Despite the current state of surround systems feeling overwhelmingly futuristic the very first surround sound experiments date back the 1930s. None of these were used in a commercial sense until 1940, with Walt Disney releasing the film Fantasia. Disney wanted to find new methods to create a higher level of immersion for the audience, and for the film Fantasia it had to match the immersive, vibrant visual effects.
Despite the success of Disney’s system (Fantasound) it was too expensive to implement on a wider scale, with only two cinemas ever being outfitted with the array of 54 speakers that Fantasound required. Despite several other attempts at more affordable alternatives, the format died out completely until about 1975 when Dolby released Dolby Stereo – which operated through the basic left and right speaker channels as well as options for the sides and rear of cinema theaters. This was developed further through the 80s and 90s where Dolby would release the expanded Dobly SR as well as the the five-channel and seven-channel Dolby Digital Surround. [1]
In more recent years Dolby has also introduced Dolby Atmos – with the first Atmos-encoded film ‘Brave’ being released in 2012. This featured scale-able ‘3-D sound’ by adding 128 tracks (only 10 of which was for ambient stems and dialogue, leaving 118 for audio such as sound effects). [2]
[1] Anon, (n.d.). The History of Surround Sound – Official Fluance® Blog. [online] Available at: https://blog.fluance.com/history-surround-sound/.
[2] KEF US. (2021). A Brief History Of Surround Sound. [online] Available at: https://us.kef.com/blogs/news/a-brief-history-of-surround-sound.
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