http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pemb...se-35-million-
donation-new/story-28298902-detail/story.html
--
Tony Sayer

tony sayer wrote:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pemb...se-35-million-
donation-new/story-28298902-detail/story.html
--

** A story that was published many times was that Ray Dolby was inspired to invent his noise reduction system while staying in one of the rooms at Pembroke.

Near his room was a chapel which held regular performances of coral music and the like. So Ray installed a mic in the chapel and ran a line back to his room. The sound quality was superb, but when recorded to 1/4 inch tape the playback was spoiled by noise.

This got him thinking ...

His thinking led to Dolby A, which enabled 1mm wide tracks on 2 inch tape to have an acceptable s/n ratio. Then Dolby B & C which improved the s/n of stereo cassettes using 0.6mm track width.

This man saved a lot of tape.


..... Phil

On 08/12/2015 00:46, Phil Allison wrote:
tony sayer wrote:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pemb...se-35-million-
donation-new/story-28298902-detail/story.html
--

** A story that was published many times was that Ray Dolby was inspired to invent his noise reduction system while staying in one of the rooms at Pembroke.

Near his room was a chapel which held regular performances of coral music and the like.

Smoking reef-ers presumably?


--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.

Did he not die some time ago though?

Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
Remember, if you don't like where I post
or what I say, you don't have to
read my posts! :-)
"tony sayer" wrote in message
...

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pemb...se-35-million-
donation-new/story-28298902-detail/story.html
--
Tony Sayer

However trying to make the domestic system sound reasonable without the
dolby crippled the system in my view. BX was far better and did not need the
hx bodges or very special tape. It did need tape with lower noise and low
modulation noise, and just as with Dolby, it could be embarrassed by some
solo piano pieces where one heard the his playing along with the notes.
The setting up of dolby was its downfall as tapes were all over the place
in their sensitivity and headroom crush effects, never mind noise and the
mechanical head alignment caused aberrations which caused pumping effects.
It way after all non linear and frequency dependent.

DBX was linear tough and sounded far better in m y view.
All pretty academic now though I have toyed with the idea of using some
kind of primitive dolby decoder on some old tapes to see if the quality
could be improved for transcription to digital.
Brian

--
From the Sofa of Brian Gaff Reply address is active
Remember, if you don't like where I post
or what I say, you don't have to
read my posts! :-)
"Phil Allison" wrote in message
...
tony sayer wrote:

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Pemb...se-35-million-
donation-new/story-28298902-detail/story.html
--

** A story that was published many times was that Ray Dolby was inspired to
invent his noise reduction system while staying in one of the rooms at
Pembroke.

Near his room was a chapel which held regular performances of coral music
and the like. So Ray installed a mic in the chapel and ran a line back to
his room. The sound quality was superb, but when recorded to 1/4 inch tape
the playback was spoiled by noise.

This got him thinking ...

His thinking led to Dolby A, which enabled 1mm wide tracks on 2 inch tape to
have an acceptable s/n ratio. Then Dolby B & C which improved the s/n of
stereo cassettes using 0.6mm track width.

This man saved a lot of tape.


..... Phil

In article ,
Brian-Gaff wrote:
However trying to make the domestic system sound reasonable without the
dolby crippled the system in my view. BX was far better and did not need
the hx bodges or very special tape. It did need tape with lower noise
and low modulation noise, and just as with Dolby, it could be
embarrassed by some solo piano pieces where one heard the his playing
along with the notes. The setting up of dolby was its downfall as tapes
were all over the place in their sensitivity and headroom crush
effects, never mind noise and the mechanical head alignment caused
aberrations which caused pumping effects.
It way after all non linear and frequency dependent.

The last version of Dolby (pro) was SR, and quite superb. Many didn't like
Dolby A, but SR was fairly universally loved - apart from cost of course.
Had analogue still been in use, I'm sure there would have been a cheaper
version produced.

--
*Organized Crime Is Alive And Well; It's Called Auto Insurance.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 08/12/2015 08:30, Brian-Gaff wrote:
The setting up of dolby was its downfall as tapes were all over the place
in their sensitivity and headroom crush effects,

Our casette deck has a "learn" mode - before doing a recording you tell
it you're going to, and it writes some patterns on the tape and reads
them back to get the best settings.

It's a shame we really want it for all those old recordings we can't get
any more!

Andy

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
The last version of Dolby (pro) was SR, and quite superb.

Yes. SR was excellent.
I remember the first professional model, the 301.
It was a two channel unit in a 6U box with eight plug in cards, and psu.
So NR units for an Ampex 4 track (half inch tape), or a Studer J37
(four tracks on 1") which were "state of the art" in 1965,
filled a half rack. The first units were known as "Stretchers" because
they had the letters SN (Signal to Noise) with a double headed arrow
and the word Stretcher painted in small white silk-screen letters at the
top left of the front panel.

Ray Dolby set up Dolby Labs in 1965 in South London (Streatham IIRC)
They moved to LA in 1the late 70's but still had European HQ in
Soho Square London, and development at Wootton Bassett.

Dolby approached both EMI and Decca, the two major record
companies in the UK with regard to funding. EMI were working
on their own "Compander" at their Hayes facilities, with a project led
by Dr Percival. They were not interested in investment in a rival system.
As far as I know the "Compander" never became available commercially.

Decca promised technical assistance, and field evaluation, making stereo
recordings with two tape machines in parallel, one with and one without
Dolby NR. Decca was the first record company in the UK to buy Dolby
equipment. I recall many of the units had very low serial numbers.

One might get the impression that due to tape noise, recording pre Dolby was
of low technical quality. This is of course not the case. There are many
fine
classical recordings made in the 50s and 60s which are still highly
regarded.
In those days tape speeds of 30ips (76 cm/s) were commonly used for better
HF and lower noise. Some American record companies used the AME
recording curve.

For pop recordings it was common practice to record on four tracks
(Bass and Drums on one track) and the rest of the band across two
tracks, with one left for vocals. Studios with more than one 4 track
machine
recorded four tracks, and then "bounced" these (the technique known as 4 to
4)
to two tracks of a second machine mixing via the console, sometimes
adding new material from mics as they went. The build up of tape noise was a
critical factor, and so the advent of Dolby NR was a great technical
advance.
This 4 to 4 process demanded considerable skill, as each instrument in the
submix had to be at the level at which it will appear in the final mix.
There was no "undo"

Interesting to note that analogue multitrack (typically Studer A80-24 and
Dolby
SR) is still in demand for pop music recording. Tracks are then
transferred to a digital workstation for post and mixing.

It is easy for us, in this digital age, to be critical of earlier
techniques, which were
at the time of their introduction, ground breaking. Duke Ellington whose
first
recordings were made at the very end of the acoustical recording era,
announced
on hearing the playingback of an electrically recorded wax, made at Okeh
Studios
in 1929 that "recording techniques have now reached perfection"
so great was the improvement:-))

Iain