Speakers & Speaker Systems

Multichannel audio is the name for a variety of techniques for expanding and enriching the sound of audio playback by recording additional sound channels that can be reproduced on additional speakers. more...

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Surround sound refers to the application of multichannel audio to channels "surrounding" the audience (generally some combination of left surround, right surround, and back surround) as opposed to "screen channels" (center, left, and right).

One of the first documented uses of surround sound was implemented in 1940 for Disney's classic animation, Fantasia. Dubbed 'Fantasound' it consisted of three audio channels which were diffused (panned—initially live by an engineer) around the cinema over up to 54 speakers.

One of the first surround amplifiers of the world intended for the popular user was the orthoperspecta system designed by the Finnish engineer Tapio M. Köykkä, patented in the early 1960s. It was a 3.0 enlargement of stereo sound (i.e. L-R, L+R, and R-L), which was achieved through the use of the sum and the difference of the phase of sound. In 1973 the Finnish company Salora launched its orthoperspecta amplifier, which came in two models, the Salora 3001 ja 3001, the latter with a built-in turntable, which could be either Dual 1225 or Thorens TD 160, depending on the choice of the customer.

Surround sound systems are used in cinema sound systems, home entertainment systems such as "home theater" systems, video arcade games (For example, Battle Gear 4 Tuned from TAITO used 5.1 channel surround sound system), computer games, technical theatre, and a growing number of other applications.

Consumer surround sound formats include sound on Video DVDs and HDTV broadcasts encoded as Dolby Digital or DTS; the competing DVD-Audio (DVD-A) and Super Audio CD (SACD) formats; and MP3 Surround.

Theatrical film 5.1 surround formats include Dolby Digital, DTS, and Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS).

Surround sound hardware is mostly used by movie productions and sophisticated video games. However, some consumer camcorders (particularly DVD-R based models from Sony) have surround sound capability either built-in or available as an add-on. Some consumer electronic devices (AV receivers, stereos, and computer soundcards) have digital signal processors or digital audio processors built into them to simulate surround sound from stereo sources.

Creating surround sound

Surround sound can be created using several methods. The simplest method involves using one of many surround sound recording microphone techniques and/or mixing in surround for playback on an audio system which uses several speakers placed around the listener to play audio coming from different directions. A second approach is to process the audio using psychoacoustic sound localization methods to simulate a 2-D sound field using headphones.

Read more at Wikipedia.org