November 18, 1972
Ray Dolby-Initiator Of
The Silent Revolution
By RICHARD ROBSON
(Tape Editor, Music Week)
Ray Dolby has arguably done more to get the cassette accepted as a serious music system than anybody. With his revolutionary B-type noise reduction circuit, Dolby has transformed the cassette from being a system used primarily for convenience rather than quality to a true hi-fi medium.
His work in the recording field, although less known in the outside world, has been equally acclaimed and the Dolby A-type professional system is now used in 500 studios all over the world.
Dolby first became interested in the problems of excess noise when recording on tape when he joined Ampex in 1949 and worked for the firm during vacations while a high school student. While at Ampex, Dolby in fact built his first noise reduction unit a fairly basic system for a video tape recorder.
After winning a scholarship from Stanford to Cambridge University in 1957, he again began to realize what a limiting factor noise could be when sound recording in his spare time at Cambridge, he used to record a lot of live music on an old Ampex 600 machine he had acquired.
But while at Cambridge, Dolby's first technical love was X-ray micro-analysis and on leaving the university, he went to India for a couple of years, planning to return to London to set up his own laboratory to develop X-ray machines.
Then, toward the end of his stay in India, Dolby hit on the idea of a low-level differential treatment for the noise problem and the germ of the Dolby A-type system had been born.
He returned to London as planned but instead of setting up a laboratory to develop X-ray equipment, immediately started work on a noise reduction unit.
Dress Factory
He said: "I've always, let's say, been a kind of inventor in electronics and I wanted somewhere to develop my own ideas. I opened my first laboratory in May, 1965, in Fulham, in the corner of a dressmaking factory! Even then, I still had the idea of a kind of general purpose laboratory, less strongly focused on the subject of noise reduction. But as the noise reduction system developed and the project blossomed, it became an all-absorbing thing and there just wasn't the time- quite apart from the resources to devote to other ideas such as the X-ray project."
In November, 1965, a prototype A-type unit had been completed and Dolby gave his first demonstration to Decca.
His timing couldn't have been better. Decca had been looking for some form of noise reduction unit and on testing Dolby's system, were so impressed that they subsequently bought Dolby's entire output for five months.
The first batch of units was delivered to the firm in April, 1966, and by the summer of that year, all of Decca's - main recordings were being done with the system.
Recalls Dolby: "Decca was a lucky break for us. They took the view that they were on to something which looked as if it was going to be pretty good and they wanted to keep the news from leaking out. They wanted to get as much recording done as possible before their competitors also had the system."
In fact, Decca even offered to buy Dolby out but the 39-year-old American physicist shrewdly refused and by the end of the summer of 1966, he had given further demonstrations to Pye, EMI and the BBC. Although the initial reaction from these companies was not as good as with Decca, orders soon started flowing in.
In November, 1966, Dolby decided that the time was ripe to try to sell the system in the U.S. so he flew to New York, gave demonstrations to about 15 companies, and returned a fortnight later with orders for 17 units. The firm had got its first foothold in America.
Today, there are more than 500
A-type units in use in studios throughout the world, including virtually every 16-track facility in London. And last September, Do!by unveiled at the Audio Engineering Society Convention in New York, the M16 unit, a third generation unit for multi-track work which the firm claims will substantially reduce the cost of multi-track noise reduction installations.
Two studio equipment manufacturers, 3M and Scully, have even started manufacturing studio recorders with built-in Dolby circuits.
The idea of producing a consumer version of the system--the B-type circuit--hit Dolby in 1967 when he was beginning to make some real headway in America with the professional system. Cassette at that time was virtually unheard of so that the only domestic application for Dolby's system was with consumer open reel units.
Said Dolby: "The publicity that accompanied the introduction of the A-type system in the United States prompted Henry Kloff, then of the KLR Corporation, to phone me from Boston and ask why the same thing couldn't be done for the consumer.
"He came to London and we discussed the whole possibility. Within a few months we developed working circuits which we sent over to KLH. They took out an exclusive license and introduced the first two B-type consumer open reel recorders in 1968 and in1969."
8-Track
Also in 1968, Dolby decided to explore the possibility of applying the system to the 8-track cartridge.
Cassette, he felt at first, would never be accepted as a serious music system because of what appeared to be bad inherent faults such as too low a tape speed, mechanical problems and poor frequency response.
However, when he started working with 8-track he found the endless loop system also had problems although he concedes that at the time he considered them to be ergonomic ones rather than technical. So Dolby once again looked at the cassette system.
He explained: "In
1969, we bought a Wollensack 4700 unit which had just been introduced-it was the first real hi-fi cassette recorder. It had everything we were looking for--heavy duty mechanics, low wow and flutter and a much improved frequency response. We made a lot of improvements to the machine and using the B-type circuit, we found that for the first time we could make direct comparisons between the cassette and the master tape.
"We would flip a switch and be uncertain as to which was which.
That was really exciting. We used this machine throughout 1970 and into '71 to demonstrate to the industry the whole hi-fidelity cassette concept."
Today, Dolby has licensing agreements with virtually every major hardware manufacturer in the world except Philips, some of whom, in addition to marketing decks equipped with the B-type unit, have also introduced add-on Dolby "black boxes" for use in conjunction with existing cassette systems.
On the software side, Dolby started talking to various record companies in 1969 about encoding cassettes and Decca again was the first firm to show interest in the ideas. Decca in fact subsequently became the first company in the U.K. to start releasing B-type cassettes and has now been joined by RCA, which is Dolbyizing all its cassettes, and Precision.
With an eye to the future, Dolby is already looking around for other applications for his noise reduction techniques. He has developed a variation of the B-type system for film soundtracks while in the U.S., and has been experimenting with B-type FM broadcasting. In fact, one way and another, Dolby has made a lot of noise about silence.
