Peter Scheiber

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Peter Scheiber
BornApril 30, 1935
DiedJanuary 18, 2023
Alma mater Oberlin Conservatory of Music
OccupationFounder of Scheiber quadraphonic system

Peter Scheiber was a classically trained musician and audio engineer. He was considered to be the originator of multichannel matrix audio formats, a mathematical formula used to convert four audio channels into two and back again.

Contents

Scheiber was also the inventor of the 360-degree spatial decoder. [1] Like Lou Dorren, Scheiber was an early pioneer of multi-channel sound. [2] It has been written that Scheiber pioneered the surround sound technology that is used in theaters today and referred to as Dolby Surround. [3] [4] [5]

In matrix quadraphonic systems four channels are converted (encoded) down to two channels. These two matrixed channels are recorded onto tape or vinyl record. Reproduction occurs via a two-channel stereo transmission medium - in most cases a vinyl record - these are decoded back to four channels and reproduced via four loudspeakers. [6] [7]

Musician

Scheiber, an Oberlin College music graduate, obtained a full scholarship to study with the first-chair players of the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood. He was 22 years of age when he got to study with Chicago Symphony's first bassoonist. He also played first-chair in the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. During his professional career, he played with the Ottawa Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony orchestras. [8] Around 1977 his bassoon was stolen from the trunk of his car and according to the May 2007 article in Indianapolis Monthly and he never replaced it. Also later being called on to play there would be reasons not to play such as a missing reed or music. [9]

Audio career

Peter Scheiber was born in Croton-on-Hudson in New York in 1935. He grew up in Peekskill. From an early age, passionate about music and technology, he had a workbench in his bedroom for experimenting with his gadgets. He later earned a scholarship at Tanglewood Music Center and played with the Chicago Symphony. Later, as a professional, he was a member of orchestras in Ottawa and Texas. [10]

In 1967 Scheiber, then a 32-year-old bassoonist, came up with the idea of encoding four channels of sound in two channels and decoding them back to four. He sold a patent license to CBS. [11]

Peter Scheiber would eventually take legal action against Dolby Laboratories and Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp for infringement of his patents. [12]

During his career he worked with Jim Fosgate of Fosgate Electronics and Tate surround technology. [13]

As of October 2003, the 68-year-old Sheiber had more or less become a recluse for eight years due to his legal battle with Dolby Laboratories. This was over Dolby's development of a surround sound system for motion picture industry which was based on his invention. After some difficulties, he was able to secure some royalty payments from Dolby and Harman International which lasted from 1983 to late 1994. He received over a million dollars. The companies eventually stopped paying Scheiber as they claimed that the patents had expired and he wasn't due any more money. In June 2002, Seventh Circuit Appeals Judge Richard Posner ruled against him, which was his biggest defeat.

Scheiber was upset that Dolby and others were making millions from the technology he pioneered. [14]

Further reading

Related Research Articles

Sony Dynamic Digital Sound is a cinema sound system developed by Sony, in which compressed digital sound information is recorded on both outer edges of the 35 mm film release print. The system supports up to eight independent channels of sound: five front channels, two surround channels and a single sub-bass channel. The eight channel arrangement is similar to large format film magnetic sound formats such as Cinerama and Cinemiracle. The five front channels are useful for very large cinema auditoriums where the angular distance between center and left/right channels may be considerable. SDDS decoders provide the ability to downmix to fewer channels if required.

Dolby Digital, originally synonymous with Dolby AC-3, is the name for a family of audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. Called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1995, it is lossy compression. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35 mm film prints. It has since also been used for TV broadcast, radio broadcast via satellite, digital video streaming, DVDs, Blu-ray discs and game consoles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quadraphonic sound</span> Four-channel speaker audio

Quadraphonic sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for the reproduction of sound signals that are independent of one another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Surround sound</span> System with loudspeakers that surround the listener

Surround sound is a technique for enriching the fidelity and depth of sound reproduction by using multiple audio channels from speakers that surround the listener. Its first application was in movie theaters. Prior to surround sound, theater sound systems commonly had three screen channels of sound that played from three loudspeakers located in front of the audience. Surround sound adds one or more channels from loudspeakers to the side or behind the listener that are able to create the sensation of sound coming from any horizontal direction around the listener.

Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. The terms Dolby Stereo and LtRt are also used to describe soundtracks that are encoded using this technique.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolby</span> Audio technology company

Dolby Laboratories, Inc. is a British-American technology corporation specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.

Matrix decoding is an audio technology where a small number of discrete audio channels are decoded into a larger number of channels on play back. The channels are generally, but not always, arranged for transmission or recording by an encoder, and decoded for playback by a decoder. The function is to allow multichannel audio, such as quadraphonic sound or surround sound to be encoded in a stereo signal, and thus played back as stereo on stereo equipment, and as surround on surround equipment – this is "compatible" multichannel audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DTS (company)</span> Series of multichannel audio technologies

DTS, Inc. is an American company, DTS company makes multichannel audio technologies for film and video. Based in Calabasas, California, the company introduced its DTS technology in 1993 as a competitor to Dolby Laboratories, incorporating DTS in the film Jurassic Park (1993). The DTS product is used in surround sound formats for both commercial/theatrical and consumer-grade applications. It was known as The Digital Experience until 1995. DTS licenses its technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers.

Dolby Stereo is a sound format made by Dolby Laboratories. It is a unified brand for two completely different basic systems: the Dolby SVA 1976 system used with optical sound tracks on 35mm film, and Dolby Stereo 70mm noise reduction on 6-channel magnetic soundtracks on 70mm prints.

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless, multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories for home video, used principally in Blu-ray Disc and compatible hardware. Dolby TrueHD, along with Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and Dolby AC-4, is one of the intended successors to the Dolby Digital (AC-3) lossy surround format. Dolby TrueHD competes with DTS's DTS-HD Master Audio, another lossless surround sound codec.

MPEG Multichannel, also known as MPEG-2 Backwards Compatible, or MPEG-2 BC, is an extension to the MPEG-1 Layer II audio compression specification, as defined in the MPEG-2 Audio standard which allows it provide up to 5.1-channels of audio. To maintain backwards compatibility with the older 2-channel (stereo) audio specification, it uses a channel matrixing scheme, where the additional channels are mixed into the two backwards compatible channels. Extra information in the data stream contains signals to process extra channels from the matrix.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stereo Quadraphonic</span> Matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system

SQ Quadraphonic was a matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system for vinyl LP records. It was introduced by CBS Records in 1971. Many recordings using this technology were released on LP during the 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Center channel</span> Audio channel

Center channel refers to an audio channel common to many surround sound formats. It is the channel that is mostly, or fully, dedicated to the reproduction of the dialogue of an audiovisual program. The speaker(s) connected to the center channel are placed in the center of and behind the perforated projection screen, to give the effect that sounds from the center channel are coming from the screen. In many home surround sound units, the center channel is positioned above or below the video screen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dolby Headphone</span> Technology developed by Lake Technology

Dolby Headphone is a technology developed by Lake Technology (Australia), that later sold marketing rights to Dolby Laboratories, sometimes referred to as Mobile Surround, which creates a virtual surround sound environment in real-time using any set of two-channel stereo headphones. It takes as input either a 5.1 or a 7.1 channel signal, a Dolby Pro Logic II encoded 2 channel signal or a stereo 2 channel signal. It sends as output a 2 channel stereo signal that includes audio cues intended to place the input channels in a simulated virtual soundstage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jim Fosgate</span> American audio engineer (1937–2022)

James M. Fosgate was an American inventor, engineer and businessman. The self-taught son of a television and radio repairman, Fosgate invented the first car amplifier in 1973 and founded Fosgate Electronics, now called Rockford Fosgate. After his departure from Rockford Fosgate in 1981, Fosgate remained active in the audio world, running Fosgate Laboratories and leading the team that created Dolby Pro Logic II. Fosgate was also the developer of one of the finest quadraphonic decoders, the TATE II 101A (see Stereo Quadraphonic for details), in collaboration with Peter Scheiber and Martin Willcocks, which was superseded by his 3601 decoder.

Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels, allowing sounds to be interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal nor vertical limitations. Following the release of Atmos for the cinema market, a variety of consumer technologies have been released under the Atmos brand, using in-ceiling and up-firing speakers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QS Regular Matrix</span> Matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system developed by Sansui Electric

Quadraphonic Sound was a phase amplitude matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system for phonograph records. The system was based on technology created by Peter Scheiber, but further developed by engineer Ryosuke Ito of Sansui in the early 1970s.

The Hafler circuit is a passive electronics circuit with the aim of getting derived surround sound or ambiophony from regular stereo recordings without using costly electronics. Such circuits are generally known as matrix decoders. The Dynaquad system works using similar principles.

Stereo-4, also known as EV or EV-4, was a matrix 4-channel quadraphonic sound system developed in 1970 by Leonard Feldman and Jon Fixler.

Dolby AC-4 is an audio compression technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. Dolby AC-4 bitstreams can contain audio channels and/or audio objects. Dolby AC-4 has been adopted by the DVB project and standardized by the ETSI.

References

  1. Indianapolis Monthly , May 2007 - Page 103 - Sound Effects by Amy Wimmer Schwarb (See caption "Got them surrounded")
  2. Billboard , May 13, 1972 - Page 72 AES-Quadrasonic Dog Fight * Continued from page 1
  3. The Herald Times, 12 Oct 2003 - Sounding off by Brian Werth
  4. Justia US Law - Peter Scheiber, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Dolby Laboratories, Inc., and Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp., Defendants-appellees, 293 F.3d 1014 (7th Cir. 2002)
  5. Tampa Bay Times, Nov. 2, 2003 - SOUND RECOGNITION By DAVE SCHEIBER
  6. Scheiber, Peter (December 1969). "Toward a More Accurate Spatial Environment". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. AES. 17 (6): 690, 691.
  7. Scheiber, Peter (November 1971). "Analyzing Phase-Amplitude Matrices". Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. AES. 19 (10): 835–839.
  8. Audio Engineering Society, Chicago Section - Meeting Review, October 17, 2006
  9. Indianapolis Monthly, May 2007 - Page 249 Sound Effects by Amy Wimmer Schwarb
  10. Indianapolis Monthly, May 2007 - Page 102, 103 Sound Effects by Amy Wimmer Schwarb
  11. Quad sound, reincarnated. (American inventors making money from Japanese televisions and stereos)
  12. law.justia.com 293 F.3d 1014: Peter Scheiber, Plaintiff-appellant, v. Dolby Laboratories, Inc., and Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corp., Defendants-appellees
  13. The Routledge Guide to Music Technology, By Thom Holmes - Fosgate, James, December 5, 1937-
  14. The Herald Times, 12 Oct 2003 - Sounding off by Brian Werth

https://www.halocremations.com/obituary/peter-scheiber/