Ray's name was already music to sophisticated ears. His Dolby Noise Reduction System has over the years improved reproduction in recording studios, FM stations, tape systems and home receivers. This latest breakthrough, which brings theaters their most faithful stereo yet, "is a huge step forward in the movie business," asserts Star Wars' creator of special sound effects Ben Burtt. So far some 600 movie houses have installed Dolby systems (at an equipment cost of $4,500 to $8,000), and Dolby conversions are approaching 100 per month. "Cinema sound had changed little since the 1930s," says the inventor. "Today's generation was brought up on high fidelity and they want something better." Pre-Dolby, film and audio tracks were prepared separately and put together later—a process that was costly and, worse, often caused projectors to wear out. Dolby's innovation was to print the sound track optically via tiny black lines on the film.
The Portland, Oreg.-born Dolby began his search for better sound as a doctoral student in physics at Cambridge University. While trying to record concerts in a chapel, he grew annoyed with the hissing on his tapes. The solution was his noise reduction system, an electronic method of muffling tape static and other unwanted background sounds. In 1965 Dolby returned stateside to sell his product (he has now refined it to a transistor chip the size of a fingernail) and in a fortnight collected $35,000 in orders.
The son of a real estate salesman who is himself "an inveterate tinkerer," Dolby got his B.S. at Stanford. Now he shares a home overlooking the Golden Gate with his German-born wife, Dagmar, and sons Thomas, 3, and David, 10 months. He commutes by Honda cycle ("a very quiet one") to Dolby Laboratories, Inc., which is based in a handsomely converted pickle factory. With a branch office in London, president Dolby has 125 other employees but, purposely, no other stockholders. "I enjoy sitting, thinking and reading the latest journals," he says. "I haven't a board of directors on my back to produce profits." That allows him to spend 20 percent of his time monkeying on new projects—which will doubtless sell despite his reluctance to advertise. "Certain things," he explains, "just happen naturally, like sex or alcohol. People will find out about them and use them."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
