Dolby Warble tone?? Anyone?

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2002 10:40 am

I have a post job that has delivery specs including a "Dolby Warble tone" Smile

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2002 1:32 pm

Maybe they mean pink noise. That's what gets used in the process of calibrating theatre speaker systems to specs.

"Dolby warble tone"... sheesh, never heard that one before.

Cheers,
Andrei

Posted: Sun Mar 24, 2002 10:45 pm

Dolby Tone would be used and needed if YOU were recording to a Dolby source. It is a function of Dolby alignment for the USER of Dolby, which is not you.

I would not worry about it.
Are you doing the final dub mix? Or are you giving them music elements for them to mix with dialog and sound effects?

Pink noise was used in the post houses for record/playback alignment. It was a good idea actually, as you could see the recording alignment condition of the whole spectrum of frequencies instead of a few centered frequencies.

Rebel Pebbles? Were you in the band with Jackie R.?

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2002 1:22 am

I mixed and layed back to Digibeta. No Dolby there! Wink

These specs for "Dolby Warble Tone" could be outdated, I'll check with the client and see if they really need it.

Jackie R. ?? don't know this person. :confused:

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2002 7:09 am

The Dolby warble tone I know refers to the Dolby A line up tone which was a 1khz tone with a cyclic dip in it. When played back on 24 track it 'warbled' as the dips in the tones were asynchronous on each channel.

I hope this help. You can contact me directly at <franko@fxgroup.net> if you like for more info.

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2002 10:20 am

FX is correct. The "Dolby Warble Tone" is output from a Dolby-A module, and recorded on a Dolby-A encoded analog master...

On playback, this tone is used to align the Dolby module, thus applying the correct degree of expansion to the material on tape, and allowing the noise reduction to sound as natural as possible...

Worked great as long as the engineers at both the tracking and mixing studios knew how to work with Dolby-A...In my experience this was often not the case, as I had to master many projects that were not properly encoded...

I am quite surprised that a current project still requires the Dolby-A warble tone; didn't it become obsolete around 1986, when Dolby SR came out?

best of luck,

SC

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2002 9:09 pm

Hi all! Anybody get an affirmative on this, the reason I ask is that the center channel information, even a straight 2 channel stereo layback, may have an adverse effect on surround systems, in particular, the center channel, the warble may allow a broadcast tech or dub tech to adjust it if it is too dominant.
Just a thought,
--Rick

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