Ray Dolby: Audio innovator

By Mike Snider, USA TODAY

It's not as if Ray Dolby isn't already a household name. His technology, usually with his surname, is part of nearly every music cassette and cassette recorder, prerecorded videotape and, most recently, DVD movie disc and player. Now the legendary 67-year-old inventor, whose name has become synonymous with superior sound — not only in homes, but in movie theaters and recording studios — is ready to take on the Net.

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The future of digitally distributed music is far from resolved, but his Dolby Labs hopes to one-up the popular MP3 and Windows Media formats, used to transfer music files across the Net, with its own system, called Advanced Audio Coding.

Created with AT&T, Sony and the Fraunhofer Institute (one of the original developers of MP3), AAC claims to compress music more efficiently — using smaller, more easily transmitted files while retaining higher quality — than other formats. The format is attractive to music labels (BMG and Universal have chosen it) because it allows copy protection and surround sound.

"We think it is the best available (format)," Dolby says.

The musical landscape has grown beyond the days of LPs and cassettes, but Dolby sees analogies to the pre-digital days of analog. While top-quality music formats such as DVD Audio are starting to appear, many listeners will be satisfied with less extravagant formats that are easy to download and shift to portable devices, he says. "People will enjoy music by whatever method they choose. You can enjoy music if you have an expensive sound system in your living room or if you have a transistor radio next to you while you're shaving."

When the topic is sound quality, few people carry more authority than Dolby. While in high school and college, he was part of the team that created the first videotape recorder in 1956. Less than a decade later, he invented a system to eliminate much of the hiss and noise from audiotape, making the music cassette a mass-market item.

That breakthrough began a long history of sound advances in music, video and movies for Dolby Laboratories, founded in London but based in San Francisco since 1976. More than 850 million Dolby-licensed products have been sold worldwide. More than 29,000 movie theaters show films in Dolby Digital Surround Sound. In the past couple of years, more than 8 million Dolby Digital home theater receivers have been sold.

Company chairman Dolby has received an Oscar, an Emmy and a Grammy for his work. President Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Technology in 1997. "Anyone who goes to the movies, in theaters or at home, benefits from Dolby technology," says Ken Pohlmann, author of Principles of Digital Audio .

Dolby, who hopes to retire soon, is focused on keeping his company, with annual revenue of $120 million, relevant in the digital era. Dolby created the standard for digital TV sound and moved to license surround-sound technologies for PCs and PC games. "It is a very dynamic environment in which we operate. You have to adapt and change with the times," he says. "Two decades ago, digital technology was very expensive. Now it's gotten very, very cheap."

Recently, he began offering employees stock options for a possible public offering. No official decision has been made.