DTS celebrated another banner year, with the vast majority of the most popular Blu-rays of 2011 packing a DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, including the record-breaking release of the Star Wars Blu-ray sets, with their four-star 6.1-channel tracks. At a private press event in Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show, the audio mavens kept that momentum going, hosting an all-star panel of producers, engineers, mixers and more, exploring the advances made in recent years and also the challenges consumers and the industry stll face despite technology that is better than ever. Scott Wilkinson of Home Theater Magazine was the moderator for the evening, himself an accomplished musician with a keen appreciation of that these guys do.
The special guests included avant-garde musician and sound designer Diego Stocco, whose film work includes Sherlock Holmes; the legendary Alan Parsons who learned his craft at Abbey Road Studios and went on to produce Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here for Pink Floyd, among other classic records; the passionate, hard-working Avila Brothers; multiple Grammy winner Elliot Scheiner, soon to being mixing the feature film adaptation of Rock of Ages starring Tom Cruise; and the wildly successful team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
Scheiner said that one of the greatest challenges DTS continues to face is simply getting consumers to appreciate how much the sound matters, not just in music but in movie and home theater applications. To that end, DTS also unveiled a new print ad campaign that highlights the importance of the sound across a variety of film genres. Alan Parsons reflected upon his storied career, including the early days of "surround," namely Quadrophonic mixes on vinyl, a far cry from DTS' state-of-the-art 11.1-channel configuration.
Not coincidentally, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have recently completed mixing a Boyz II Men reunion project in the 11.1 format. All in attendance agreed that the challenge of the modern listening trend is not only the compressed quality of digital audio codes such as MP3 but also the loss of the shared listening experience, when people used to gather to listen to a new record or to watch a movie. That's another perk of a home theater presentation, the ability to share entertainment with family and friends.
Jam and Lewis also took the opportunity to introduce a new act that they discovered on YouTube and have since begun mentoring, the endearing young Roney Boys, who entertained the crowd with a song followed by two encores. The Roney Boys performed at the DTS booth as well, and the celebrity guests offered their own live presentations for attendees behind closed doors in the rockin' multichannel demo suite on the show floor. As expected, the lines were daunting.
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