DolbyÆ Digital Developers Now Have Off-The-Shelf Solution In Aureal's A3D 3.0
DolbyÆ Laboratories continues to advance the boundaries of game audio at the Game Developers Conference, held March 10-12, 2000 at the San Jose Convention Center (San Jose, California). The theatre-style demonstration featured ""Messiah,"" by award-winning software developer/publisher Interplay Entertainment. This title was produced in Dolby Digital using Aureal's newly released positional audio Software Development Kit (SDK), A3D 3.0. ""Dolby is committed to helping game developers harness the power of the Dolby Digital standard, bringing multichannel audio to the gaming environment,"" said Dennis Staats, Manager, Technology Marketing, Dolby Laboratories. ""On every major platform, from the Playstation to the PC, Dolby is active in making theatre sound the hallmark of a great game. Dolby Digital helps game developers deliver great soundtracks by acting as a medium for efficiently delivering theatre-quality multichannel audio. By employing Dolby technologies in over 275 titles to create a multichannel experience for gamers and PC enthusiasts, the development community has signaled its desire to compete with film and television on equal footing."" Dolby Digital and A3D Aureal's A3D 3.0, with support for streaming Dolby Digital multichannel audio, allows developers to provide gamers with the Dolby Digital experience by taking full advantage of the latest generation of DVD-ROM drives and multichannel soundcards. In doing so, A3D enables developers to deliver the lush, immersive music and ambiences that can give a soundtrack a cinema-quality finish. Furthermore, this latest version of A3D allows a game title to be recognized by the Dolby Digital decoders in the 14 million DVD-ROM drives in the PC DVD-ROM platform base. ""Messiah"" Award-winning entertainment software publisher Interplay Entertainment Corp. has utilized the new A3D SDK to incorporate Dolby Digital 5.1-channel music and in-game dialog into ""Messiah,"" one of the industry's most highly anticipated releases. Along with full-motion video sequences, ""Messiah"" offers a truly interactive theatre-like sound experience to gamers in a top-flight title. ""Dolby Digital surround sound is the perfect complement to the state-of-the-art look that we've worked so hard to achieve in ëMessiahí,"" says the developer's President, David Perry of Shiny Entertainment. ""The enveloping quality of the multichannel effects in the game is truly remarkable."" About Dolby SurroundÆ Dolby SurroundÆ is the technology that first made home theatre possible. It encodes four sound channels (left, center, right, and surround) onto the tracks of any stereo medium, including console- and PC-based games. The encoded media can be played back over conventional mono or stereo systems, or in full four-channel surround sound over a system that includes a Dolby Surround ProLogicÆ decoder. About Dolby Digital Dolby Digital was introduced in 1992 for cinema sound. Due to its unique combination of audio quality, low data rate, and flexibility, it has since become a specified audio format for DVD-Video discs worldwide, and the audio standard for ATSC digital broadcast TV and SCTE digital cable TV. With new recordable DVD formats, Dolby Digital makes it possible for consumers to record near-CD-quality audio in only one tenth the space required by the audio coding (PCM) used on CDs themselves. About Dolby Laboratories Dolby 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, California with European headquarters in England, the privately held company also has offices in New York; Los Angeles, California; Shanghai and Tokyo.