Dolby™ Digital is a surround sound audio format created by Dolby™ Laboratories. The company was founded in 1965 by Ray Dolby and first designed professional recording equipment. They pioneered a method of audio compression and expansion that greatly reduced the hissing sound often heard in tape recordings at the time, while maintaining the clarity of the recording itself.
Years would pass and the company would continue to develop ways to improve sound. Movie theaters around the world would have Dolby™ equipment to provide a grand listening experience. In the 80's the company would enter the digital era, and offer surround sound, and in the early 90's, digital surround sound would be born. Until 1993, Dolby™ Labs was the preeminent provider of digital surround sound in the theater, and the home.
dts™ stands for Digital Theater Systems and was founded in 1993 in Agoura Hills,CA. It was designed to improve on the current digital surround format at the time called ac-3 (audio codec 3) by Dolby Laboratories. The use of lower data compression would result in a richer audio experience than the current technology.
Today, both Dolby™ Labs and dts™ continue to advance surround sound audio quality. Thanks to the advancement of technology found in today's surround sound software like blu ray discs, video games, and DVDs, and the remarkable sophistication of today's advanced surround sound receivers, we have the privilege of hearing the director's and sound designer's sonic vision exactly as they intended.
Not long ago, dts surround sound and Dolby Digital, or ac-3 as it was originally called, gave us 5.1 channel digital audio on our home theater systems. This allowed for 5 discreet channels of sound coming from 5 speakers plus a low frequency effects channel for a subwoofer. For the first time, surround sound speakers were as full range as the front speakers, and independent of each other. This meant that a sound designer could place sounds all around the listener and manipulate them anyway they wanted. This allowed for very realistic panning effects and a greater sense of immersion into the film, game, or show. Well if that was not awesome enough, now there are newer more advanced audio formats brought to the home theater scene.
Why would we need something better?
Although the aforementioned dts surround sound and Dolby Digital surround formats sounded great, they were digitally compressed in order to fit on DVD and video game media available at the time. Now, that is no longer the case. Thanks to newer media like blu ray movies and their vast storage capacity, the producers of today's movies can include uncompressed digital soundtracks which are identical to the studio master recording and the ones we hear at the movie theater.
Now called dts-HD Master Audio and Dolby True HD, these latest formats from the two companies are able to provide home theater lovers with sound quality that compromises nothing.
