Surround sound
I WAS JUST A YOUNG pup when I first heard about surround-sound systems. Cosmo, a tie-dyed T-shirt wearing hippie who always smelled of strange herbs and ended every sentence with 'groovy', 'far out', or 'crazy, man', sat me on his knee during a smoke break in his stereo sales job and told the whole story. It was a tale of two cities, man, he explained. And it all began a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, in an alien land filled with strange creatures: Los Angeles.
George Lucas was working there on Star Wars, a film that gave debuts to revolutionary effects such as the first modern '5.1' surround-sound tracks. The system uses five standard speakers, three in front of the listener to the left, centre and right, and two at the back to left and right. The .1 desig-nation refers to a sixth, low-frequency effects track connected to a sub-woofer. Far out.
But Star Wars was hardly the first surround-sound movie. Walt Disney wanted to immerse the listener in his 1940 classic Fantasia, so engineers developed a multi-track, multi-speaker system that allowed sounds to move with the action on the screen.
World War II took the boffins' attention from surround sound, but when TV began cutting into moviemakers' profits in the 1950s they tried all sorts of things to bring viewers back: 3-D glasses, wide screen, Smell-O-Vision (crazy, man!) and surround sound.
Meanwhile, Cosmo explained, a couple of 'cats' in Boston were working on speakers that would change music forever. The first speakers to make it into homes in any numbers had been attached to radios. They emphasised mid-tones and bass sounds, which made the spoken voice more intelligible and warm sounding than earlier speakers. Highs and deep bass had been omitted to reduce static and other noise inherent on radio. The 'cats' went the opposite way by creating bright, crisp highs and deep, smooth bass, leaving little in between. The public loved this sound, as pioneered by speaker manufacturers Acoustical Research, Boston Acoustics and Bose. The 'Boston Sound' was born.
By the time Star Wars hit cinemas in 1977, home surround-sound was on the market. It used the Dolby Pro-Logic system with its four channels - front right, centre, left and rear - usually played through two speakers.
Lucas then stepped into the home market with THX sound. THX is not a system, but a certification. When you buy THX-rated amplifiers and speakers it means Lucas' people have given them their stamp of approval. He had realised what really sells a movie soundtrack is the bass. There is nothing like the rumbling of a kettle drum or a thunderous explosion to get a movie-goer's heart thumping and bring them into the film. THX systems became known for their 'kick butt' bass and clear dialogue.
It's here that our tale of two cities comes together. The Boston Sound became so popular that most stereo speakers today tend to drop mid-range tones. The few that don't are often described as sounding too 'forward' or 'muddy'. That was a major complaint about THX systems: laser discs sounded terrific but music CDs didn't.
On the other hand, if you play a DVD through a standard set of audio speakers, dialogue can seem much quieter than the music and sound effects. So where do you find a sound system that makes both movies and music sound good? With 5.1 surround sound there's nothing to worry about. The people who invented Dolby Digital and DTS (Digital Theatre Systems), the two 5.1 surround-sound standards on DVDs, realised: most listeners will use music speakers front right and left; Lucas was right about 'kick-butt' bass.
DVD's 5.1 surround sound includes the Star Wars-pioneered low frequency channel routed to a sub-woofer. More importantly, while the five remaining channels are used to pan sounds, most dialogue comes from the centre speaker. Most centre speakers include a tweeter and two mid-range drivers to make speech more intelligible.
Next week: Home Theatre in a box, man.
