Like stereophonic sound, the original Dolby Stereo® had

three front channels and a surround-sound channel. But instead of
using magnetic tracks, it reverted back to the superior optical
track technology to allow for clearer sound playback. Dolby
stereo also used an advanced noise-reduction process, which
improved sound quality further. Today, Dolby Stereo is the
analog sound standard, thanks to its superior sound quality and
relatively simple installation.

Dolby Stereo stores sound information on two optical tracks.

The heightened sound quality of Dolby Stereo led

moviemakers to make more extensive use of the surround
channel. George Lucas' “ Star Wars” one of the first films
encoded for Dolby Stereo, used surround sound to heighten its
epic space battle scenes. By gradually panning the sound of
fighter ships from the front channels to the rear channel, sound

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engineers made it seem like the ships were flying off screen over
the audience.

The Dolby Stereo theater layout

Later movies followed the “Star Wars” model, using the

surround track to create fantastic effects, as well as fill in
background noise to establish a scene's setting. In later versions
of the surround-sound system, theater owners could hook up a
subwoofer to handle extremely low-frequency sounds (a
crossover unit can separate out these sounds from both audio
tracks). Many moviemakers use the subwoofer to create a
powerful rumbling in the theater, shaking the audience when
there is an explosion or earthquake on-screen. The subwoofer
channel in both analog and digital surround-sound systems is
sometimes called the low frequency effects (LFE) channel.

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In 1982, Dolby launched Dolby Surround®, a version of
Dolby Stereo for home entertainment systems. Dolby Surround
reproduces the effect of Dolby Stereo in the theater, but it works
a little bit differently. The audio channels are encoded as
magnetic tracks on video tape or broadcast as a television
signal, rather than put down as optical tracks. The speakers are
set up in the same basic way as in a theater, except the original
home Dolby system only had three channels --- left speaker, right
speaker and rear speaker. In 1987, Dolby introduced Dolby Pro
Logic®, which had an additional channel for a front central
speaker.

The real innovation of Dolby Stereo is how so much audio

information is squeezed into a small space on the film. When
Dolby engineers started working on the new format, they figured
out they would only be able to fit two optical tracks in the
available space. In order to allow for four separate audio
channels, they developed a special 4-2-4 processing system. In
this system, originally used in the quadraphonic home stereo
recordings of the early 1970s, four channels of audio information
are encoded into two tracks. In the next section, we'll find out
about the clever trick that makes this possible.

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FOUR FROM TWO

The basic idea of a 4-2-4 processing system is to derive

four streams of information from two streams of information.
Essentially, the four streams of information are:
• The information in stream A
• The information in stream B
• The information that is the same in stream A and stream
B
• The difference between the information in stream A and
stream B

The first two channels are fairly straightforward. The A

stream feeds the left speaker, and the B stream feeds the right
speaker. But the "same" and "difference" channels are a little
more complex. To understand how this works, you need to know
a little bit about how speakers produce sound.

A basic speaker is built around an electromagnet, a metal

cylinder with a wire coiled around it. The electromagnet is
surrounded by a permanent natural magnet. When you send an
electrical current through the electromagnet, it becomes
magnetized and acts like a natural magnet, with a north pole and
a south pole. The coiled wire in the electromagnet is connected
to the (+) speaker wire on one end and the (-) speaker wire on the
other end. The audio amplifier is constantly changing the

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direction of the current so that the orientation of the poles keeps
switching.

Changing the orientation of the poles shifts the attraction

between the electromagnet and the surrounding natural magnet.
This causes the electromagnet to move back and forth. As the
electromagnet moves, it pushes and pulls a speaker cone, which
rapidly pushes out air and then pulls back in. This movement of
air particles produces the sounds we hear.

An audio signal, then, is just a fluctuating electrical current.

When the current fluctuates one way, the speaker cone moves in;
when it fluctuates the other way, the cone moves out. This signal
can be represented as an oscillating wave. The particular sound
produced depends on how rapidly and how far the cone moves,
which is dictated by the fluctuation pattern in the electrical
current.
In a surround-sound setup, the signal for the center channel is
recorded on both the A stream and the B stream. The center
signals on both streams are identical in amplitude and frequency,
and they are synchronized exactly.

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The surround-sound encoder takes four channels and

combines them all onto two channels.

A surround-sound decoder that supports a central channel

will pick out the identical signals in the A stream and B stream
based on their pattern and amplitude. In a surround setup with no
center speaker, the perfectly balanced center signals will create a
"phantom speaker" (the illusion of a speaker) directly in
between the left and right speakers.

The sound signal for the surround channel is also recorded

on stream A and stream B, but the identical signals in each
stream are out of phase with each other. Instead of playing in
synchrony, they are shifted in time in both audio streams. The
result is that the two signals work opposite one another: When
the surround signal in stream A tells the left speaker cone to
move out, the signal in stream B tells the right speaker cone to
move in. Because of this, the surround signal information coming
from the front left and front right speakers largely cancels itself
out, and you don't hear it.

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The surround-sound encoder splits the surround channel in two and

shifts them in time so they are "out of phase."

.
A surround-sound decoder receives both stream A and
stream B and shifts them relative to one another so the surround
signals are in phase again. With this shift, the right, left and
center signals are all out of phase, and so tend to cancel each
other out.

The surround-sound decoder picks out the information in the

right and left channel that is out of phase, shifts it so it is in
phase again and directs it to the surround-sound speakers.

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In addition to separating the different signals, proper
surround decoders pass the audio information through different
filters and noise-reduction elements to balance sound levels and
reduce noise. Pro Logic decoders use active "steering" elements
to control the process more precisely. Lots of home audio
hobbyists have figured out a way to partially unlock the surround
channel using only a two-channel home stereo and an extra set of
speakers. In the next section, we'll see how this bare-bones
surround-sound setup works.

ACCESSING THE SURROUND CHANNEL

The easiest way to access the surround-sound channel is to

get a receiver with a surround-sound decoder. The decoder
recognizes the out-of-phase information and extracts it into a
third channel. To balance the sound, the receiver also boosts the
channel to an appropriate level, and adds a slight time delay. It is
possible to access surround sound with a standard stereo receiver,
however, since all the information is actually included in the left
and right channels.

To do this, get a pair of rear speaker and position them to

the left and right of the listener. Connect the (+) amplifier
terminal for the right channel to the (+) speaker terminal on the
right rear speaker and the (+) amplifier terminal for the left

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channel to the (+) speaker terminal for the left rear speaker. Then
you connect the two (-) terminals on the rear speakers.

The "poor man's surround sound" setup

The stereo signals that are in phase in the front channels

cancel each other out in the rear speakers: The (+) currents for
left and right will arrive at the (+) and (-) terminals of each
speaker at the same time, so the current won't change the
electromagnet at all.
But the signals that are out of phase in the stereo channels will
form an alternating current -- the current for these signals will
flow out of the (+) amplifier terminal for the left channel while
the (+) speaker terminal for current is flowing into the (+)
amplifier terminal for the right channel. The effect is that these
out-of-phase signals move the electromagnet for the rear speaker,
and so control the rear sound.
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To set up a simple central speaker -- one that anchors the

left and right stereo speakers -- just turn on your television. If it's
a mono-speaker television, it will play both stereo channels
mixed together. Stereo televisions will also work decently for
anchoring purposes, because both channels emanate from the
area of the television.

The other piece you need in this setup is a potentiometer,

a device that can apply different degrees of resistance to a
current, thereby reducing the voltage in a circuit. In this
surround-sound setup, the potentiometer simply acts as a volume
control for the rear speakers. You can hook it up anywhere along
the circuit leading to the rear speakers.

This setup won't give you the same quality surround

sound as an actual surround-sound receiver, of course. But
assembling a homemade system is a great exercise for
understanding how analog surround sound works in the first
place.

In the 1990s, a new kind of surround sound started

popping up in theaters, and since then it has been gradually
eclipsing the standard 4-2-4 approach. In the next section, we'll
take a look at these new digital theater sound systems.

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DIGITAL DOMAIN

Today, many theaters boast digital surround-sound

systems. Digital sound works on a very different principle from
analog sound systems.

In analog recordings, sound is encoded as a long,

fluctuating stream of information. In digital recordings, sound is
encoded as a series of 1s and 0s, just like a computer program.
With this approach, you can encode a lot more information in a
limited space, making for crisper, more precise audio tracks.

Digital theater sound was introduced to the public with the

release of “Jurrasic Park” in 1993. "Jurassic Park" used a
technology called DTS Digital Sound®, named for Digital
Theater System, the company that patented the process.

In this sound system, six separate audio channels are

encoded onto one or two CDs. The theater is equipped with a CD
player and a decoder that splits these channels up and plays them
on different speakers arranged throughout the theater. As in
Dolby Stereo, DTS has three front sound channels and a
subwoofer. But instead of a single surround channel, it has
separate channels for speakers on the left side of the theater and
speakers on right side of the theater.

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The theater setup used in DTS and Dolby Digital

The CD is synchronized with the picture by a special time

code on the film. The code, a series of dots and dashes along the
side of each frame, is read by a special optical reader mounted on
the projector. The reader shines light on the film with a light-
emitting diode (LED). The light that passes through the film hits
a small photocell. The photocell sends pulses of current
representing these flashes of light to the DTS processor. The dash
pattern corresponds to a pattern encoded onto the CD. The
processor makes sure the two codes are synchronized so that the
sound and picture fit together.

Dolby followed suit with its own digital format, Dolby

Digital®. Dolby Digital is also known as Dolby Digital 5.1® (for
five audio channels and a subwoofer channel), Dolby AC-3® (for
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Dolby's third audio-coding design) or Dolby SR-D® (for Spectral
Recording Digital). Dolby Digital has the same basic speaker
arrangement as DTS, and it sounds similar, but it works on a very
different system. Instead of recording audio on CDs, digital
information is encoded as tiny patterns on the film in the space
between the sprocket holes.

The Dolby Digital reader shines an LED through this

pattern as the film passes through the projector. On the other side
of the film, the light hits a charge coupled device (CCD), the
same sort of light sensor used in a digital camera. The CCD
registers an image made of hundreds of little specks that
represent 1s and hundreds of spaces between the specs that
represent 0s. The Dolby Digital Processor unit interprets the
digital information in this image as an audio signal.

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A Dolby Digital reader

Dolby Digital Surround EX® works the same way as

Dolby Digital, but it includes an extra surround channel. The
extra channel drives speakers along the rear wall of a theater.
Like the front center speaker, it can be used to anchor sounds
from the left and right surround channels.

The latest entry in cinema digital sound, Sony Dynamic

Digital Sound® (SDDS), boasts five separate channels at the
front of the theater as well as left and right surround channels.

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Like Dolby Digital, SDDS encodes digital information with

a distinct pattern of light and dark areas on film. In this case, the
reader includes a laser on one side of the film and an array of
photocells on the other side. The laser passes light through
transparent areas of the film, but not through opaque areas. The
photocells that are not exposed to light pass a small current on to
the processor, but the exposed photocells do not. In this way, the
processor receives the digital pattern, which it interprets as a
sound signal. Unlike the other digital formats, SDDS uses two
identical digital tracks to allow for better error correction.

Dolby and DTS have both released home theater versions

of these popular formats. While digital sound cannot be recorded
on video tape or broadcast over conventional cable, it is the only
way to encode information on DVD. Digital sound is also
broadcast on satellite systems, as well as digital cable. For movie
fans everywhere, surround sound has become an integral part of
the theater experience. And for moviemakers, putting together
the surround mix has become a crucial step in the production
process. Surround sound has effectively expanded movies into
three dimensions, putting the audience in the middle of the action
like nothing else can.

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CONCLUSION

As in any industrial field a number of competing technologies

have been As in any industrial field a number of competing
technologies have been developed. Among these the DOLBY DIGITAL
teccnology from Dolby Labs, USA, one of the pioneers in noise
reduction and analog surround sound technology, has received much
attention and acceptance. Based on psychoacoustic masking, this
technology is all set to become the industry standard. The developments
in the audio industry especially those linked with the movie industry has
come a long way from the noisy bandwidth limited mono sound to
present 8 channel surround sound.

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REFERENCES

• www.howstuffworks.com
• www.dolby.com
• www.sdds.com
• www.techalone.com

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