Dolby Headphone Arrives At CES 2000

Dolby Laboratories, the world leader in multichannel sound, previewed its much anticipated Dolby Headphone technology at this year's Winter CES in Las Vegas. With Dolby Headphone, consumers can use their favorite headphones to experience programs in the full multichannel sound they expect in a cinema or a fine home theatre.""Traditional stereo playback on headphones, while pleasant, creates a shallow but extremely wide stereo effect that appears 'in your head,'"" said Larry Poor, Director of Technology Marketing for Dolby Laboratories. ""With Dolby Headphone, listeners can now experience rich, full surround sound over conventional headphones.""Listeners can enjoy Dolby Headphone in stereo with program sources such as MiniDiscs and CDs to MP3 files, and in surround sound with most multichannel program sources, whether they are encoded in Dolby Surround, Dolby Digital, PCM, MLP-packed PCM, or MPEG.Developed by Lake Technology and Dolby Laboratories, the technology is being licensed by Dolby to consumer electronics manufacturers to include in almost any product that normally provides a stereo headphone jack. Such products include digital cable and satellite set-top boxes, VCRs, DVD-Video and DVD-Audio players, conventional and digital TV receivers, personal and laptop computers, portable stereos, game consoles, A/V surround decoders and receivers, auto sound systems, and multimedia speaker systems.""Unlike typical virtual headphone surround systems, Dolby Headphone works well for most listeners, through most types of stereo headphones,"" continued Poor. ""Dolby Headphone allows listeners to enjoy Dolby Digital multichannel audio with headphones they already own! Since no customization or user adjustments are necessary, consumers can experience theatre-like multichannel sound just by plugging into any consumer product equipped with Dolby Headphone.""About Dolby HeadphoneDolby Headphone is a unique signal processing system that enables your stereo headphones to realistically portray the sound of a five-speaker playback system. Dolby Headphone's room modeling algorithm is performed by a digital signal processing system (DSP) developed by Lake Technology. This makes the technology easy to incorporate into virtually any type of audio or video product normally featuring a headphone output.Multichannel products that incorporate Dolby Headphone to simulate multispeaker surround playback, such as those equipped with Dolby Digital 5.1-channel and/or four-channel Dolby ProLogic Surround decoding, display the Dolby Headphone symbol on the unit or one of its controls. These products also apply the Dolby Headphone process to stereo programs. Stereo equipment that provides Dolby Headphone to emulate only the two-speaker listening experience is identified with the Dolby Headphone Stereo symbol.About Dolby LaboratoriesDolby Laboratories is the developer of signal processing systems used worldwide in applications that include motion-picture sound, consumer entertainment products and media, broadcasting, and music recording. Based in San Francisco with European headquarters in England, the privately held company also has offices in New York, Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Tokyo.