Nearly everytime we visited the cinema, we see a great big “Dolby Digital” logo before any movie – all the work of one man who revolutionalised the way we experience music and cinema – Ray Dolby. The founder of Dolby Laboratories, and ‘inventor of surround sound’ died last week at the venerable age of 80. He started off as an young American engineer, who decided to found Dolby Laboratories in 1965 with a meagre staff of 4 – but it would soon grow – because soon after the Labs conception, Dolby invented 2 products that would change sound forever – the Dolby Sound System and the Dolby Noise Reduction System.

The Sound System became their premier product, and NR became his foremost invention – it, as he said, reduced the “hissing” noise that was generally associated with cassette recording at the time. His company went from strength, inventing surround sound and Dolby Digital cinema (which was introduced first with the movie Star Wars Episode III) – that have filtered into and transformed our lives unbelievably. The audio wizard was diagnosed with leukaemia and passed away on 12th September.