Patent US 4,024,344

In a stereophonic reproduction system, especially for a cinema, a center channel signal is derived by combining left and right channel signals. In order to harden the center image, particularly in speech, the left and right channel signals are compared and, when they include significant amounts of correlated information, the relative gain of the center channel is enhanced by boosting the gain of that channel and/or cutting the gain of the left and right channels. The test for correlation of information is preferably restricted to speech frequencies and the enhancement of relative gain may be performed only at middle frequencies.