6 SDDS - T he industry's best sounding format
SDDS Print Master Guidelines, Page
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6 SDDS - The industry's best
sounding format
Sony Dynamic Digital Sound
â
(SDDS
â
) is the motion picture
industry's most advanced digital sound format, designed exclusively
for cinema presentation. In developing SDDS, Sony applied decades
of innovative experience in professional and home audio to deliver
the highest quality sound presentation. SDDS has been engineered
to give filmmakers increased creative freedom and ultimately to preserve the integrity of the
master soundtrack. With SDDS, today’s moviegoers can now experience a film's sound
exactly as heard by the director and sound engineers on the mixing stage.
6.1 Hear the Difference
Digital sound has changed the way people see movies. The
clarity and vibrance of SDDS truly heightens the movie going
experience. While other digital formats are limited to the same
5.1 channels as home systems, SDDS provides movie
audiences with up to eight channels of crystal clear discrete
audio. The additional two channels increases sonic detail and headroom adding impact to
the presentation.
6.2 System Basics
SDDS is a sound-on-film format comprised of the SDDS soundtrack, optically printed on
both edges of 35mm film and the SDDS playback hardware – a reader and processor. As
the film is projected, the SDDS soundtrack is scanned, its data is processed, and ultimately
converted into analogue audio signals for the cinema's loudspeakers and amplifiers.
6.3 SDDS Products
Sony manufactures a range of products that fit the
exhibitor's needs. For new cinemas, there is the
DFP-D3000 system that includes analogue and control
functions and can serve as the central processor in any
cinema, also available as an analogue only processor.
For retrofit applications there is the add-on DFP D2500 that simply
adds SDDS to any existing system.
Both systems use the DFP-R3000 Reader to scan the soundtrack.
The reader mounts to the top of any 35MM projector.
6.4 Big Sound for the Big Screen
The days of narrow ‘shoe box’ small screens are over. Today,
the emphasis is on making cinema going an event. There is a
trend towards building, larger, wider screens to maximise the
experience. SDDS enables filmmakers and theatre owners to
fill big auditoriums with six or eight channels of discrete digital
sound through five screen loudspeakers, two surround
channels and a full-frequency sub-woofer channel. The glory
days of 70mm big sound have returned with SDDS. None of the latest home theatre
environments can compete.
