Surround EX, DTS-ES, Neo-6

Everything you ever wanted to know but were always afraid to ask...

The formats of Dolby/THX Surround EX, DTS ES Matrix or Discrete 6.1, as well as the NEO-6 process range (music & film) still remain, for many of you, a totally unfathomable mystery.

How does it work? What for? How does it apply to my system? Questions that will remain all too often without answers as long as valid technical explanations are not forthcoming from the firms responsible for such turmoil in the up until now well established order of cinema sound.

The time has come to clarify the most disturbed among you by a series of articles - as historic as they are technical - that we had wished to be as complete as possible.


The case of Surround EX :
History & Controversy :

The advent of the recent "Extended" sound formats began with the Dolby Digital Surround EX procedure, better known under the domestic name, THX Surround EX, the technology having been officially co-developed by the Dolby laboratories and the THX division of the Lucasfilm, the giant with a finger in many a pie.
The first arms of this new 5.1EX format (and not 6.1 as we have the habit of running into nowadays) was, in the cinema, at the occasion of the world release of the film « STAR WARS - Episode One » on May 21st,1999.

According to the legend, the Surround EX procedure was imagined in 1998 by Sir Gary Rydstrom, talented sound engineer and ingenious mixer inhabiting for a number of years, the obscure but overequipped « SkyWalker Sound Building », THE reference when it comes to cinema recording and monitoring studios (there's no question over the fact that they're qualified THX PM3…) situated in the glamorous surroundings of the famous domain: « The SkyWalker Ranch ».

For those who still don't know what we're talking about, try to simply imagine The Little House on the Prairie in a High Tech version bristling with all the latest technological refinements available today, and throw in the whole Lucas Film family, working tirelessly for the cause of "big" sound and beautiful images. You thus have a little idea of this shrine to the seventh art and its derivatives.
On this topic, and in order to know a little more on enigmatic complex, I couldn’t recommend too highly to visit the site « Inside SkyWalker Ranch » (http://george.lucas.net/) offering a guided visit of the multiple divisions of the Lucas empire (Industrial Light & Magic, LucasArt, etc…), all of this seen through the eyes of an absolute fanatic having evidently been totally overwhelmed by "LucasFilm" during a privileged visit in this reputedly impenetrable fortress (to give you an idea, former president Ronald Reagan was even refused entry to the sacrosanct ranch during the period of his mandate).

In short, Rydstrom, as technical director of "SkyWalker Sound" and holder of no less than 7 Academy Awards saw himself landed with the development of the sound track for "Episode One". The Director, George Lucas himself, had wished to create a "sound experience" with levels of realism and on a scale never reached until then.
It was the ideal occasion for Rydstrom to do away with the frustration of mixing in multi-channel 5.1, a configuration he judged too imprecise and not flexible enough for his tastes. Note however that this is a major classic of the « Star Wars » saga… each episode of the series having contributed in its time to serious progress in the quality of cinema sound and image reproduction.

In order to better meet the demands of the master Jedi as well as his own wishes, Rydstrom came up with the idea of adding to the conventional Dolby Digital 5.1 format with a matrixed rear central channel as a complement to the right and left lateral Surround speakers. The admitted goal was, at the end of the day, to obtain a much more "precise" Surround field, with the movement of different sound sources as well as a reinforced impression of evelopment and spatializing:
"I wanted the listeners to be totally encircled by the Surround Sound, as well as being able to hear, very precisely, the sounds being played out directly behind them.", said G. Rydstrom in a Dolby Press Release in June ’99, "I seeked to develop a sound format offering new possibilities and allowing for a very precise positioning of sounds such as they can be heard in reality.".
Added to by George Lucas: "This new Surround technology offers the director a new creative tool in the reproduction of realistic sound tracks.", "I’m proud that THX and Dolby have joined forces to develop this technology and to put it at the disposal of the film industry".
W.T.D.S. (What They Don’t Say…)

There you have it for the official line on the Dolby Digital/THX Surround EX format, based on the diverse information emanating from the two primary speakers in the affair.
More like a very nice fable if one can believe this "troublemaker" PANALOGIC (http://www.panalogic.com) (nothing to do with PANASONIC mind you…), an Australian company specialised in the manufacture of professional multi-channel processors and who, for their part, have a totally different story.

For PANALOGIC, the EX adventure began in 1988 with the launching on the pro. market of a revolutionary processor called the PANASTEREO SP-23, which already, in its time, allowed for the creation, from any optic stereo source coded in Dolby Surround, an effects signal with a view towards powering a complementary wall of rear speakers.
The procedure was registered by its creator under the name "Surround SX" (sic !!!), and it is amusing to note that the technology employed here is in every way identical to that recycled by the current Surround EX.

In 1995, PANALOGIC experimented with the "Surround SX" concept on DTS for cinema at the "Avoca Beach Theatre" situated near Sydney. In this installation, the PANASTEREO CSP-3200 processor in charge of DTS decoding had its left and right Surround outputs linked to a MATRIX CM-220 Surround SX decoder of the brand for a configuration comparable to the current DTS ES (pro version) or DTS ES MATRIX (home version).

And it’s only three years later, in October 1998, with the announcement of the then coming launch of "Star Wars EP1- The Phantom Menace" by Lucasfilm, that THX and Dolby entered into the scene expressing their aim to put the film out with a 5.1 soundtrack, added to by a sixth central rear channel – deliberately matrixed in the Surround channels.
To conclude, and still according to PANALOGIC, all THX and Dolby did was to bring a specific "software" contribution to a hardware configuration that was already in existence for almost 12 years… Which isn’t really allowed to show in the communication made by the two former entities with regard to the Surround EX format.

More to come soon in "Surround EX, How Does It Work ???"