10.2 Surround Sound

10.2 Surround Sound

10.2 is the surround sound format developed by THX creator Tomlinson Holman of TMH Labs and University of Southern California (schools of Cinematic Arts and Engineering). Developed along with Chris Kyriakakis of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, 10.2 refers to the format's slogan: "Twice as good as 5.1". However, there actually may be 14 discrete channels if the left and right point surround channels are included. 10.2 is considered by Holman to be "the next feasible step" in surround sound, but certainly not the end. He states that 5.1, a name which he himself came up with in 1987, was chosen as it was "the MINIMUM number of channels necessary to give a sense of spaciousness". Holman and others state that higher sampling rates, which is a recent trend in digital recording, does not have a significant perceivable effect and that the next frontier in sound engineering is to increase the number of discrete channels to meet human spatial sound perception.