Dolby Audio in the Browser

You may already be familiar with the premium surround sound audio experience that Dolby delivers regularly to feature films in the cinema and home theater. What you may not realize is that the same high-quality experience is also available on the web through the browser. This includes content delivered in Dolby Digital Plus™ as well as Dolby Atmos®.

Users can now experience the benefits of these audio formats, including improved clarity, loudness, consistency of playback, multichannel surround sound, and the immersive Dolby Atmos experience—all through one of the most common playback methods on the planet: the browser on your laptop or PC. Playback, including Dolby Atmos precise sound rendering from any point in space around or above the listener, can be achieved over any connected headphones* or Dolby Digital Plus or Dolby Atmos enabled receiver connected to the computer via HDMI®.

This site will get you up to speed on how to get your content prepared and delivered in Dolby® format to the browser. Here you will find sections on content preparation (mixing considerations, for example), encoding options, and tools, as well as sample demonstrations and code to host your content for playback on most popular current HTML 5–capable browsers. Check back often for updated articles, sample code, and tools to help you on your way to delivering the optimal entertainment audio experience to your users.

Why Dolby Audio in the Browser?

With Dolby content delivered to the browser, users can now enjoy the best in-browser entertainment experience available. Dolby Digital Plus has emerged as the primary delivery platform for high-quality connected entertainment in the living room. Many of the world’s leading content streaming services use Dolby to deliver stereo, 5.1, and 7.1 content to entertainment devices such as TVs, gaming consoles, tablets, smartphones, PCs, and smart Blu-ray players.

With the emergence of high definition video and the increasing resolution and color fidelity in computing displays, the browser visual experience has improved significantly in recent years—yet the audio experience has not—until now. With Dolby Digital Plus encoded content, supporting browsers allow content creators and developers to build web applications and stream content that take advantage of native browser functionality (i.e. without the need for plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight).

Dolby Digital Plus is available today in Microsoft Edge (Windows 10 and above), Apple Safari 9 on OS X 10.11 (El Capitan and above), and Apple Safari 9 on iOS 9.3 and above.