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 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 several new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for using leitmotifs. Over the years, multiple record labels recorded Steiner’s score, 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)

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE)

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