Historical context: film

The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (1908)

Mono (1927 - late 1970s)

The first sync sound films were in mono, with a single channel of audio played back through a speaker located in the front of the auditorium at the horizontal center of the screen.

King Kong - 1933

The score was unlike any that came before and marked a significant change in the history of film music. King Kong’s score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American “talkie” film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music). Steiner used a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for his use of leitmotifs.[61] Over the years, Steiner’s score was recorded by multiple record labels and the original motion picture soundtrack has been issued on a compact disc.

Fantasia (1940)

The Dolby Stereo Era (mid- 1970s to mid-1990s)

Dolby Stereo - three channel

Dolby Stereo - four-channel

Star Wars (1977)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978)

The Digital Surround Era (the early 1990s to present)

Dolby Digital - Batman Returns (1992)

Dolby Surround EX - Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

DTS - Jurassic Park (1993)

Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) 1993’s

Dolby Atmos

The evolution to Atmos