Audio company Dolby has been a staple of professional theaters, home theaters, and music studios for more than six decades. When it comes to cinematic sound, Dolby is one of the leading audio companies for mixing and mastering the highs and lows of many of our favorite movies and shows. Dolby Cinema and Dolby Digital are just two of the company’s many innovations, but if you want the best audio quality possible, the former is definitely the superior option. This will also require you to get in your car and drive to a Dolby-compatible theater.
Dolby Cinema (DC) is the professional cinematic version of Dolby audio you’ll hear when watching a movie in a DC-certified theater. More of a full brand experience, DC uses Dolby Atmos, an object-based surround sound setup that maps audio both horizontally and vertically. In a DC theater, Atmos speakers are placed along the walls and ceiling, creating an immersive soundstage that engulfs you in three dimensions. But DC Theaters also uses custom theater acoustics to drive Atmos audio, in addition to Dolby Vision HDR laser projection for enhanced visuals.
Dolby Digital is a digital compression format (also called AC-3) that the Dolby company has used since the 1990s. Used for everything from Blu-rays and DVDs to streaming platforms, cable programming and video games, the Dolby Digital format is commonly used to encode audio for 2.0 stereo playback or 5.1 surround sound.
Dolby Digital is just one format, while Dolby Cinema is a complete cinematic experience
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Over time, engineers were able to expand the traditional Dolby Digital codec to add support for additional surround channels and even lossy versions of Dolby Atmos. Formats such as Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) are capable of carrying lossy Atmos metadata as well as their compressed surround sound data. For lossless Atmos playback at home, Dolby TrueHD is the codec you want to use, and you’ll usually find this format supported on UHD Blu-ray discs.
But even the biggest, nicest, and best-sounding DC theaters don’t use Dolby TrueHD; instead, all audio and visual data is written to a digital cinema package (DCP), which is then integrated and processed by professional cinema servers. Dolby TrueHD is simply the best we can do at home with our Atmos soundbars and multi-speaker setups.
You can also expect to pay a little more to watch movies at a Dolby theater. The price difference isn’t astronomical compared to a standard ticket, so it may be worth the extra few dollars if it’s a movie you’ve been dying to see for months or years. Plus, who can deny the next-level comfort of reclining seats and sofas that many Dolby Cinema theaters come with?
