'Pirates of the Caribbean,' 'Kung Fu Panda 2' to Use Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound

LAS VEGAS -- Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 2, Disney/Pixar’s Cars 2 and Paramount’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon are among the upcoming movies that will use Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound, which will be highlighted this week at CinemaCon.

Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 3 was the first Dolby 7.1 release. Since the June 2010 launch, more than 1,300 global installations of Dolby Surround 7.1 have been conducted. Disney’s Tron: Legacy was a recent Dolby 7.1 release.

The format is aimed at improving the spatial dimension of soundtracks and enhancing audio definition.

Enabling content creators to mix in a discrete 7.1 format, Dolby Surround 7.1 provides four surround zones to better orchestrate audio channels in a movie theater environment. The four surround zones incorporate the traditional left surround and right surround with new back surround left and back surround right zones.

In total, the Dolby Surround 7.1 format comprises eight channels of audio with a channel layout of left, center, right, low-frequency effects, left surround, right surround, back surround left and back surround right.

It was recently announced that Dolby Surround 7.1 is being used for Ramesh Sippy Entertainment's Dum Maaro Dum, to be released April 22 in India. In addition, Lord of the Dance 3D in the United States, U.K. and Ireland and a theatrical mix of Torrente 4 in Spain was available in Dolby Surround 7.1.