Holman Draws Crowd For Surround Seminar

12-Apr-00

While the broadcast industry prepared for a digital television lovefest at NAB 2000, Tomlinson Holman on Sunday, April 9, 2000 gave sound professionals a detailed look at how psychoacoustics, room acoustics, microphone and studio techniques and other factors play into the rapid shift to multichannel sound for broadcast. Some 100 people [including Widescreen Reviewís Perry Sun] attended Holman's second-annual Surround Sound seminar, again held at the Alexis Park hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada and hosted by Surround Professional magazine and TMH Corp. Entitled ""Audio For Digital Television,"" the seminar covered a lot of ground as Holman made his case for multichannel over traditional mono or stereo broadcasts. Using graphical and recorded sound demonstrations, he contended that properly-mixed surround soundtracks ""envelop"" audiences, while stereo broadcasts, at best, provide a sense of ""spaciousness."" Holman gave ample attention to microphone selection and placement, acoustics and post-production techniques, and illustrated his points with a number of examples from popular Hollywood films. In his opening, he noted that it was Walt Disney that first experimented with multichannel audio for film, for the animated classic ""Fantasia."" It was Holman's experiments that helped establish the Lucasfilm THXÆ standards. He also authored the book ""Sound For Film And Television."" One of the those in attendance, Mark McKenna, Studio Manager for Glen Tonche Studios, Shokan, New York, said the move to multichannel sound was causing a ""rebuilding (of the) culture of the recording studio."" Slated to open this fall, Glen Tonche Studios will provide recording artists with 5.1-capable facilities. ""I'm hoping to be educated (in surround sound),"" he said early in the seminar. Separately, the event included a demonstration of Studer's Binaural Room Scanning technology (a surround-sound headphone system that responds to a listener's head movements) and a brief presentation by Tannoy on the company's line of dual concentric loudspeakers. Source: Pro Sound News