Monday, June 27, 2011

Surround Sound Speakers: Why is in Demand


Surround sound speakers encompasses a range of latest techniques such as for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with audio channels reproduced via additional, discrete audio speakers. Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work better, and presents a fixed or forward perspective of the sound field to the listener at this location. There are other non surround based formats. The three-dimensional (3D) sphere of human hearing can be virtually achieved with audio channels that surround the audio listener. To that end, the multichannel surround sound application encircles the audience with surround channels (left-surround, right-surround, back-surround), as opposed to "screen channels" (center, [front] left, and [front] right), i.e. ca. 360° horizontal plane (2D).

Though home theater, cinema and soundtracks represent the major uses of surround techniques, its scope of application is broader than that as surround sound permits to create an audio-environment for all sorts of purposes. Multichannel audio techniques may be used to reproduced contents as varied as music, speech, natural or synthetic sounds for cinema, television, broadcasting, or computers. In terms of music content for example, a live performance may use multichannel techniques in the context of an open-air concert, of a musical theatre or for broadcasting; for a film specific techniques are adapted to movie theater, or to home (e.g. home cinema systems).The narrative space is also a content that can be enhanced through multichannel techniques. This applies mainly to cinema narratives, for example the speech of the characters of a film, but may also be applied to plays for theatre, to a conference, or to integrate voice-based comments in an archeological site or monument. For example, an exhibition may be enhanced with topical ambient sound of water, birds, train or machine noise. Topical natural sounds may also be used in educational applications. Other fields of application include video game consoles, personal computers and other platforms. In such audio applications, the content would typically be synthetic noise produced by the computer device in interaction with its user. Significant work has also been done using surround sound for enhanced situation awareness in military and public safety applications.

Commercial surround sound media include videocassettes, DVDs, and HDTV broadcasts encoded as compressed Dolby Digital and DTS, and lossless audio such as DTS HD Master Audio and Dolby True HD on Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, which are identical to the studio master. Other commercial formats include the competing DVD-Audio (DVD-A) and Super Audio CD (SACD) formats, and MP3 Surround. Cinema 5.1 surround formats include Dolby Digital and DTS. Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) is a 8 channel cinema configuration which features 5 independent audio channels across the front with two independent surround channels, and a Low-frequency effects channel. Traditional 7.1 surround sound speaker configuration introduces two additional rear speakers to the conventional 5.1 arrangement, for a total of four surround channels and three front channels, to create a more 360° sound field.

Most surround sound recordings are created by film production companies or video game producers; however some consumer camcorders have such capability either built-in or available separately. Surround sound technologies can also be used in music to enable new methods of artistic expression. After the failure of quadraphonic audio in the 1970s, multichannel music has slowly been reintroduced since 1999 with the help of SACD and DVD-Audio formats. Some AV receivers, stereophonic systems, and computer sound cards contain integral digital signal processors and/or digital audio processors to simulate surround sound from a stereophonic source.

Article Source: AmazineArticles

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