Matthew Sweet discovers the life, work and legacy of Ray Dolby, whose pioneering innovations in sound revolutionised the way we experience music and movies.

Matthew Sweet goes in search of Ray Dolby, the extraordinary inventor whose Dolby Noise Reduction system revolutionised recorded sound, transformed the cinema experience, and whose company, Dolby Laboratories, celebrates its 60th birthday in 2025.

To hear the programme with elements in binaural sound, listen with headphones on BBC Sounds to experience some of it in a 3D soundscape with a sense of space and distance.

Matthew talks to some of the people who knew Dolby best, including his widow Dagmar and two of his earliest employees, sound engineers David Robinson and Ioan Allen (who still works for Dolby Laboratories 60 years on), and to veteran Hollywood sound designer and director Midge Costin about the transformative impact Noise Reduction had on cinema, from its earliest use in the 1970s on Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and George Lucas’s Star Wars, to the subsequent development of digital and surround sound. He visits the Dolby studios in Soho, London, to be immersed in Dolby’s legacy, the latest cutting-edge technological developments in sound and vision, and gets to grips with the technology that Dolby pioneered. The famous double-D logo was ubiquitous on domestic cassette tapes throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s - but what actually is Noise Reduction, and how does it work? This programme reveals all.

Producer: Graham Rogers

The programme includes short audio clips from:
Brief Encounter (1945) dir. David Lean
Star Wars (1977) dir. George Lucas
Days of Thunder (1990) dir. Tony Scott

Paul Simon's Political Storm

Monstrous Regiment