Leaky Pipeline: The fight that revolutionized cinema sound

The invention of digital audio for film

The podcast episode explores the story of Elizabeth Loughan and Pascal Shedeville, who developed a system to create high-quality digital audio tracks for films. They realized that the traditional analog audio printed on 35mm film could degrade over time, leading to poor sound quality. So they devised a method to store digital audio separately on a high-capacity CD and synchronize it with timecodes printed on the film. The system involved using a buffer memory to ensure that the audio stayed in sync with the film projection. Despite facing competition from giants like Kodak and Dolby, Elizabeth fought for her patent and successfully negotiated with DTS, another major digital audio company. Eventually, DTS bought the patent from Elsie Concept, marking a significant achievement in the field of digital audio for film.