Surround Sound


Surround sound immerses the audience in the home theater experience. A well-calibrated surround sound system can make sounds from anywhere around the audience not just where the speakers are located. So, when a character on screen throws an object at the audience they might duck as whistles overhead and crashes behind them.

The surround sound effect is created by decoding one of a variety of surround sound formats. The most common surround format today is called Dolby Digital 5.1. Nearly every DVD sold has a Dolby Digital soundtrack.
Surround sound formats can provide two things. Most importantly is the method of surround sound by dividing a soundtrack into many channels of sound. More advanced surround methods like Dolby Digital and DTS provide analogue to digital conversion, which means they determine the sampling and bit rates from the analogue source material.

Here are the major surround sound formats of past, present and very near future:

Quadraphonic
Dolby Digital
Dolby Surround
Dolby Pro Logic/ Dolby Pro Logic II
Dolby Digital EX (THX EX)
DTS
DTS ES discreet 6.1
DTS Neo:6
DVD Audio
Sony Dynamic Digital Sound SDDS
THX