Dolby Labs Relocating to Bigger Office in Burbank

BURBANK — Dolby Labs, a leading provider of sound systems for movie theaters, is relocating from the Hollywood office building it has occupied for six years to a bigger facility in Burbank near the major studios.

The privately held company said it is spending $6.5 million to purchase and upgrade a 21,000-square-foot office building on Alameda Avenue and Hollywood Way, near Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. and NBC.

Dolby occupies a 7,000-square-foot office building on Barham Boulevard in Hollywood. The move to Burbank is scheduled for September, company officials said.

David Gray, vice president of Hollywood Film Production for Dolby, said the new space will allow the company to accommodate a staff that has doubled in size to 30 people since the mid-1990s.

The new facility also will give Dolby more space to show off new products while staying close to its customers in the music and movie industries, Gray said.

“Not only can we offer the industry larger screening facilities here, but it allows us to test in an acoustic space that is closer to a real theater,” he said.

Company officials say the new building will expand their ability to produce in-house demo materials, host industry screenings and other functions as well as to test, repair and market their products, Gray said.

One feature of the new facility is a state-of-the-art 100-seat floating theater, acoustically isolated from the rest of the building. It will allow the company to showcase its new digital sound technologies.

A pioneer in noise-reduction technology for audio systems, Dolby is headquartered in San Francisco but maintains offices in Los Angeles, New York City, Shanghai, Tokyo and England.

The company’s Los Angeles presence dates to 1977, when it began marketing its Dolby stereo technology to the entertainment industry, mainly for use in feature films, Gray said.

Dolby rents equipment on a per-film basis to movie makers for film soundtracks. It also profits on the back end by manufacturing and selling sound equipment to theater owners.

Major competitors in the theater sound business include Sony Dynamic Digital Sound, Digital Theater Systems and Lucasfilm THX, the company founded by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. Nearly 26,600 theaters worldwide are equipped with Dolby Digital technology, and another 4,605 use Dolby Digital Surround EX systems.

Gray said the company is working to expand its reach in Digital Video Disc, High Definition Television and the Internet.