Surround sound

Surround sound is a technique for enriching the sound reproduction quality of an audio source with additional audio channels from speakers that surround the listener (surround channels). Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to surround sound, standard theater sound systems had three "screen channels" of sound, emitted by loudspeakers located only in front of the audience: at the left, center, and right. Surround sound adds one or more channels from loudspeakers behind the listener, thus is able to create the sensation of sound coming from any horizontal direction 360° about the listener. The most common surround sound specification, the ITUs 5.1 standard, calls for 6 speakers: Center (C) in front of the listener, Left (L) and Right (R) at angles of 60° on either side of the center, and Left Surround (LS) and Right Surround (RS) at angles of 100 - 120°, plus a subwoofer whose position is not critical.

Surround sound is characterized by a listener location or sweet spot where the audio effects work best, and presents a fixed or forward perspective of the sound field to the listener at this location. The technique enhances the perception of sound spatialization by exploiting sound localization; a listener's ability to identify the location or origin of a detected sound in direction and distance. Typically this is achieved by using multiple discrete audio channels routed to an array of loudspeakers.

There are various surround sound based formats and techniques, varying in reproduction and recording methods along with the number and positioning of additional channels.

Though cinema and soundtracks represent the major uses of surround techniques, its scope of application is broader than that as surround sound permits creation of an audio-environment for all sorts of purposes. Multichannel audio techniques may be used to reproduce contents as varied as music, speech, natural or synthetic sounds for cinema, television, broadcasting, or computers. In terms of music content for example, a live performance may use multichannel techniques in the context of an open-air concert, of a musical theatre or for broadcasting; for a film specific techniques are adapted to movie theater, or to home (e.g. home cinema systems). The narrative space is also a content that can be enhanced through multichannel techniques. This applies mainly to cinema narratives, for example the speech of the characters of a film, but may also be applied to plays for theatre, to a conference, or to integrate voice-based comments in an archeological site or monument. For example, an exhibition may be enhanced with topical ambient sound of water, birds, train or machine noise. Topical natural sounds may also be used in educational applications. Other fields of application include video game consoles, personal computers and other platforms. In such applications, the content would typically be synthetic noise produced by the computer device in interaction with its user. Significant work has also been done using surround sound for enhanced situation awareness in military and public safety applications.

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