Making Stereo Fit

"Making Stereo Fit reveals the fascinating long history of surround sound in American cinema. Making a major contribution to histories of film sound, Eric Dienstfrey’s elegant synthesis of his meticulous research establishes how the dynamic tension of innovation and fit to norms has been central to film sound design from the early sound period to the present."—Helen Hanson, author of Hollywood Soundscapes: Film Sound Style, Craft and Production in the Classical Era

"Combining archival research with descriptive acoustic analysis—all while embedded in a context of U.S. film technologies in economic flux—Dienstfrey provides a compelling guide to the historic innovations and creative reinventions that have come to define the art, aesthetics, and science of cinema sound."—Miranda Banks, author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild

"A deeply researched history of technological decision-making that offers rich and provocative reconsiderations of important films, this outstanding book will shape many future conversations about the development of stereophonic expression and cinematic sound. More than any book in recent memory, Making Stereo Fit explains how movies came to sound the way they do."—Neil Verma, author of Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama

"Making Stereo Fit illuminates the possibilities and challenges that three-dimensional sound presented to inventors, filmmakers, studios, exhibitors, and audiences. Dienstfrey’s absorbing history makes audible the industrial, economic, and aesthetic forces that shaped—and limited—stereo’s dynamic role in film history."—Nathan Platte, author of Making Music in Selznick’s Hollywood