Mondo Knows Facts
Dolby Digital brought 5.1 surround to cinemas
Batman Returns carried the first six-channel digital film prints in 1992 Dolby Digital stored its audio as AC-3 data on the film itself, in the space between the sprocket holes, and read it with a scanner inside the projector. The six channels were left, centre, right, two surrounds and a low-frequency channel. The system later became the standard for DVD. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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Surround sound adds channels behind the listenerFive point one means three front channels, two rear and a bass channelDolby Atmos treats sounds as movable objectsThe mix stores a position for each sound rather than assigning it a speakerQuadraphonic sound collapsed after a format warFour-channel records arrived with three incompatible ways of decoding themDolby B made cassette hiss bearableThe 1968 system raised quiet treble when recording and lowered it on playbackSurround sound uses six separate channelsFive full-range channels plus a low-frequency channel carry the mixDolby Stereo put four channels on an optical trackThe 1977 release of Star Wars helped make the format widespread
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Tags: surround, cinema, dolby
Dolby Digital brought 5.1 surround to cinemas: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Batman Returns carried the first six-channel digital film prints in 1992. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a music fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.