I agree with Ted. Dolby is a "process" (they themselves called it a "process" in numerous marketing 
materials), really it's a compressor and band-filter and expander. So it's just another piece of 
outboard equipment. I think a musician or producer that has access to a real-deal good-working-order 
Pultec EQ unit or Fairchild compressor would never use a "plug-in" instead. Modelling is only so 
good, it's modelling instead of actual hardware. The sound is bound to be different, by varying 
degrees (good modelling = slight differences due to slightly different performance characteristics 
in the real world; poor modelling = little resemblence to the real thing). Dolby made and makes good 
hardware, when used properly it's fine to run a source through a Dolby unit, the result will sound 
better than un-decoded.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ted Kendall" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 11, 2012 4:03 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Dolby Plugin


> On 10/01/2012 21:51, Richard L. Hess wrote:
>> Hi, Louis,
>>
>> Your wishes are the same as the rest of us...but I'm afraid you'll have to hold your nose and go 
>> out to the outboard Dolby A unit and then back into digital.
>>
>> I wish I were wrong, but Dolby has been pretty insistent that they don't want to do this.
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> On 2012-01-10 3:14 PM, Louis Hone wrote:
>>> Greetings
>>>
>>> A client brought me a WAV file which is a direct transfer from a quarter
>>> inch tape (1980). The tape had a full set of tones (15 K, 10 K, 1K, 100,
>>> 50, and Dolby A warble tone) and these tones are in the WAV file. The
>>> original tape was Dolby A encoded and the WAV file has not been decoded. I
>>> know that whoever did the transfer, adjusted the azimuth, as well as high
>>> and low frequency EQ prior to the transfer. However, no Dolby A unit was
>>> available so the tape remains encoded. My question: is there a Dolby A
>>> plugin that can be used in ProTools ? I wish to avoid going back to the
>>> analog domain (and through a Dolby A unit) and back to digital in order to
>>> decode this file.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>>
>>> Louis Hone
>>>
>>
> What's the problem with going through analogue? Transparent conversion has been available for some 
> time now, and the vagaries of modelling would be far more likely to cause problems than another 
> stage of conversion.
>