Surround sound: how close is the revolution? - television sound production

Post, Oct, 2002 by David John Farinella

The "surround sound is coming" cry has been resounding throughout the post community for years now. It was going to revolutionize how consumers watched television, how mixers would work and even how some programming was recorded. Yet, half a decade later the percentage of shows, or even advertisements for that matter, broadcast in surround is minimal.

Those in the pro surround camp point to a number of promising facts. There's the boom in the number of consumers who have bought home theaters to take advantage of 5.1 surround capabilities, the explosion of the DVD market (so much so, that the future of VHS tape is dim) and the ever looming FCC mandate for digital broadcasts by the year 2006.

After all, surround has been the theater standard for the past 10 years and it's sure to spread from the silver screen to the small screen, right?

On the other hand, many post facilities that have already built surround-capable rooms, purchased all the requisite gear and hired experienced mixers only to sit on their hands. The call for surround broadcast is not there, they say, because consumers have not started to demand it. Not only that, the delivery requirements have yet to be finalized, so it's almost like putting the proverbial cart before the horse.

Dolby, one of the leading suppliers of surround technology, is understandably bullish on the state of the surround market. Tom Daily, marketing director, professional audio at Dolby, points out that demand for surround has grown from feature films to television to videogames, and it doesn't look like that demand is going to slow any time soon. "It takes awhile to get the whole infrastructure set up, but we expect to see in the next year or two all the major broadcasters having regular programming with 5.1 and able to accept commercials for 5.1 playback."

Daily has heard from facilities that are still waiting. "I think a lot of [facilities] expected it to be a big new source of income as a way to charge for additional revenue," he says. "Except for the real high-end customers, it hasn't been the cash cow they were hoping for."

The good news for mixers, Daily reports, is that moving to 5.1 should be a snap. "As far as the mixing talent, if they have worked with Dolby Surround Pro Logic, the old LCRS to create LTRT, when they move to 5.1 it's not a huge leap in terms of time it takes to mix," he says. "But the bang for it is much more powerful than it ever was with Pro Logic. Creatives can make their presentations much more entertaining and much more involving then they ever could before."

One of the reasons Daily is so bullish on 5.1 is because of the inevitable FCC requirements for digital television and the buzz around local TV stations. "They are getting much more serious about their planning, so what that tells me -- for the facilities that are staying state of the art -- is that when their local stations can accept higher quality advertisements and higher quality local content, they'll be putting it on the air," he states.

Another reason Daily is looking forward is that many producers of TV series are archiving their shows in 5.1 for the future. "If you're doing something today that people are going to be watching three or five years from now, you definitely want to do a 5.1 mix -- even just to put it on the shelf," he says. "Trying to go back three years from now and do that mix when the show comes out in syndication, or when there's a use for it in the future, is going to be a nightmare."

So what do audio post studios think?

SYNC SOUND

Ken Hahn. co-owner of NYC's Sync Sound (www.syncsound.com) sees good things in the surround market because of the popularity of DVDs and the fact that Sync Sound is delivering some television programs in 5.1 -- some for use overseas. Sync Sound first got involved with surround through mixing features and high-end projects, so the company was in early enough where they didn't have to make a huge investment to do 5.1 for television. However, Hahn didn't believe it would take this long for broadcast surround to happen. "We did gear up for things we thought were going to happen sooner and we were really beating the drum," he says. "Inevitably not much happened, but now it's pretty regular. The high-end programs that we do, you don't even have to sell it because someone has already sold them on it."

One of the keys of the work Sync Sound has done in surround is to make sure it's believable, especially for a retrospective show.

"That's become an art in itself, [taking] the audio from 20 to 30 years ago into performance stuff for today and making all that work in a way that people find entertaining, as opposed to distracting," Hahn explains. "If it's black and white footage of this old blues player sitting on a park bench -- that's not 5.1 You need the sound to sound like the picture."

So far, Hahn reports, clients still perceive surround work as an additional service and cost, and not yet the standard. "To be able to say that something has a 5.1 mix is a bonus, but they don't necessarily want to pay a lot more for getting it. That's part of the challenge of doing these things. The experience that I've had is that the more involved the client's are, the more they realize what they are getting, and the next time they're more enthusiastic about trying to budget for it."