Talk:Ray Dolby

Directing
What film(s) did Ray Dolby direct? I don't find him listed as a director at IMDB. His biography (linked to this article) also doesn't mention this. Zarathus73 (talk) 23:02, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I removed it for now, if a references is found it can added back. – ukexpat (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Spouse Dagmar's maiden name
If anyone could track down Ray's wife Dagmar's maiden name, I would appreciate it. They married in Germany in 1966 and I've come across the name Baumert, but cannot confirm that is what it is. Thanks. —  Wylie pedia  00:20, 13 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This site confirms that, but is in Dutch so you may need to use Google Translate or similar. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:58, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Error concerning today's announcement
I am conflicted so I cannot edit but the gift was the largest ever gift to an Oxford or Cambridge College. It was not the largest ever gift to Cambridge University (which was made by Bill Gates). This is consistently reported per my wording. Please correct. The gift was also denominated in UKP (£35m exactly) not in dollars, but that is widely misreported. --BozMo talk 11:06, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

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Relationship with Nakamichi: A Personal Remembrance
By the time I joined Nakamichi in 1975, the company was already in a symbiotic relationship with Dolby Laboratories. Although Nakamichi had overcome "impossible" technical hurdles with the Compact Cassette, the one thing they couldn't do on their own was noise reduction. Dolby had the breakthrough NR technology but needed to work with a manufacturer with bleeding-edge mechatronics and magnetic head technologies. Both Etsuro Nakamichi and Ray Dolby were visionaries who were convinced that the Compact Cassette could become a high-fidelity portable music medium, reaching masses far beyond the dictation-quality market at which the inventor Philips originally took aim. It was the combination of Nakamichi and Dolby that convinced Philips the cassette could become something big.1

Although the Nakamichi brand had just been established shortly before I was hired, the company had been in the OEM manufacturing business for some time, making products (mainly tape decks) for brands like Fisher, Harmon Kardon, KLH, Advent, and others. Other than Advent and KLH, most of them were not interested in signing a license agreement with Dolby Labs. It was E. Nakamichi who personally sold the system to Japanese competitors like Sony (including Aiwa), Panasonic, Pioneer, Denon, Hitachi, etc.2 He did it because he understood that the Dolby system had to become a worldwide standard in order for his own business to succeed. If those competitors had splintered off to do their own things, there would have been no standard, and history would have been different.

Not surprisingly, E. Nakamichi and Ray Dolby developed a close personal relationship, as well. At the first opportunity, Mr. Nakamichi had me meet Dr. Dolby, and I immediately understood why these two guys thought the world of each other. In the ensuing years, Ray and I met at events like conventions and shows, and I liaised with his technical people fairly regularly for product development and PR messaging. After I left Nakamichi, we stayed in touch. If I ever needed to borrow some pro Dolby gear -- for example, to encode the sound track of a multimedia show with Dolby Surround -- I'd just pick up the phone and call him. The gear would be at my doorstep in a couple of days.

When Mr. Nakamichi died, Ray and I were devastated, of course, and we commiserated. When Ray Dolby died a few years ago, I was deeply saddened and regretted not having done a better job of staying in touch. I know this sounds trite, but he really was one of the nicest guys I ever met -- a true gentleman.

Big licensing bucks? You bet. That was and is Dolby's thing. Although they dabbled in manufacturing some pro gear for the recording and film industries, their main thing has been licensing. Not everything was a success (remember Dolby FM?), but on the whole they've been super smart about parlaying their technologies. Few people realize that the very thing that made Dolby noise reduction a success -- a deep understanding of human psychoacoustics (especially auditory masking) gained through extensive experimentation -- lies at the root of modern perceptual coding. It's given us not only Dolby's own AC-3 (the codec underlying Dolby Digital and its progeny) but also stuff like MP3, DTS, WMA... It's all about tricking the brain so that it appears you're getting something for nothing -- more dynamic range from an inherently noisy medium or more high-quality content through data pipes of limited bandwidth.

Harron K. Appleman

1Henry Kloss must also be recognized as a visionary in this endeavor.

2JVC was an initial holdout as they attempted to get around Dolby B-type licensing with their own ANRS circuitry. They eventually came around because they lost patent infringement cases and consumers wanted the "real thing." The thing that made it all work was Dolby's brilliant "sliding band" technology, and there was just no getting around it.

HKA (talk) 16:12, 7 October 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your personal reminiscences. If you can find third-party reliable sources, some of this information could also be added to the article. If not, your contribution here in Talk will still be appreciated by at least some Wikipedia editors. Reify-tech (talk) 18:57, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

^^^ what he said. thank you so much for this, mr Appleman. I wish there was more information about dale dolby; he seems to have been the engineering genius of the two; while ray was undoubtedly a fine engineer himself, he was a greater businessman, & realised that the licensing model would get his company's name onto more products than any amount of manufacture.

duncanrmi (talk) 02:09, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Jan 17, 2023: Dolby papers donated to Stanford Silicon Valley Archives
Stumbled on this announcement:

January 17, 2023, Sound pioneer Ray Dolby’s personal papers are donated to Stanford Libraries’ Silicon Valley Archives

NB: the announcement ends with, "The Ray Dolby Papers are not yet available for research. Interested scholars should contact the Silicon Valley Archives to learn more." Looks like that is still the case as of this writing.

--CmdrDan (talk) 15:25, 14 April 2023 (UTC)