In the past month Dolby has scooped up several key people that I know from various places such as Avid, Adobe, Intel and even Boeing. I've no idea what's in the fire but I can't remember any company in recent history going after so much high-end talent from such varied sources in such a short period of time.

I've never followed Dolby nor know anyone there - (well, actually I know several now!) but it's clear they're either gearing up for something big or, they've just accomplished a major housecleaning. Either way it's interesting to witness this kind of activity.

Maybe they're gearing up for the battle of the century - Digital Home Theatre 3D

Maybe they've discovered how to reduce hiss in cassette tapes.

Dolby huh? You don't say... could be that they're developing a new weapon that uses nothing but pure science to blind the enemy.

Or maybe they've finally figured out how to fix that annoying doppler-pitch change when something approaches then passes you. You know, maybe a cochlear implant or bionic ear thingy.

No wait, I totally got it: They're designing a "whining woman" filter! I'd pay money for that!

Maybe having top notch staffers is cheaper than hiring consultants to work on the ability of a new 3D sound system being being integrated in to the current set of leading post-production tools?

Andrew

Maybe they've discovered how to reduce hiss in cassette tapes.

lmao! my first car was an '84 Mazda RX-7, 5 speed with a turbo II engine swap. it had a dolby cassette deck and a 10 band equalizer. i had a ton of cassettes that i could not find on CD. after i replaced the speakers and cleaned the heads, i realized playing with the equalizer did a MUCH better job of cleaning up the hiss compared to the dolby whatever-button.

i have a lot of home theatre equipment, and i cannot tell a difference between DTS or Dolby Digital or 44.1 or 96k or what have you.

its probably a new proprietary standard with no perceptible change in audible performance, just like 90% of their licensed technologies already.

From vague memory I think the Dolby noise reduction technology boosted the higher pitched tones at the time of recording to tape. Upon playback they were suppressed, thus also suppressing the hiss that you would normally hear from the tape ... effectively getting a better signal to noise ratio out of the medium.

Apart from compression technologies, it beats me what they are doing these days. (Disclaimer: I haven't looked at their web site recently.)

Andrew