Fantasia & The Birth of Surround Sound

Just over 80 years ago, Walt Disney and Leopold Stokowski started a collaboration that birthed a brand new way of listening to a composition. It was their partnership in the making of the animation great ‘Fantasia’ that sparked the idea for multi channel playback, which forms the basic principle of surround sound.

Stokowski was a classical music conductor, later known as the founder of the American Symphony Orchestra, who was pushing forward with experimental stereo recordings throughout the 1920s and ‘30’s. This push was mainly inspired by the lack of high fidelity radio broadcasting technology available at the time. Around this same time, Leopold had approached Dr. Harvey Fletcher, a physicist and Director of Research at a company called Bell Laboratories, and had begun seeking new ways to improve the quality of transmission. During a meeting with Walt Disney, Stokowski suggested that Disney studios contact the sound engineers at Bell Labs. Bell Labs at the time had been working on a multi channel stereo recording technology (this is all before tape recording was available in the U.S. by the way so they did this all on optical sound tracks which they had to get developed before overdubbing wow), which Walt was delightfully interested in. He thought that during the movies ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ scene, it would be remarkable if the audience could not only localize the bumblebee on the screen, but localize the bee’s sound source within the auditorium. Thus, surround sound technology was born. Interestingly enough, the bumblebee scene never made it to the final cut of the movie, yet from the cutting room floor, an industry was conceived.

With the release of ‘Fantasia’ in 1941, Disney also released a surround sound speaker system for sale to cinemas. The ‘Fantasound’ multichannel system was the first version of the standard 5.1 surround sound we know and love today, featuring front left, front center, front right, rear left and rear right channels. These channels were split among 54 speakers which were placed around the auditorium. This project had planned to be rolled out to cinemas on a widespread basis, although the necessary equipment required to reproduce ‘Fantasound’ was far too costly. With the high end version of the system coming in at $85,000, only two cinemas ended up featuring the first ever commercial surround sound playback system. Disney also released versions of the system that offered a slightly more competitive price at $45,000, although these systems failed to implement surround sound technology. When tape recording technology became more widespread in the U.S. (almost a decade later), multichannel surround sound systems became much less complex and expensive to replicate. Cinemas also adopted the newer widescreen format during the 1950’s, which required the extra front speakers to spread across the length of the screen. 5.1 surround sound technology has since become far more affordable and has led to incredible advancements in playback technology such as Dolby Atmos, boasting a 7.1.4 channel system.

During the production of the Fantasound system, Disney engineers also invented multitrack recording, overdubbing and pan potting. These processes at the time were breaking ground in the audio industry, and influenced the recording techniques of music producers from the 1950’s to current date. Fantasia is a great example of the experimental nature of sound recording and playback during one of its more infantile stages. From the outtakes of an 1940’s animated movie came the startup of a whole industry which is now implemented in most cinemas worldwide. Thanks Disney.

References

Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 Speaker Setup. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.dolby.com/us/en/guide/dolby-atmos-speaker-setup/7-1-4-setups.html

HOLMAN, T. (2017). SURROUND SOUND. [S.l.]: CRC PRESS.

Leopold Stokowski (Conductor, Arranger) - Short Biography. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Stokowski-Leopold.htm

Miller, M. (2018). The History of Surround Sound | Surround Sound in the Movies | InformIT. Retrieved from http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=337317

Stokowski, Harvey Fletcher, and the Bell Labs Experimental Recordings. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.stokowski.org/Harvey_Fletcher_and_Bell_Labs_Stereo.htm