The death of Dolby.

[StanleyB]

I read this morning that Ray Dolby has passed away. Those of us old enough to remember the cassette recorder would recognize the name. His noise reduction invention was controversial to say the least. After the demise of the big C he branched into other forms or audio manipulation, none of them that I considered to be any good. Two channel stereo is still far superior.

[Rare Bird]

Thats sad to hear..

I personally never used dolby

[walpurgis]

Sad to hear that. He was a clever guy.

Although I hated the way the various Dolby formats sounded with tape.

[Marco]

Yup, sad news. Yet another of our audio pioneers and genuine innovators leaves us. There are less and less of them now, the likes of which we will ever see again... :(

Marco.

[JazzBones]

Yup, sad news. Yet another of our audio pioneers and genuine innovators leaves us. There are less and less of them now, the likes of which we will ever see again... :(

Marco.

Have we reached the stage where machines will invent other machines yet especially in our beloved field of Audio?

[StuN]

Very sad, he made the humble cassette viable as a music medium and transformed cinema audio. Sadly missed.

[Lodgesound]

Ray Dolby was also one of the 5 Ampex engineers who invented the world's first practical video recording machine - Quadruplex was the industry standard from 1955 when it was invented until 1981.

[Thing Fish]

I heard he went quietly.

[Stubies]

He was a household word when i grew up.

Dolby B and C made our cassettes listenable!

[Cotlake]

I read this morning that Ray Dolby has passed away. Those of us old enough to remember the cassette recorder would recognize the name. His noise reduction invention was controversial to say the least. After the demise of the big C he branched into other forms or audio manipulation, none of them that I considered to be any good. Two channel stereo is still far superior.

I agree that his noise reduction for cassette had dubious results, particularly with music that did not have very extended treble. I rarely used Dolby when recording on cassette as I found the so called hiss reduction compressed the top end and generally supressed the sound dynamics. Having said that, the quality of tape used made a big difference and the better the quality, the less likely need to bring in his filter.

He did go on to make some significant impact to the quality of cinema theatre sound that we all benefit from if we visit that media.

[Lodgesound]

Dolby type A and later SR noise reduction systems were the industry standard for analogue magnetic tape on both audio and video recorders.

Both gave incredible results - SR especially although it came just too late as digital audio recording was really taking off by then (1986).

Most of your finest vinyl records originate from Dolby A encoded quarter and half inch tape masters. Even at 15 ips analogue tape was considered far too noisy to be used without it - 30 ips carried far too many LF response irregularities to be used in final stage mastering to disc.

The domestic B and C versions were whoppingly stripped down versions of these complex systems and I agree could have more of a detrimental effect on tape recordings made in the home.

[Clive197]

While Ray Dolby may have passed on, his name lives on in the form of Dolby Labs.