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It's super unclear to me why Dolby keeps being the ones to do basic things. What is underneath the marketting gloss? It feels like we are all paying a lot for h

It's super unclear to me why Dolby keeps being the ones to do basic things. What is underneath the marketting gloss? It feels like we are all paying a lot for high bit depth, paying a lot for multi-channel audio. I have never understood how or why it is that expensive proprietary codecs keep taking over. Maybe there is more value add somewhere, but it's very unclear, esepcially under the gloss of (usually deeply non technical) marketting fluff.

52-6F-62 4y ago
They invented a lot of this stuff first, some of the preliminary work going back decades. It's not a secret. It predates digital audio. There's nothing stopping open source digital codecs from ruling, but they need people working for them. Personally, I'd rather pay dollars than data.
anigbrowl 4y ago
Partly marketing and licensing deals with studios - they do market very heavily. But they did pretty much invent the whole surround sound thing as we know it today, as well as a host of other realtime audio processing technologies. They're kinda the luxury mattress company of theatrical audio - it's expensive, but once you get it installed it's really nice to have. When I did audio production in the film industry, Dolby stuff was a post production expense but not e very big one. Their license fees aren't staggeringly expensive, and the quality and reliability of the playback system was its own argument - if the Dolby 5.1 sounds right in one theater it's going to sound right in another, and that's a big deal because bad sound can really kill a movie, even if the audience can't articulate why (most people don't think too much about sound). Digidesign (the manufacturers of Pro Tools & later owners of Avid) are a far more aggressive company that has maintained a virtual lock on its market with a combination of very expensive hardware and moat-building strategies.
izacus 4y ago
Don't underestimate existing business relations and contracts. The format you're using is the format that your TV/soundbar/tablet support. There's only a few manufacturers of those and they have decades of business relationship with Dolby. Breaking those proprietary realtionships with open source has always been a losing battle - look at HEVC vs. VP9 vs. AV1 battles or AptX vs. AAC vs. Opus. Media industry is a surprisingly tight knit and very conservative club that doesn't adopt outsiders easily.
UltraViolence 4y ago
Like DTS HD Master Audio (which is basically HiRes PCM) and Dolby TrueHD (which too is basically HiRes PCM)? We're basically paying for an alternative WAV or FLAC format.

52-6F-62 4y ago

They invented a lot of this stuff first, some of the preliminary work going back decades. It's not a secret. It predates digital audio. There's nothing stopping open source digital codecs from ruling, but they need people working for them. Personally, I'd rather pay dollars than data.

anigbrowl 4y ago

Partly marketing and licensing deals with studios - they do market very heavily. But they did pretty much invent the whole surround sound thing as we know it today, as well as a host of other realtime audio processing technologies. They're kinda the luxury mattress company of theatrical audio - it's expensive, but once you get it installed it's really nice to have. When I did audio production in the film industry, Dolby stuff was a post production expense but not e very big one. Their license fees aren't staggeringly expensive, and the quality and reliability of the playback system was its own argument - if the Dolby 5.1 sounds right in one theater it's going to sound right in another, and that's a big deal because bad sound can really kill a movie, even if the audience can't articulate why (most people don't think too much about sound). Digidesign (the manufacturers of Pro Tools & later owners of Avid) are a far more aggressive company that has maintained a virtual lock on its market with a combination of very expensive hardware and moat-building strategies.

izacus 4y ago

Don't underestimate existing business relations and contracts. The format you're using is the format that your TV/soundbar/tablet support. There's only a few manufacturers of those and they have decades of business relationship with Dolby. Breaking those proprietary realtionships with open source has always been a losing battle - look at HEVC vs. VP9 vs. AV1 battles or AptX vs. AAC vs. Opus. Media industry is a surprisingly tight knit and very conservative club that doesn't adopt outsiders easily.

UltraViolence 4y ago

Like DTS HD Master Audio (which is basically HiRes PCM) and Dolby TrueHD (which too is basically HiRes PCM)? We're basically paying for an alternative WAV or FLAC format.