PROMISING PROGENY

There's no great rush at the moment toward surround sound for music in the home-the kind of audio that doesn't have pictures and isn't on wheels. Still, all sorts of signs say that we will have it (in due time) when a few things ripen sufficiently.

Notably, of course, the digital approach. Fortuitously, that gives me a chance to sketch in a bit of back ground (avoiding staggering amounts of technicalities) that might help the consumer to think ahead, and maybe even the manufacturer too.

My retrospective look at quadraphonic sound of the 1970s in the April and May issues of Audio was deliberately confined to the sound we then knew, minus even the thought of a video picture and mainly concentrated in the classical area, including the standard demo warhorses. Now things are different. Surround sound, returning to our homes, comes through the back door, en route from the movies. Where does it go? Not, you may be sure, to the music room. It heads straight for the nearest VCR, and what used to be the living room "concert hall" is now mostly a mini -theater. This is indeed a brave new world (sometimes), full of varied entertainment. Music listening, shall I say, tends to take a back seat.

Or a front seat when it's on wheels.

Believe me, non-picture music-the standard living room audio that has sustained us through 40 years of hi-fi is going to persist, video or no video. It still has huge resources to offer, as witness the extraordinary success of the still-expensive CD even before price leveling. (Not a video in a car load of CDs, if you remember the famous ad.) But at this moment the great Public is interested in what's new, which means anything with a picture attached, whatever the video format might be. It doesn't much matter whether it is Cultural Uplift or TV Wasteland, as long as you can look at it and hear the sound.

But surround sound is a catchy thing, and, as I have said before, we now know a lot more about the ways it can work for our ears. It will find its way back into classical and other music before too long, and we'll handle it far more knowledgeably than in quadraphonic days, both in the listening and in the technical know-how. So gather ye videos while ye may (with Dolby Surround Sound), and bide your time.

It you will think of things this way, you will understand a lot about the cur rent discussions concerning surround sound, which, under the Dolby logo, clearly has the lead in the movie/video world of commercial entertainment and an enormous extension into the home market. As usual, Ray Dolby has his sensitive forefinger on the Public's beating pulse. The fact is that the pre sent Dolby parameters are elegantly geared to things as I have just de scribed them. To the best of my knowledge, there is no further intention.

Dolby Surround is not for music-at least not for music that doesn't come with pictures.

The catch is that you could play your Beethoven and your Beatles records and lots more with genuine Dolby Sur round Sound, and no pictures at all, if somebody would obligingly encode a few recordings for you. (This is assuming you have the extra gear for surround sound.) Who's to stop you? But the problem is that none of the three Bs (or four, if you count The Beatles) comes under the Dolby guarantee. So yours is the risk-not legal, but merely that you may achieve something less than surround perfection in your classical music (or any other type). What more should you expect? We're in the movies now. We're into video. We take our surround from those sources.

Dolby is impeccably right! What we need-now-for music is one surround system, as a beginning, with no ifs or buts, no alternatives, no complications beyond the basics.

Please-not another quadraphonic mess! One step at a time, and each an absolutely clear one.

Beyond my somewhat simplified language is an ocean of complication.

Over the years, as some know, the earlier matrix way of encoding numerous sound channels into our basic two has been busily developed in a dozen directions, Dolby being only one-if the first to emerge at top level. But there are also other possibilities, much more advanced and much more versa tile, in the digital area. They could compete very meanly with Dolby for a general music surround-that is, if the present Dolby Surround were to be promoted as all-purpose. So Ray Dolby, I would say, is extremely wise to stay out of those potentially larger markets. He is into home video surround, licensing decoding circuitry for equipment used in playing videocassettes whose soundtracks carry Dolby encoding. Home video, period. I think that's plenty. You could run a dozen conglomerates on this much business potential alone.

Digital surround does indeed loom and may arrive very soon. I've had material on hand for some time, for example, concerning a system rather bravely named Colossus, perhaps to match the clout of that hallowed name Dolby. It looks good. This system is already projected in numerous formats for pro and consumer four -channel surround recording. No details here, but not only is it all -digital, it (a) is video based; (b) has discrete channels, four for consumer use and as many as 32 for the pros, and (c) seems to be infinitely compatible with everything--via the usual no-loss transference from one digital format to another.

The first recording for the Colossus system (the consumer version) was made at a championship air race-not exactly classical music. But this may have been because Colossus was associated for a time with that familiar audio outfit, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab, which began, many years ago, with superb LP recordings of railroad and trolley sound effects. Sound effects, you'll note, are very useful in movies and video. But, aside from the "1812 Overture," they don't occupy much space in home music.

Ah, but wait. Being digital, the Colossus system is easily adaptable to the type of digital data stream used for Compact Discs. So can we have CDs with digital surround sound via the Colossus system? Definitely. And discretely. DATs (Digital Audio Tapes) too, if and when.

Look a bit further and you will see why Ray Dolby is playing his potent cards with extreme finesse. Other news is that Telarc, that familiar super nova of the record biz-the first in the States to record all -digital and the ardent promoter of the classical spectacular-has already acquired a Colossus unit, with its discrete four -channel for mat, for recording on CD. No recordings as yet announced, but you can be sure they won't be of jet planes. More likely the "1812 Overture." But keep in mind that there might be Beethoven, or a Brandenburg Concerto, or even a string quartet. All this, if we have patience. It'll be a while.

I could go on and on about the enormous advantages of a digital approach to surround sound, given enough time for careful development toward the end, or ends, that are envisioned. Let's say only that, aside from noiseless sound quality, there is that near -infinite capacity for transference (what used to be called copying), but now without loss. Digital audio transfers itself in any direction as new systems may require; it does not become obsolete, it just adapts and lives on.

There is also digital's enormous capacity for information, its extra room for even more info than we will need. That in itself is a mortal challenge to any analog surround-sound system for the consumer.

These implications, and plenty more, are certainly understood by Dolby, whose present Surround Sound is not digital, just a typically ingenious and precise version of the long-time matrix approach. Precise, again, for its pre sent use. But not for a wider purpose, in competition with digital.

The genius of Ray Dolby is his dazzling ability to choose the right parameters, not only at the exact right moment but for a future longer than any one might believe. Dolby has provided the very best bandages for the disabilities inherent in analog audio, which over the years has surely been more triumphant because of him. Dolby bandages--signal processings--persist where others fade, not always for reasons of profit and loss. The others may work even better than Dolby, but they don't hit the nail on the nose. Who but Dolby could have set down, in the early 1960s, the Dolby A noise-suppression parameters that have survived through nearly a quarter-century right up to the digital present? The same for Dolby B when NR moved into the home area, and later for the Dolby C extension of the B.

Now, Dolby SR is probably the final segment in this line, almost a stunt in the face of digital, with professional specifications that can exceed those of present digital sound. This system may be analog, but I'll bet it will sell. Be sides, it's beautiful.

Ray Dolby's contributions have an elegance of design like that of the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal, without the weight. This includes Dolby Surround despite that system's curiously negative quality: Its precise tailoring for one immediate purpose and no other.

Yes, there is considerable protest now from those who think that Dolby for home video is not quite the thing for home Beethoven; they are urging a Dolby modification or alternative, for better results. Yes, it could be done.

We have that from Peter Scheiber himself, who holds the basic matrix patents from which Dolby operates. There is the leeway. You will find the Scheiber reasoning in the final issue (October/November 1986) of a feisty little mag called MultiChannelSound (or MCS Review), which had been coming from one Larry Clifton (Box 19, Capron, Va. 23829) ever since quadraphony waned. In that excellent is sue there is also a spirited technical report on Dolby's inadequacies for mu sic surround both in the theater and the home, among them the notorious mono that goes to the rear speakers. I agree with both accounts. I could imagine a simple alternative built into the Dolby system, with a switch marked "Video" and "Music," like the pushbutton choices between competing matrix systems we used to have. It really would be very simple to de sign-and to manufacture.

If you have followed me this far, I think you can see that this will not hap pen-and for good reason. Should Dolby set himself up at this late date with an essentially short-lived analog surround for the special demands of home listening, with digital--like Colossus--hovering only inches away and possessing a far greater potential? Not likely! Dolby is right.

If and when the Dolby people get into general music surround sound, you may guess, it will be on a much grander scale and will have the typical Dolby permanence and all-over usefulness. A new digital dynasty? That would require, of course, a whole new Dolby designation. It could well affect audio, our audio, as greatly as all the earlier Dolbys put together. We shall see.

Meanwhile, look at video with Dolby Surround. It's great. It's for now.

(by: EDWARD TATNALL CANBY ; adapted from Audio magazine, Aug. 1987)

= = = =