The centennial issue of MIT's Technology Review lists the century's top 10 man-machine interfaces. Leading the list is the loudspeaker, a technology that came on the scene during the first 15 years of the century. But for all its fine-tuning and enhancements, the loudspeaker, which has evolved into today's sophisticated sound systems, has retained the same functionality, serving as the "remote lips and acoustic box" of a live or recorded event, albeit with a fidelity that always falls short of the actual performance.
No matter how sophisticated recording electronics has become, to date it just hasn't cut it for audiophiles who want to experience being "immersed" in the sound of their favorite performance.
Now comes DVD-Audio, whose standards are in the process of being hammered out, with the potential of enabling the listener to "be there" as he or she listens to Motley Crue's latest hit recorded in a studio or Berlioz's "Te Deum" recorded live in a cathedral.
This newest "surround sound," which is familiar to movie theater audiences, is about to become the latest rage in home theaters and, soon after, in DVD machines. Panasonic's DVD-A7 has built-in decoders for both the Dolby Digital and DTS surround-sound formats. When you play DVD-Video disks encoded with Dolby Digital or DTS sound tracks, the decoder processes the six channels of audio information (left, right, center, left-surround, right-surround and low-frequency effects) for output to a receiver with six-channel discrete inputs. Add surround-sound speakers, and you'll find yourself enveloped in the thrilling sound of a movie theater-right in your own home.
Of course, you would need to throw away your computer or stereo set and buy one that would allow you to hook up to five speakers-center, left, right, along with a "surround left" and a "surround right" set up somewhere behind the listener. It's a safe bet that the vast majority of households won't be capable of providing the space for this so-called 5.1 format playback.
What is needed is a wireless connection from the DVD player to a single revolutionary surround-sound speaker encased in a hexagonal package that could double as a coffee table in the middle of the room. That may not be possible today, but it would definitely bring the immersion experience to a mass audience.
I'm afraid that any other interim solution, whether it be a home theater with five top-of-the-line speakers, or stereo headphones faking the surround-sound experience, would just be another extension of the man-machine interface invented some 85 years ago.
Nicolas Mokhoff is Editor, Special Issues, at EE Times and Executive Producer of EDTN Tech Zones.
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