Perspecta Sound Test Film

Posted by movieman1966 on March 6, 2013 at 8:43 am

Comments (5)

movieman1966
movieman1966 on March 6, 2013 at 9:25 am

Perspecta Sound was an attempt at a stereo-like sound process on film which was invented in 1954 and was supported by major studios like Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

The Perspecta Sound process was not a true stereophonic sound process but actually took sounds that were recorded at certain tones and levels and distributed them along the left, center, and right speakers through the Perspecta Sound processor, thus creating a pseudo-stereo effect from a mono sound source, which was beneficial for theaters that did not want to install new sound heads on projectors in order to take advantage of the stereophonic sound that was available with FOX’s CinemaScope and other widescreen film processes, making Perspecta Sound a cost effective substitute for stereophonic sound, which the only major cost was the processor inself.

Unfortunately, Perspecta Sound was short lived, and fell out of grace with studios in 1958.

Jon Lidolt
Jon Lidolt on March 9, 2013 at 10:26 am

I think it was fortunate that Perspecta Sound was short-lived. It had the same limited frequency range as the standard optical track of the time and didn’t reproduce audio in three dimensional stereo. So what was the point?

RickB
RickB on March 9, 2013 at 3:59 pm

What movies are those clips taken from?

RustyNitrate
RustyNitrate on September 9, 2017 at 12:29 am

The three sample film clips used in this test reel are from the following feature films: 1. Female on the Beach (Universal International, 1955) 2. Alaska Seas (Paramount, 1954) 3. Executive Suite (MGM, 1954)

sguttag
sguttag on November 10, 2018 at 12:22 pm

Looks like the video got blocked.

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