DVDs In 7.1 Sound
Dear Gary: After perusing your Web site and magazine, I can’t seem to find a listing of DVDs that produce 7.1 sound for my theatre. If the studios use 7.1 as a reference system and modern commercial theatres reproduce 7.1 sound for us, then why is it so hard to find them for home use? Can you provide a list of what is available?
Mel Jacobs
Managing Editor Perry Sun Comments
There is no consumer format that offers 7.1 channels. The only professional cinema sound format that utilizes discrete 7.1 (eight channels) for feature films is SDDS® or Sony Dynamic Digital Sound®. (Eight discrete, uncompressed PCM channels are also possible with digital cinema systems that are appropriately equipped, and at least two films, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and Ocean’s Eleven have utilized d-cinema audio with discrete 7.1 channels.) Our Web site, www.WidescreenReview.com, has a complete listing of films with an SDDS eight-channel soundtrack. According to the DVD-Video specifications established by the DVD Forum, Sony has the option of offering a consumer SDDS variant as one of the “alternate” audio formats (such as DTS Digital Surround), but has elected not to do so. You can potentially reproduce the two “extra” screen channels of SDDS (left-center and right-center) by applying matrix surround decoding between screen left and center, and screen right and center channels. Please refer to the article by Norm Schneider, President of SMART Devices, in Issue 58, March 2002, which is also accessible online to our subscribers.
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