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INTRODUCTION
Surround sound is a technique for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an
audio source with additional audio channels from speakers that surround the listener
(surround channels), providing sound from a 360 radius in the horizontal plane (2D)
as opposed to "screen channels" (centre, [front] left, and [front] right) originating only
from the listener's forward arc.
Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio
effects work best, and presents a fixed or forward perspective of the sound field to the
listener at this location. The technique enhances the perception of sound spatialization
by exploiting sound localization; a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of
a detected sound in direction and distance. Typically this is achieved by using multiple
discrete audio channels routed to an array of loudspeakers.[1]
There are various surround sound based formats and techniques, varying in
reproduction and recording methods along with the number and positioning of
additional channels.
Though cinema and soundtracks represent the major uses of surround techniques, its scope
of application is broader than that as surround sound permits creation of an audioenvironment for all sorts of purposes. Multichannel audio techniques may be used to
reproduce contents as varied as music, speech, natural or synthetic sounds for
cinema, television, broadcasting, or computers. In terms of music content for example, a
live performance may use multichannel techniques in the context of an open-air concert,
of a musical theatre or for broadcasting;[2] for a film specific techniques are adapted
to movie theater, or to home (e.g. home cinema systems).[3][4] The narrative space is also a
content that can be enhanced through multichannel techniques. This applies mainly to
cinema narratives, for example the speech of the characters of a film,[5][6][7] but may also be
applied to plays for theatre, to a conference, or to integrate voice-based comments in an
archeological site or monument. For example, an exhibition may be enhanced with topical
ambient sound of water, birds, train or machine noise. Topical natural sounds may also be
used in educational applications.[8] Other fields of application include video game
consoles, personal computers and other platforms. [9][10][11][12] In such applications, the
content would typically be synthetic noise produced by the computer device in interaction
with its user. Significant work has also been done using surround sound for
enhanced situation awareness in military and public safety applications.
2. HISTORY
The first documented use of surround sound was in 1940, for the Disney studio's
animated film Fantasia. Walt Disney was inspired by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's
operatic piece, Flight of the Bumblebee to have a bumblebee featured in his
musical Fantasia and also sound as if it was flying in all parts of the theatre. The
initial multichannel audio application was called 'Fantasound', comprising three audio
channels and speakers. The sound was diffused throughout the cinema, controlled by
an engineer using some 54 loudspeakers. The surround sound was achieved using the
sum and the difference of the phase of the sound. However, this experimental use of
surround sound was excluded from the film in later showings. In 1952, "surround
sound" successfully reappeared with the film "This is Cinerama", using discrete
seven-channel sound, and the race to develop other surround sound methods took off.
[16][17]
In the 1950s, the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen experimented with and
produced
ground-breaking
electronic
compositions
such
as Gesang
der
Jnglinge and Kontakte, the latter using fully discrete and rotating quadraphonic
sounds generated with industrial electronic equipment in Herbert Eimert's studio at
the Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Edgar Varese's Poeme Electronique, created for
the Iannis Xenakis designed Philips Pavilion at the 1958Brussels World's Fair, also
utilised spatial audio with 425 loudspeakers used to move sound throughout the
pavilion.
In 1957, working with artist Jordan Belson, Henry Jacobs produced Vortex:
Experiments in Sound and Light - a series of concerts featuring new music, including
some of Jacobs' own, and that of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and many others - taking
place in the Morrison Planetarium in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Sound
designers commonly regard this as the origin of the (now standard) concept of
"surround sound." The program was popular, and Jacobs and Belson were invited to
reproduce it at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels.[18] There are also many other
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composers that created ground-breaking surround sound works in the same time
period.
In 1978, a concept devised by Max Bell for Dolby Laboratories called "split surround"
was tested with the movie "Superman". This led to the 70mm stereo surround release
of "Apocalypse Now," which became the first formal release in cinemas with three
channels in the front and two in the rear. There were typically five speakers behind the
screens of 70mm-capable cinemas, but only the Left, Center and Right were used fullfrequency, while Center-Left and Center-Right were only used for bass-frequencies
(as it is currently common). The "Apocalypse Now" encoder/decoder was designed by
Michael Karagosian, also for Dolby Laboratories. The surround mix was produced by
an Oscar-winning crew led by Walter Murch for American Zoetrope. The format was
also deployed in 1982 with the stereo surround release of Blade Runner.
The 5.1 version of surround sound originated in 1987 at the famous French
Cabaret Moulin Rouge. A French engineer, Dominique Bertrand used a mixing board
specially designed in cooperation with Solid State Logic, based on 5000 series and
including six channels. Respectively: A left, B right, C centre, D left rear, E right rear,
F bass. The same engineer had already achieved a 3.1 system in 1974, for the
International Summit of Francophone States in Dakar Senegal.
WFS
systems,
currently
marketed
by
companies sonic
emotion and Iosono, require many loudspeakers and significant computing power.
Figure 3. Dimensions
The Ambisonics form, also based on Huygens' principle, gives an exact sound
reconstruction at the central point; less accurate away from center point. There are
many free and commercial software programs available for Ambisonics, which
dominates most of the consumer market, especially musicians using electronic and
computer music. Moreover, Ambisonics products are the standard in surround sound
hardware sold by Meridian Audio In its simplest form, Ambisonics consumes few
resources, however this is not true for recent developments, such as Near Field
Compensated Higher Order Ambisonics.[20] Some years ago it was shown that, in the
limit, WFS and Ambisonics converge.[21]
Finally, surround sound can also be achieved by mastering level, from stereophonic
sources as with Penteo, which uses Digital Signal Processing analysis of a stereo
recording to parse out individual sounds to component panorama positions, then
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positions them, accordingly, into a five-channel field. However, there are more ways
to create surround sound out of stereo, for instance with the routines based
on QS and SQ for encoding Quad sound, where instruments were divided over 4
speakers in the studio. This way of creating surround with software routines is
normally referred to as "upmixing,",[22] which was particularly successful on
the Sansui QSD-series decoders that had a mode where it mapped the L R stereo
onto an arc.
TYPES OF MEDIA
Commercial
surround
sound
media
include
videocassettes, DVDs,
and HDTV broadcasts encoded as compressed Dolby Digital and DTS, and lossless
audiosuch as DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD on Blu-ray Disc and HD
DVD, which are identical to the studio master. Other commercial formats include the
competing DVD-Audio (DVD-A) and Super Audio CD (SACD) formats, and MP3
Surround.
formats
include Dolby
or
supercardioid polar patterns will therefore often replace omnidirectional polar patterns
for surround recordings. To compensate for the lost low-end of directional (pressure
10
and also add expansiveness.[26] A 3-meter spaced microphone pair, situated 23 meters
behind front array, is used for the surround channels.[23] The centre channel is again
placed slightly forward, with the L/R and LS/RS again angled at 45 and 135 degrees
respectively.
The OCT-Surround (Optimum Cardioid Triangle-Surround) microphone array is an
augmented technique of the stereo OCT technique using the same front array with
added surround microphones.The front array is designed for minimum crosstalk, with
the front left and right microphones having supercardioid polar patterns and angled at
90 degrees relative to the center microphone.[23][24] It is important that high quality
small diaphragm microphones are used for the L and R channels to reduce off-axis
coloration.[25] Equalization can also be used to flatten the response of the supercardioid
microphones to signals coming in at up to about 30 degrees from the front of the array.
[23]
The center channel is placed slightly forward. The surround microphones are
backwards facing cardioid microphones, that are placed 40 cm back from the L and R
microphones. The L, R, LS and RS microphones pick up early reflections from both
the sides and the back of an acoustic venue, therefore giving significant room
impressions.[24] Spacing between the L and R microphones can be varied to obtain the
required stereo width.[24]
Specialized microphone arrays have been developed for recording purely the
ambience of a space. These arrays are used in combination with suitable front arrays,
or can be added to above mentioned surround techniques.[25] The Hamasaki square
(also proposed by NHK) is a well established microphone array used for the pickup of
hall ambience. Four figure-eight microphones are arranged in a square, ideally placed
far away and high up in the hall. Spacing between the microphones should be between
13 meters.[24] The microphones nulls (zero pickup point) are set to face the main
sound source with positive polarities outward facing, therefore very effectively
minimizing the direct sound pickup as well as echoes from the back of the hall [25] The
back two microphones are mixed to the surround channels, with the front two
channels being mixed in combination with the front array into L and R.
Another ambient technique is the IRT (Institut fuer Rundfunktechnik) cross. Here,
four cardioid microphones, 90 degrees relative to one another, are placed in square
formation, separated by 2125 cm.[25][27] The front two microphones should be
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positioned 45 degrees off axis from the sound source. This technique therefore
resembles back to back near-coincident stereo pairs. The microphones outputs are fed
to the L, R and LS, RS channels. The disadvantage of this approach is that direct
sound pickup is quite significant.
Many recordings do not require pickup of side reflections. For Live Pop music
concerts a more appropriate array for the pickup of ambience is the cardioid
trapezium.[24] All four cardioid microphones are backward facing and angled at 60
degrees from one another, therefore similar to a semi-circle. This is effective for the
pickup of audience and ambience.
All the above-mentioned microphone arrays take up considerable space, making them
quite ineffective for field recordings. In this respect, the double MS (Mid Side)
technique is quite advantageous. This array uses back to back cardioid microphones,
one facing forward, the other backwards, combined with either one or two figure-eight
microphone. Different channels are obtained by sum and difference of the figure-eight
and cardioid patterns.[24][25] When using only one figure-eight microphone, the double
MS technique is extremely compact and therefore also perfectly compatible with
monophonic playback. This technique also allows for postproduction changes of the
pickup angle.
BASS MANAGEMENT
Surround replay systems may make use of bass management, the fundamental
principle of which is that bass content in the incoming signal, irrespective of channel,
should be directed only to loudspeakers capable of handling it, whether the latter are
the main system loudspeakers or one or more special low-frequency speakers
called subwoofers.
There is a notation difference before and after the bass management system. Before
the bass management system there is a Low Frequency Effects (LFE) channel. After
the bass management system there is a subwoofer signal. A common
misunderstanding is the belief that the LFE channel is the "subwoofer channel". The
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bass management system may direct bass to one or more subwoofers (if present)
from any channel, not just from the LFE channel. Also, if there is no subwoofer
speaker present then the bass management system can direct the LFE channel to one
or more of the main speakers.
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commercial subwoofers sometimes going down to 30 Hz, e.g., the loud rumble of
thunder or explosions) on their own channel. This allowed theaters to control the
volume of these effects to suit the particular cinema's acoustic environment and sound
reproduction system. Independent control of the sub-bass effects also reduced the
problem of intermodulation distortion in analog movie sound reproduction. A "subwoofer" capable of playing back frequencies as low as 5 Hz was developed by a small
speaker manufacturer in Florida. It utilized a propellor design and required a large
cabinet to move sub-sonic air mass.[28]
In the original movie theater implementation, the LFE was a separate channel fed to
one or more subwoofers. Home replay systems, however, may not have a separate
subwoofer, so modern home surround decoders and systems often include a bass
management system that allows bass on any channel (main or LFE) to be fed only to
the loudspeakers that can handle low-frequency signals. The salient point here is that
the LFE channel is not the "subwoofer channel"; there may be no subwoofer and, if
there is, it may be handling a good deal more than effects.[29]
Some record labels such as Telarc and Chesky have argued that LFE channels are not
needed in a modern digital multichannel entertainment system. [citation needed] They argue
that all available channels have a full-frequency range and, as such, there is no need
for an LFE in surround music production, because all the frequencies are available in
all the main channels. These labels sometimes use the LFE channel to carry a height
channel, underlining its redundancy for its original purpose. The label BIS generally
uses a 5.0 channel mix.
Channel identification
16
Order
within
DTS/AAC[35]
Channel
name
[36]
Color-coding on
commercial
receiver and
cabling
Front left
White
Front right
Red
Center
Green
Low
frequency
Purple
Surround
left
Blue
Surround
right
Grey
Surround
back left
Brown
Surround
back right
Khaki
Front left
Center
Surround left
Front right
Surround right
Low frequency
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Ambisonics
Ambisonics is a series of recording and replay techniques using multichannel mixing
technology that can be used live or in the studio and which recreates the soundfield as it
existed in the space, in contrast to traditional surround systems, which can only create illusion
of the soundfield if the listener is located in a very narrow sweetspot between speakers. Any
number of speakers in any physical arrangement can be used to recreate a sound field. With 6
or more speakers arranged around a listener, a 3-dimensional ("periphonic", or full-sphere)
sound field can be presented. Ambisonics was invented by Michael Gerzon.
Binaural Recording
Binaural recording is a method of recording sound that uses two microphones, arranged with
the intent to create a 3-D stereo sound sensation for the listener of actually being in the room
with the performers or instruments. This idea of a three dimensional or "internal" form of
sound has also translated into useful advancement of technology in many things such as
stethoscopes creating "in-head" acoustics and IMAX movies being able to create a three
dimensional acoustic experience.
Panor-Ambiophonic (PanAmbio)
PanAmbio combines a stereo dipole and crosstalk cancellation in front and a second set
behind the listener (total of four speakers) for 360 2D surround reproduction. Four channel
recordings, especially those containing binaural cues, create speaker-binaural surround sound.
5.1 channel recordings, including movie DVDs, are compatible by mixing C-channel content
to the front speaker pair. 6.1 can be played by mixing SC to the back pair.
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Dolby Digital is the common version containing up to six discrete channels of sound.
The most elaborate mode in common use involves five channels for normal-range
speakers (20 Hz 20,000 Hz) (right, center, left, right surround, left surround) and
one channel (20 Hz 120 Hz allotted audio) for the subwoofer driven low-frequency
effects.[11] Monoand stereo modes are also supported. AC-3 supports audio samplerates up to 48 kHz. The LaserDisc version of Clear and Present Danger featured the
first home theater Dolby Digital mix in 1995.[citation needed]
This format has different names:
Dolby Digital
DD (an abbreviation for Dolby Digital, often combined with channel count; for
instance, DD 2.0, DD 5.1)
Dolby Digital EX
Dolby Digital EX is similar in practice to Dolby's earlier Pro-Logic format, which
utilized matrix technology to add a center surround channel and single rear surround
channel to stereo soundtracks. EX adds an extension to the standard 5.1channel Dolby
Digital codec in the form of matrixed rear channels, creating 6.1 or 7.1 channel
output.
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and TOSLINK can only support two-channel PCM, Dolby Digital multichannel audio,
and DTS multichannel audio. HDMI was later introduced, and it can carry
uncompressed multichannel PCM, lossless compressed multichannel audio, and lossy
compressed digital audio. However, Dolby Digital Live is still useful with HDMI to
allow transport of multichannel audio over HDMI to devices that are unable to handle
uncompressed multichannel PCM.
Dolby Digital Live is available in sound cards using various manufacturers' audio
chipsets.
The SoundStorm,
used
for
the Xboxgame
console
and
certain nForce2 motherboards, used an early form of this technology. DDL is available
on motherboards with codecs such as Realtek's ALC882D,[15] ALC888DD and
ALC888H. Other examples include some C-Media PCI sound cards and Creative
Labs' X-Fi and Z series sound cards, whose drivers have enabled support for DDL.
NVIDIA later decided to drop DDL support in their motherboards due to the cost of
involved royalties, leaving an empty space in this regard in the sound cards market.
Then in June 2005 came Auzentech, which with its X-Mystique PCI card, provided
the first consumer sound card with Dolby Digital Live support.
Initially no Creative X-Fi based sound cards supported DDL (2005~2007) but a
collaboration of Creative and Auzentech resulted in the development of the Auzentech
Prelude, the first X-Fi card to support DDL. Originally planned to extend DDL
support to all X-Fi based sound cards (except the 'Xtreme Audio' line which is
incapable of DDL hardware implementation), the plan was dropped because Dolby
licensing would have required a royalty payment for all X-Fi cards and,
problematically, those already sold.[16] In 2008, Creative released the X-Fi Titanium
series of sound cards which fully supports Dolby Digital Live while leaving all PCI
versions of Creative X-Fi still lacking support for DDL.
Since September 2008, all Creative X-Fi based sound cards support DDL (except the
'Xtreme Audio' and its based line such as Prodigy 7.1e, which is incapable of DDL in
hardware). X-Fi's case differs.
21
While they forgot about the plan, programmer Daniel Kawakami made a hot issue by
applying Auzentech Prelude DDL module back to Creative X-Fi cards by disguising
the hardware identity as Auzentech Prelude.[17]
Creative Labs alleged Kawakami violated their intellectual property and demanded he
cease distributing his modified drivers. [17][18][19]
Eventually Creative struck an agreement with Dolby Laboratories regarding the Dolby
license royalty by arranging that the licensing cost be folded into the purchase price of
the Creative X-Fi PCI cards rather than as a royalty paid by Creative themselves.
[16]
Based on the agreement, in September 2008 Creative began selling the Dolby
Digital Live packs enabling Dolby Digital Live on Creative's X-Fi PCI series of sound
cards. It can be purchased and downloaded from Creative. Subsequently Creative
added their DTS Connect pack to the DDL pack at no added cost.[20]
22
Dolby TrueHD
23
The '.1' in 5.1, 7.1 etc. refers to the LFE channel, which is also a discrete channel.
Applications
Dolby Digital audio is used on DVD-Video and other purely digital media, like home
cinema. In this format, the AC-3 bitstream is interleaved with the video and control
bitstreams.
The system is used in bandwidth-limited applications other than DVD-Video, such as
digital TV. The AC-3 standard allows a maximum coded bit rate of 640 kbit/s. 35mm
film prints use a fixed rate of 320 kbit/s, which is the same as the maximum bit rate
for 2-channel MP3. DVD-Video discs are limited to 448 kbit/s, although many players
can successfully play higher-rate bitstreams (which are non-compliant with the DVD
specification). HD DVD limits AC-3 to 448 kbit/s. ATSC and digital cable standards
limit AC-3 to 448 kbit/s. Blu-ray Disc, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox game console
can output an AC-3 signal at a full 640 kbit/s. Some Sony PlayStation 2 console
games are able to output AC-3 standard audio as well, primarily during pre-rendered
cutscenes.
Dolby is part of a group of organizations involved in the development of AAC
(Advanced Audio Coding), part of MPEG specifications, and considered the
successful 5.1.
25
5.1 surround sound is pretty much the industry standard for pre-wiring a family room or
keeping
(1) Center
room
in
Channel
your
home.
speaker that
A 5.1
you
hear
the
characters
consist
talking
of:
through.
(2) Front channel speakers for left and right audio.) Imagine hearing all of the back ground
music through these as well as the sound effects of a helicopter or ambulance heading your
way
(3) Rear channel speakers for left and right audio. These are used for sound effects in the
background.6.1 Surround Sound System. As regards the ".1" in a 5.1 system...
This simply is for the LFE channel (Low frequency effects) . This is otherwise known as
a subwoofer that gives you the bass for your sound effects. (This is best placed in a corner
of the room perhaps under a table or behind a potted plant.)
26
27
28
30
REFERENCES
1. Christos Manolas and Sandra Pauletto use of multi channel soundtrack in cinemas
2. Mark kernis narration in the cinema of Digital sound
3. Durand Begault audio visual communiation monitoring system for enhanced
awareness
4. Tomilson surround sound up and running
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