4) The DVD appeared in the middle 90s.
5) Using high definition formats to allocate content surround sound producers can do without clipping and sonic compromise.
In the early 1990s, the organization that is responsible for information and communication technologies throughout the world known as the ITU (International Telecommunications Union) conducted research aimed at determining the optimum speaker allocation in a 5.1 arrangement. The research was based mainly on the classical music as source material and the rear speakers were described only as «effects» or «ambience» speakers. As a result, a document entitled «Recommendation for Multichannel Stereophonic Sound System With and Without Accompanying Picture» was issued in 1994. Actually, professionals widely accepted it as a factual industry standard. The ITU Recommendation, however, may not be considered to be perfectly suitable for many music applications, since it came out long before the appearance of modern surround sound mixing methods which treat all the five speakers as equally important.
The 1990s were featured by development and proliferation of digital audio systems. Employment of digital audio for film production was practically becoming a commonplace; the role of digital audio workstations (DAWs) in recording studios all over the world was getting more and more important. There were plans for creating a digital television broadcast system that gradually would mature into High Definition Television (HDTV). Researchers made a focus on embedding surround sound into the second-generation digital audio systems that were growing in number successfully. In that period, at least three major film digital surround sound encoding formats saw the light of the day. These were Sony SDDS >TM, Dolby >R Digital >TM (technically called «AC-3»), and DTS >TM. Moreover, the introduction of laser discs (with their ability to carry encoded surround sound) greatly encouraged advance of a nascent industry known as home theater. People began to add supplementary subwoofers and surround speakers to their home listening sets.
In the mid – 1990s, the DVD was released. It provided the mass public with a medium delivering surround sound right into the comfort of their homes. Audio manufacturers started offering different surround sound tools that whetted the consumer’s appetite for high quality digital multitrack systems and a variety of components such as surround – ready mixing consoles, monitoring units and effects devices have found their way into people’s living rooms as well as into professional studios.