About Digital Sound and Digital Cinema

Digital Sound and Digital Cinema

Glenbrook Cinema is equipped with Digital Cinema Projection systems. Film has been replaced with digital files that are played back by a computerized server. All Digital Cinema Projection systems output sound digitally, whether it is one channel or up to 12 channels, as allowed by the Digital Cinema specification.

The sound is compressed losslessly, which means that there is no compression used that removes any of the original sound that was produced in the studio.

Digital Sound
All sound that you hear during a Digital Cinema presentation is stored and delivered digitally. The traditional, expected format is 5.1 channels (3 front, 2 surround, 1 subwoofer).

7.1 Channel Digital Sound
Glenbrook Cinema is also equipped with 7.1 channel sound for those movies that are so encoded. It splits the traditional two surround channels into four, so you now have two side surround channels (left and right) as well as two rear channels (left and right). This allows for more localization of sounds as they pan behind the listener and can help when action flies overhead, since the sound can move from in front of you to behind you, causing your brain to fill in the gap above you (to a certain extent).

This sound format does not have an official designation. It is marketed by Dolby Labs as Dolby Surround 7.1, even though no Dolby-specific technology or equipment is involved in the process, except for the Dolby CP750 processor in Glenbrook’s case.