As
part of the DVD-Audio ‘Explore
the Format’ experience,
High Fidelity Review was treated to a behind-the-scenes
tour of Dolby Laboratories’ facility in Burbank, California.
This is the company’s branch office dedicated to providing support
services for the Hollywood entertainment industry. Strategically
located near major film and studios, the facility
makes a variety of resources available to its clients as
needed. A reception area, conference room, and
event space is available for meetings and gatherings, such
as the one organised to promote DVD-Audio.
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formal DVD-Audio presentation was held in the 49-seat
Larry Umlang Presentation Theatre II, often used for
Quality Control screenings (‘Lord of the
Rings’ and
Austin Powers ‘Goldmember’ were both quality-controlled
here). The entire room is suspended on neoprene blocks
to achieve acoustic isolation. |
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Presentation Theatre sound system features a massive
array of JBL loudspeakers, including an as-yet unused
ceiling-mounted unit John Kellogg, General Manager
of Multi-channel Audio and Music at Dolby Laboratories
dubbed the “Voice of God speaker”. |
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front speaker array is installed directly behind the
Presentation Theater screen. |
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the stage, up to three no-frills sub-woofers provide
low frequency slam for the entire Presentation Theatre,
although only one was hooked up when we took the tour. |
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| Feeding
the Presentation Theatre is a state-of-the-art projection
room equipped for both film and video playback. Seen
to the left of this image is a Strong Super Lume-X
professional projector. |
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| Although
he usually does his mixing work in his home studio,
Producer John Kellogg sometimes uses the Dolby facility’s
Project Room for audio testing and in-house production. |
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In
addition to the Presentation Theatre, Dolby has a realistically
sized home theater environment available for testing
consumer media content, from DVD-Video and DVD-Audio
to HDTV programming.
At the ‘Explore the Format’ event,
it was used to showcase high-resolution DVD-Audio titles,
in this case a selection from 5.1 Entertainment’s ‘Opaline’,
by the band Dishwalla. |
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A
central Machine Room makes all software and programming
resources directly accessible from the presentation
rooms and home theatres, as well as the Project Room.
And you thought your system was complex… |
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Notes:
Dolby’s home theater room includes two complete
audio systems, a Meridian 500-series all-digital set-up
(electronics and loudspeakers), and a more modest Denon
AVR-5803 receiver hooked up to an M&K Reference loudspeaker
system.
In
the home theater room, consumer media content is tested
with a dual rear/dual lateral speaker configuration
for surround, following THX, Dolby, and ITU specifications.
Manufacturers of home theater processors offering proprietary
7-channel decoding, such as Meridian and Lexicon, also
recommend this type of speaker configuration. Content
is never targeted for a “quad”-type setup
and a single rear center is never used, contrary
to mistaken notions fostered by some A/V publications.
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Philip Brandes - 24/03/2003
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property of High Fidelity Review, copyright
2003, all rights reserved. This feature cannot be reproduced
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