Surround-sound technology explained

The first time I met Tomlinson Holman was in the late 1970s, when he was in the high-end audio business. He designed electronics but went on to bigger and better things when he developed THX Sound for Lucasfilm. Later, I heard his experimental 10.2 channel sound system, and I came away with a whole new appreciation of his genius. Tom Holman is Mr. Surround Sound.

His newly revised book, Surround Sound, Up and Running provides an extensive overview on the subject. It was written for recording engineers and producers, but technically inclined home theater enthusiasts will gain new insight into how surround sound came to be.

Surround sound has been around in one form or another since 1940, the year Disney released the movie Fantasia. After that multichannel's history has been a series of false starts and doomed formats, and Holman covers them all. Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind initiated the modern surround era.

The chapter on Saving Private Ryan cites specific examples of how a sound mix is designed and conceived. Director Steven Spielberg wanted to keep the battle shots close-up and claustrophobic--the sound was used to put us in the midst of the battles.

The sound crew at the Skywalker Ranch recorded a full set of World War II-era weapons. On the Omaha Beach scenes the German defenses are mixed to the right and from the surround channels; the Americans from the front and left channels. Surround was used to track the sound of artillery shells whizzing by. The storytelling aspects of the film are heightened by the surround sound.

Holman covers multichannel microphone techniques, monitoring, speaker placement guidelines, audio coding, and psychoacoustics in depth. He has less to say about Blu-ray, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS Master Audio; I wish that he fleshed out these newest technologies a bit more.

[dascha1]

I would've listened to your article completely but the Sound Off was the first thing that came to mind. Then again, probably ~99.9% of all blogs and web sites offer the same feature.

[epitone]

Actually, Steve, there's not much to say about Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA -- both are exact copies of the sound in the original studio mix; the only thing new about them is the lossless compression technology.

[schtan]

hello steve , i heard that he had it up to 10.5 ... that would be 5 sub channels and i am guessing 8 would be the upper left front speaker , ala yamaha presence channel , 9 would be the upper center channel near the ceiling for height info and centering the sound image , think of a rocket launch or falling rain , and 10 would be the upper right speaker...

[David_Bowers]

Hi Steve,

I was lucky enough to be assistant editor on this book and I wondered if you could get in touch. My e-mail is [e-mail].

Kind Regards,

David

[borispmchan]

If I've remembered that correctly, I've seen more than 3, more likely as 6 speakers at the front in a cinema. All JBLs , looks like JBL 1400 ARRAY.