"Ultra Stereo" Sound Format?

[Jim Cassedy]

Next week, I'm running a print of a 1987 flick from the Universal Studios vault.
It's in archival condition- - on acetate stock, & it's never been platterized, so it's got zero splices.
(woo hoo!) - - but I'm a bit perplexed about the sound format.
The on-screen sound credit & optical track info indicate that it's "Recorded In Ultra-Stereo" ®
So, obviously, it's in stereo, but what format on my CP-650 do I play back in?
Should I use "Dolby A", or what?
THANKS

"ACTUAL PHOTOS!"
UltraStereo_Credit.jpg

UltraStereo_Trk.jpg

(. . and just for more format fun, in another month or two I'll be running abuncha 70mm mag sound stuff)

[Frank Cox]

The first theatre I worked in had Ultra Stereo.

As far as I recall, it's just Dolby A without paying the license fee.

So Dolby A is the setting you want.

[Randy Stankey]

I remember being told the same thing. If you don't have Ultra Stereo, use Dolby A.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Ultra Stereo was USL's (Ultra Stereo Lab's) development and it was developed to be compatible with Dolby A. According to USL, their own decoders offered improved chanel separation compared to Dolby's processors.

Since the format could be used without paying royalties to Dolby, it was a pretty popular format in the second half of the 1980s.

[Steve Guttag]

Ultra Stereo's NR was "compatible" with Dolby-A so that would be the proper selection. I wouldn't call Ultra Stereo encoding "popular." One of its "bigger" titles was Cobra. I had a tee-shirt that listed all of the Ultra-Stereo movies at that time...it was a who-isn't-who of "B" flicks...mostly slasher/low-rent horror stuff. The very people not too interested in getting the Dolby license. As to Ultra-Stereo improving on Dolby...believe what you want. Just know, when they mixed the movie and determined the channel and frequency response results, they didn't monitor it on the Ultra stuff...so any change you make isn't an improvement, it is an altering. Then again, those that were buying JS series processors were doing so for cost, (or possibly availability), so precise playback was likely not the primary concern.

[Gordon McLeod]

It was Dolby A (aka 04) we had for many years two UltraStereo encoders here in Toronto and a fair number of French Language titles were mixed with them and I know the used the USL for decode as well
Also I remember seeing Ultra*Stereo on some Hindi titles as well

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Their encoding was also used on 1421 U.S. made films as well. The last one appears to have been mixed in the late 90's. Harold may know more about this. Also note that the USL Type A noise reduction was in reality 3-1/2 bands, not 4. . The list is here:

[Jim Cassedy]

Thanks, all- - Dolby A would have been my guess, but I wanted to get some opinions.
There was a gap in the mid 1980's where I worked in TV production & as an AC on some
low budget flix, so I missed out on the Ultra-Stereo era. I do have a working USL decoder
frame in my collection of filmstuff, but I wasn't going to hook it up for a one-night show.

[Steve Guttag]

3-1/2? Genuine Dolby-A was sort of like that. It had four companders where band 4 overlapped band 3 rather than 4 completely non-interacting bands.

[Geoff Jones]

I've got a message for you, and you're not going to like it.

So awesome that Alamo is showing this on their biggest screen in SF. Here in Colorado, they've got it on small screens not worth leaving home for, as usual.

(And selling more tickets than the new releases that are on the biggest screens, as usual.)

[Jon Dent]

mostly slasher/low-rent horror stuff.

How dare you say that about the original "Cube"!

[Steve Guttag]

There were actually some high-brow titles in there...The Player being one. But, by and large, the bulk of Ultra*Stereo releases were "thrifty" features that seemed to favor horror/slasher movies.

[Brad Miller]

Ultra Stereo vs Dolby processors at a theater.
Pepsi vs Coke products at a restaurant.

It's the same thing. Just cheap owners cutting corners everywhere they can, not worrying about quality or customer satisfaction, only about counting pennies.

[Harold Hallikainen]

Their encoding was also used on 1421 U.S. made films as well. The last one appears to have been mixed in the late 90's. Harold may know more about this. Also note that the USL Type A noise reduction was in reality 3-1/2 bands, not 4. . The list is here:

I didn't start at USL until 2007, though I did a little contract work before that (on the JSD-80). So I know almost nothing about the film encoding system. But, there were lots of movie posters around the office for movies using Ultra Stereo sound.

Harold

[Marcel Birgelen]

There were actually some high-brow titles in there...The Player being one. But, by and large, the bulk of Ultra*Stereo releases were "thrifty" features that seemed to favor horror/slasher movies.

The Player was mostly independently financed and produced and not backed by any major studio. I guess the big studios wanted to have the Dolby logo on the poster.

I guess that Ultra Stereo is one of the alternative "formats" that actually made some ground, especially because it was compatible with Dolby A. Even USL is still somewhat around in some shape or form, as part of QSC... That's more than most other alternative audio formats and their sponsoring companies can claim.