DolbyÆ Laboratories Debuts New DTV Multichannel Audio Authoring Tool At NAB

DolbyÆ Laboratories, the world leader in multichannel sound technology, announced that it will unveil and demonstrate its new DP570 Multichannel Audio Tool at the 2000 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show, April 10-13, 2000 in Las Vegas, Nevada.This unit allows users to create metadata for multichannel audio programs and to monitor its effects without requiring any external encoders or decoders. The DP570 accepts up to eight channels of PCM audio, then feeds the audio accompanied by a separate metadata bitstream to a Dolby DP571 Dolby E Encoder for further distribution, or directly to a DP569 Dolby Digital Encoder for transmission to the consumer. In this way, producers can easily assign metadata parameters that will ultimately reach consumer playback systems via programs with Dolby Digital audio.""With so many new formats featuring Dolby Digital audio, DTV broadcasters, postproduction houses, and DVD authoring facilities are in need of a convenient, rational solution for creating Dolby Digital metadata,"" said Tim Carroll, Product Manager, Professional Products for Dolby Laboratories. ""Thanks to the new Dolby DP570 Multichannel Audio Tool, they will now be able to take full advantage of this vital feature of the Dolby Digital audio coding system.""The DP570 lets producers and DTV broadcasters optimize the presentation quality of their multichannel audio mix, while avoiding any additional encode/decode cycles. The DP570 also provides many useful features that simplify or enhance the creation of multichannel audio programs, including multiple speaker selection, audio channel routing (which eliminates the need for an external router), separate inputs for Dolby Surround ProLogicÆ decoding, and a 5.1-channel monitor configuration.