What is surround sound?

There are various methods of producing a sound recording. One of the easiest ways used in the past movies was known as mono. This implied that all the sound was made into a single channel and was listened to busing one speaker. On the other hand, if the sound is heard using two speakers then the system is known as a stereo. When sound is heard from a stereo it forms an experience of a live performance (Newell 49).

Surround sound systems use this technology and advance it further. This is done by incorporating more soundtracks so that the sounds come from many directions. The phrase surround sound means precise multi-channel system made by Dolby Laboratories; it was applied as a common phrase for theatre and home theatre multi-channel sound systems (Holma 75).

There are unique microphones that will copy surround sound, though this is not a suitable method to create a surround sound track. The majority of the films incorporate surround sound channels and are made in an integration studio. The sound technicians use various audio recordings to determine which audio tracks to use.

Historical background

In the early 1950s, the first money-making multichannel sound design was made for film use. Many Hollywood films were recorded with multichannel designs. A variety of theatre designs were formed during this period, comprising the popular Cinerama and Cinemascope, however many of them applied similar knowledge of sound technology. In general, these technologies were called stereophonic sound. Quad was the first design made in the 1970s. However, as a result of incompatibility matters in the transmission process, the Quad failed to function properly. In the 1970s, Dolby made plans of solving the incompatibility problems by establishing a new design known as the Dolby stereo, a unique encoding system that later became very famous.

With the design of CDs in the early 1980s, stereo devices became popular. With the advent of DVDs in 1995 people began to spread multichannel sound in digital design. In 1992, Dolby labs formed a system known as Dolby Digital that provided good quality multichannel surround occurrence. The Dolby Digital was selected as the main audio coding design for DVDs and for digital audio broadcasting (Collins 77).