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Dolby Digital Surround EX - Dolby® Digital Surround EX™ provides a third surround channel on Dolby
Digital movie soundtracks. The third surround channel can be decoded at the cinema's or home viewer's
option for playback over surround speakers located behind the seating area. The left and right surround
channels are reproduced by surround speakers to the sides. To maintain compatibility, the back surround
channel is matrix-encoded onto the left and right surround channels of an otherwise conventional 5.1 mix, so
no information is lost when the film is played in conventional 5.1.
A 5.1-channel soundtrack can be played on a 5.1-speaker system. But it is not always understood that it can
also be played on a 6.1- or a 7.1-speaker system. To do this, the two surround signals on the 5.1 soundtrack
are spread across the three or four surround speakers. This distribution can be accomplished by a Dolby
Digital EX decoder, or other proprietary methods provided in home theater equipment by various manufac-
turers.
Dolby Pro Logic II - Pro Logic II brings exciting features and advanced performance for decoding the many
thousands of existing Dolby Surround programs, making them sound more like a discrete Dolby Digital 5.1-
channel version than ever before. Pro Logic II is able to decode the thousands of existing Dolby Surround
movies and TV shows already on the shelf, compatibly, and with enhanced image stability. The improvements
in decoding techniques mean that the discreteness of the sound field elements are better preserved in the
decoding process than was possible with the standard Pro Logic technology. Pro Logic II offers a music mode
to expand stereo non-matrix recordings into a five-channel layout in a way that does not diminish the subtlety
and integrity of the original stereo recordings.
Dolby Pro Logic IIx - Dolby Pro Logic IIx is a new extension of Dolby Pro Logic II technology. This highly
sophisticated algorithm processes native stereo audio signals and 5.1-channel multi-channel content to
produce 6.1 or 7.1 output channels. Dolby Pro Logic IIx expands the choice in playback system configuration
(allowing 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 playback channels) and, when incorporated into an A/V receiver or processor such
as B&K, it allows a convenient upgrade path from a traditional 5.1-channel sound system to 7.1 output
channels. The two surround back channels are decoded into stereo.
Center width - The Center Width control allows the user to modify the amount of steering that is
applied to Center signals. As steering is reduced, the Center signal originates increasingly from the Left and
Right speakers, and is concurrently reduced in the Center speaker. The purpose of the Center Width control
is to reduce the “hard Center channel” phenomenon that sometimes results from Center signal steering of
stereo encoded soundtracks.
Panorama - The function of the Panorama mode is to create a more enveloping front surround field. It
is equally useful when applied to Dolby Pro Logic IIx processing.
Movie or Music - Surround programs are primarily movie based. Even TV dramas are essentially
mixed like movies. When programs are mixed in surround, they are monitored through the surround decoder
that will be used for playback in the cinema or home. Movie mode is the reference decoder mode for any
such surround-encoded program.
Music, on the other hand, is commonly mixed for stereo playback, and no surround monitoring is done by the
mixer. When played back through a surround decoder, the results may not always be optimal. This is
because a movie-type decoder is expecting a signal that has been deliberately surround encoded. Music
mode brings the benefits of a highly natural and balanced multichannel surround sound field to content that
was not specifically encoded for surround playback.
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