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Home Theatre Systems

Surround Sound History
Home Theatre Systems

Home Theater systems

An interesting history of home theatre systems and surround sound systems began about 70 years ago. The first first known time the use of surround sound for home theatre systems was attempted was back in the 1940s, when the Disney studio's had created the acclaimed animated film named Fantasia. Mr Disney was inspired and charged by Rimsky Korsakov's operatic piece that he had produced and named, "Flight of the Bumblebee". He wanted to have a enlightening bumblebee featured in his new musical Fantasia film and make it sound as if it was flying in different areas of the theater to the viewers ears creating the effect of home theatre systems of today. However, the project was the unsuccessful and was simply dropped film but lead to the eventual invention of what we know today as "surround sound".

Beginnings of Surround Sound

The first multichannel audio application was quickly named 'Fantasound'. It was systematically comprised of three different audio channels and quality speakers. This new wave of audio sound was then diffused throughout the cinema by an engineer using 54 loudspeakers under his control. Then in surround sound effect was achieved by using the sum and the difference of the phase of the sound. In the 1950s, a skilled German composer by the name of Karlheinz Stockhausen begin experimenting with some advanced electronic compositions such as Gesang der Jünglinge and Kontakte.

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The latter Kontakte was using fully discrete and rotating quadraphonic audio sounds that were generated with several industrial electronic equipment pieces in Herbert Eimert's studio at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk. Mr. Edgar Varese's Poeme Electronique, was later created for the Iannis Xenakis designed Philips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. It utilized a unique spatial audio with 425 booming loudspeakers to move the musical sound throughout the pavilion. This set the trend for many other musical composers to create this new ground-breaking surround sound effects in the same time period.

The commonly used 5.1 surround sound heard today had its beginnings in 1987 at the famous French Cabaret Moulin Rouge. A skilled French engineer by the name of Dominique Bertrand experimented using a mixing board specially designed in cooperation with Solid State Logic. This unit was based on a 5000 series and included 6 different channels emitting different sounds. It consisted of an A left, then a B right, then a C center, with a D left rear, a E right rear, and finally an F bass. This same creative engineer had already achieved an operational 3.1 system back in 1974, for the International Summit of Francophone States in Dakar Senegal.

New Technology Problems

The push for more advanced Surround sound goes beyond the ordinary stereo to produce multi-channel effects for movies, television and music through the use of Dolby Surround Sound,DTS Surround Sound and
THX Surround Sound. This article this will limit itself mainly to surround standards, formats and features used in the home, though you should know that there are many other surround technologies for movie theaters, cars, and other uses with new advances in technology.

Digital music has forever changed the way we buy and listen to music creating a desire for Multi-Room Audio technology that will fill every room of your home.