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The Historical Evolution of Dolby Laboratory
Dolby Lab was founded by Ray Dolby. He started his career in high school when he worked part-time for Ampex in Redwood City, California. During his college years, he joined the team of Ampex engineers and devoted himself to inventing the world's first practical video recorder. The equipment was introduced by 1956, and his work focuses on the electronic part.

1957 After graduating from Stanford University, Dolby won the Marshall Scholarship and was able to study at Cambridge University in England. After studying in Cambridge for six years, he got a doctorate in physics. Dolby worked in India for two years as a United Nations consultant of the Central Scientific Instrument Organization. 1965, he returned to England and founded his own company-Dolby Laboratories Limited in London. As an American company, the company moved its headquarters to San Francisco on 1976. room

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Dolby Lab was established by Dr Remington Dolby. Dr. Dolby 1933 was born in Portland, Oregon, USA and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. /kloc-when I was 0/6 years old and still in high school, I worked in Ampex company. The company is one of the earliest manufacturers of tape recording equipment in the United States. Later, he was responsible for developing the electronic circuit of the world's first practical video recorder developed by the company.

From 65438 to 0957, Dolby graduated from Stanford University and received Marshall Scholarship from Cambridge University in England to study long-wave X-rays. 196 1 year received a doctorate in physics. 1963 was appointed by the United Nations as a consultant to India for two years.

As an amateur recording enthusiast, Dr. Dolby has realized for many years that when recording audio or video signals on tape, background noise will damage the recording quality. While in India, he began to seriously think about how to reduce the noise without damaging the recording quality. These explorations have become the basis of Dolby A noise reduction, B noise reduction and C noise reduction systems.

1965 After returning to England, he set up his own laboratory in London to realize the plan he thought of when he was in India. 1968 established a company named "Dolby Lab". Although the work center was in Britain 10 years before the company was established, it has always been an American company. After 1976, the main work of the company was transferred to San Francisco.

1965, the first Dolby A noise reducer (A stands for audio) came out. The design of the system can be aimed at a variety of audio noise reduction applications, especially to solve the noise generated by the recorder when recording the master tape in the recording studio. By 1966, several noise reduction technologies have been developed, but all of them have damaged the recording quality to some extent. Therefore, the difficulty faced by Dr. Dolby at that time was how to convince the industry and potential customers of his technology. At that time, multi-track recorders were used, from track 4, track 8, 16 to track 24. When multi-channel recording tapes are mixed, the noise level of the mixed dual-channel master tape is much higher than that of the dual-channel direct recording master tape.

19665438+1October, the British department of Decaux Records Company thought that Dolby A noise reducer could really work as described by Dr. Dolby, so it ordered nine Dolby A30 1A noise reducers, which were first used to record some Mozart piano concertos played by Askin Nazi in Vienna in May1966. 1966165438+1October, Deka published the first record recorded with Dolby A noise reducer-Mahler's Second Symphony conducted by Stie.

Subsequently, the recording industry began to recognize and widely use Dolby A noise reduction system. At first, it was only used to record classical music. After the popularization of multi-track recording technology, its application is more extensive. Soon, professionals and non-professionals all over the world began to associate Dolby with high-quality recording.

With the increasing demand for applying the noise reduction technology invented by Dolby to civil tape recorders, at the urging of KLH, an American commercial tape recorder manufacturer, Dolby Laboratories began to develop a more practical civil noise reduction technology in April 1967, which was originally called "Simplified Dolby System" and later became the well-known Dolby B noise reduction technology. When the development of Dolby B noise reduction technology was nearing completion, Dr. Dolby decided that Dolby Laboratories would not produce civil audio products or consumer electronic products, but would license Dolby's technology to manufacturers, and then mature manufacturers would apply for production. By the end of 1974, Dolby Laboratories had 47 authorized manufacturers, including all major manufacturers of consumer audio equipment.

Since then, Dolby Laboratories has developed a series of technologies: C-type noise reduction, SR (spectrum recording), S-type noise reduction, HXPro, Dolby stereo, Dolby surround, Dolby directional logic, AC- 1, AC-2, dolby digital (AC-3) and Dolby E, which are widely used in professional and civil audio equipment, film recording, cinema playback equipment and Dolby E.

In addition to its headquarters in San Francisco, Dolby Laboratories has set up branches or liaison offices all over the world: Los Angeles, Wootton Bath (UK), London, Brisbane, new york, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. Dolby's first technology developed during the company's initial establishment is called Dolby noise reduction technology. This is a complex new audio compression and expansion technology, which can greatly reduce the inherent background hiss of professional tape recording without obvious side effects on recording materials. Although the system has many new ideas, it only processes soft signals, but retains loudness signals that can naturally shield unprocessed noise, and divides the spectrum into multiple segments to prevent the inherent pulsation (noise modulation) of traditional broadband expanders.

Dolby made his first system, mainly to promote this product to record companies. It is this decision that largely laid the foundation for Dolby Laboratories' high global turnover today: using the company's own factory to manufacture professional audio products. Among other features, no side effect is the difference between Dolby noise reduction technology and previous noise reduction technology, which has won it a place in various recording and film sound production institutions around the world.

Although at first glance, noise reduction (NR) seems to be a small invention with limited application, it has a profound impact on the audio industry. For example, multi-track recording technology flourished in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the only reason was Dolby A noise reduction technology. Without it, the combination of narrow tracks will produce very loud tape noise, and the result of multi-track mixing is unacceptable. When this technology is applied to consumer formats and movie audio, its impact is equally far-reaching.