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Post by lrobertson on Oct 3, 2019 8:39:41 GMT -5
Yes but some of us try to provide technical links rather than thinking we could speak out of authority. I thought these discussions were to increase our knowledge not to try to shut down discussion. It shouldn’t be this hard for us to admit when we’re wrong and misunderstood something. I’m not trying to be an attack dog like we see here if there is disagreement.
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Post by mgbpuff on Oct 3, 2019 8:46:55 GMT -5
Yes but some of us try to provide technical links rather than thinking we could speak out of authority. I thought these discussions were to increase our knowledge not to try to shut down discussion. Well technical link yourself to death and mix them all up as you usually do. Netflix info is not Dolby info, is not DTS info, but you mix all of this up and even invent your own technical data on top of it all.
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 3, 2019 8:49:02 GMT -5
Yes but some of us try to provide technical links rather than thinking we could speak out of authority. I thought these discussions were to increase our knowledge not to try to shut down discussion. Well technical link yourself to death and mix them all up as you usually do. Netflix info is not Dolby info, is not DTS info, but you mix all of this up and even invent your own technical data. www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-for-the-home-theater.pdfThis one mentions 9.1 bed channels. Could you be wrong? Could I? Sure. They mentioned cinema. I’d have to run through the mixing pdf for home audio but this goes along with how Keith explained it in the past. That specific speakers can be selected for playback outside of the norm. Not just xyz based objects. That’s how I read it. I’ll try to not attack you for it and just provide some documentation to support what I’m saying. We don’t have to lash out you know. I try to keep my ego out of these things. In the end it seems foolish to argue over things that don’t very much matter for us end users. The times I get in most trouble on these forums is when I refer hearsay from non official sources. Then I find out what someone says doesn’t hold water.
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 3, 2019 9:27:18 GMT -5
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Post by mgbpuff on Oct 3, 2019 9:47:17 GMT -5
Fist of all the article to which you refer is not a technical documentation, but is a white paper which tries to reduce the mathematical and program intricacies inherent in technical documents for a common audience understanding. It does say that cinema mixes contain up to 9.1 beds, but it does not explain if those are non object coded channels or if they are agreed upon blocks of object encoded sounds fixed to 9.1 (oh, lets drop the .1 sub channel for these discussions)locations for the purpose of simplification for theater installations that preexisted before immersive sound. Atmos for Home only has 7 max fixed channels - that's a fact. So yo may or may not get sound in wides because wides are considered as object coded apeakers only (however a given mixer can do just about any thing he wants with wides, you just cannot count on wides being specifically programmed for channel type information, but it can be. Object sound is not aimed at specific speakers, but the renderer uses the locally available speakers in conjunction with each other to pinpoint a sound in a specific x.y.z or a moving x.y.z location.
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Post by TDifEQ on Oct 3, 2019 9:48:14 GMT -5
Nice .pdf. Any idea why RMC-1 cannot have Middle Heights, only Middle Tops in 9.1.6 config? Top middle overhead is the language used on the pdf. Probably just confusion over the language but all the same. And about DTS it is both the source material and the decoding ability that is the problem right now. With Pro we will have the decoding ability for wides and the ability to apply neural:x for wides for old content but we won’t have old content that has object info encoded for wides. The old content is very similar to pinned Atmos. The difference though from Atmos is DTS will allow us to apply neural:x upmixing to DTS:X where Atmos isn’t meant to be touched or manipulated by the DSU. I’m hoping that changes and we can apply neural:x to Atmos for at the very least the pinned movies. And if Emotiva did have a proprietary upmixer hopefully it can pick up that outboard dsp task that goozoo mentioned to add some wide content for envelopment and whatever other speakers sit between the bed channels. With RMC-1, tops and heights are distinct and different speakers ... positioned at different locations. See attached speaker layout grabbed from www.hometheatershack.com/forums/system-setup-connection/127977-atmos-track-explained-7-1-vs-5-1-2-a.html
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Post by mgbpuff on Oct 3, 2019 9:50:46 GMT -5
Now that's a nice reference. Thanks. It will take some time to peruse through.
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 3, 2019 9:57:34 GMT -5
Now that's a nice reference. Thanks. It will take some time to peruse through. Page 160 says Atmos can be re rendered up to a 9.1.6 format. I think think this is basically pinned 9.1.6. I don’t know. I’m not trying to argue. It does feel like semantics when I’m reading through all this. I feel like the mixers have a lot of tools to fall back on but that doesn’t mean they utilize them all or ever will. I’m sure industry standards will always be priority for how it’s chosen to be done. Pg. 239-244 indicated tracks 1-10 are for 7.1.2 beds as default and 11-128 are set as objects by default but the format is able to be changed from this default to beds with tracks 11-128. The “bed reveal triangle” that shows up on all 11-128 input options on the right is the method I think. We could theoretically figure out if the full range music on John Wick 3 in the wides is an object or technically a bed channel sound. You could turn the wide speakers off and see if it affects the adjacent speakers as they’d have to image that sound. If it doesn’t have an affect it’s probably a bed assignment. I only point this out because it seemed odd for an object to be full range music with static xyz. They seem better suited for panning sound effects.
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 3, 2019 10:15:31 GMT -5
Top middle overhead is the language used on the pdf. Probably just confusion over the language but all the same. And about DTS it is both the source material and the decoding ability that is the problem right now. With Pro we will have the decoding ability for wides and the ability to apply neural:x for wides for old content but we won’t have old content that has object info encoded for wides. The old content is very similar to pinned Atmos. The difference though from Atmos is DTS will allow us to apply neural:x upmixing to DTS:X where Atmos isn’t meant to be touched or manipulated by the DSU. I’m hoping that changes and we can apply neural:x to Atmos for at the very least the pinned movies. And if Emotiva did have a proprietary upmixer hopefully it can pick up that outboard dsp task that goozoo mentioned to add some wide content for envelopment and whatever other speakers sit between the bed channels. With RMC-1, tops and heights are distinct and different speakers ... positioned at different locations. See attached speaker layout grabbed from www.hometheatershack.com/forums/system-setup-connection/127977-atmos-track-explained-7-1-vs-5-1-2-a.html View AttachmentI think I misunderstood. There are two 9.1.6 layouts. One with the front and back heights mounted on the wall and the other with the front and back heights on the ceiling. I think the wall setup gives better backwards compatibility with an Auro setup and some people may prefer it for mounting speakers. Dolby has some PDFs on their website for both. Is this what you were asking?
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Post by TDifEQ on Oct 3, 2019 11:52:36 GMT -5
I think I misunderstood. There are two 9.1.6 layouts. One with the front and back heights mounted on the wall and the other with the front and back heights on the ceiling. I think the wall setup gives better backwards compatibility with an Auro setup and some people may prefer it for mounting speakers. Dolby has some PDFs on their website for both. Is this what you were asking? Yes. Heights are mounted to wall. Tops mounted to ceiling. Slightly different locations. RMC-1speaker size menu gives a choice of either Tops or Heights for front and rear "heights" locations. For the middle "heights" location, the only choice the RMC-1 speaker size menu gives is Top Middle. Pretty much like in the diagram in previous post. Thx. Fig1. RMC-1 Spkr Size Menu for Front Height ... rear height menu is the same Fig2. RMC-1 Spkr Size Menu for Left/Right Sub ... which is used for Top Middle Speakers in 9.1.6 config
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Oct 3, 2019 15:51:55 GMT -5
This documentation refers to Dolby Atmos mastering software and equipment. For example, starting on page 159, they explain how to create the configuration files necessary to instruct the Dolby Atmos Renderer to render an Atmos mix to a fixed-channel mix. So, for example, you could create a file instructing the renderer how to create a specific down-mix, and which bed channels and objects from the Atmos mix to place in which channels of the down-mix. And, yes, the resulting 5.1 channel mix would be "pinned", in the sense that it consists of fixed channels rather than Atmos type beds or objects. The result would then be a separate "fixed format" version of the original Atmos mix - which you could then use for some other purpose or encode in a fixed-channel format like Dolby TrueHD.
So, if you had a Dolby Atmos master, and wanted to create a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 version of it, this is how you would go about doing so. However, the resulting version would no longer be "an Atmos Mix".
(This is directly analogous to using a 3D renderer to render a 3D model into a 2D picture using a specified camera angle and lighting.)
If you're really curious about the options available when CREATING a Dolby Atmos mix.... then you probably want to read this one..... (I suspect there may be a newer version available somewhere - but I cannot find it.)
Note that both of these apply to the CINEMA version of Dolby Atmos... The HOME version has some further constraints as does the process for converting from one to the other.
Also note that the Dolby Atmos renderer found in home theater processors and AVRs is rather more limited than the cinema version.
You can also find more information about various software packages which can be used to create Dolby Atmos content simply by Googling:
"Dolby Atmos Authoring"
I disagree that it would be especially odd to have a full range object with a static x,y,z. (Although I would expect more complex options to get at least a slight workout in a big budget flick like John Wick 3.)
For example, if I were remastering an old movie, and my master copy included several ground-level tracks, plus a single ambience track of "sounds of birds overhead".... It would make perfect sense to assign that track as a single object, directly overhead, and of size sufficient to cover the entire sky. That would place my track of "birds overhead" right where I want it to be. And, since it's just one track, there would be no point in moving it around, and it would require a lot of work to re-master it into multiple tracks, which I could then position and adjust individually. (I suspect that the VAST majority of content Disney Studios owns is not in Dolby Atmos - which might explain why they apparently standardized on a simplified "pinned format" which would work easily with streaming - although I'm just guessing there.)
Just because certain capabilities exist, you shouldn't assume that they will be used, or used to full advantage.
Now that's a nice reference. Thanks. It will take some time to peruse through. Page 160 says Atmos can be re rendered up to a 9.1.6 format. I think think this is basically pinned 9.1.6. I don’t know. I’m not trying to argue. It does feel like semantics when I’m reading through all this. I feel like the mixers have a lot of tools to fall back on but that doesn’t mean they utilize them all or ever will. I’m sure industry standards will always be priority for how it’s chosen to be done. Pg. 239-244 indicated tracks 1-10 are for 7.1.2 beds as default and 11-128 are set as objects by default but the format is able to be changed from this default to beds with tracks 11-128. The “bed reveal triangle” that shows up on all 11-128 input options on the right is the method I think. We could theoretically figure out if the full range music on John Wick 3 in the wides is an object or technically a bed channel sound. You could turn the wide speakers off and see if it affects the adjacent speakers as they’d have to image that sound. If it doesn’t have an affect it’s probably a bed assignment. I only point this out because it seemed odd for an object to be full range music with static xyz. They seem better suited for panning sound effects.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Oct 3, 2019 16:02:44 GMT -5
A normal theatrical installation uses up to 32 speakers (expandable to 64 - and probably more). In that situation, bed channels are intended for "fixed areas", like "front left"... and several speakers in that part of the room may be assigned as "members of the front left bed". (The "front left bed" is just that; it does not have a specified x,y,z position.) Object channels are intended for individual objects, each of which has coordinates in space, as well as a size and a level. (The renderer may assign each object to one or more individual speakers in accordance with where it determines that object belongs.) So, for example, in a theater with 32 speakers, speakers #1 - #5 could all be part of the "front left bed".... so the front left bed channel would always play through all five of them. (And the front left bed itself never moves.... although the content in it could still be panned.)
But objects could also be assigned to any one or more of those speakers individually by the renderer.... based on the coordinate location of the object and the speakers.
(As I recall, the assignments are all separate, so each speaker could be assigned as an object speaker, or a member of a bed, or both.) If all this seems dreadfully complicated that's probably because it is... which is probably why not that many films so far have taken full advantage of it. (However, as consumers, we have little control over it anyway, so it's sort of moot.) And, yes, the sub-set of this which is supported by the "home version" is spelled out in the licensing documentation and licensed decoding software.
NOTE that the number of objects has nothing to do with the number of speakers..... A single object could pass through a dozen speakers while it flies from the back left lower corner to the front right upper corner. And, in fact, at some points, it could even occupy multiple speakers (that's how you make a large object). I could also play a sound track with 100 objects through a single pair of stereo speakers (and the renderer would position each object at it optimum location - within the constraint of only having two speakers).
Fist of all the article to which you refer is not a technical documentation, but is a white paper which tries to reduce the mathematical and program intricacies inherent in technical documents for a common audience understanding. It does say that cinema mixes contain up to 9.1 beds, but it does not explain if those are non object coded channels or if they are agreed upon blocks of object encoded sounds fixed to 9.1 (oh, lets drop the .1 sub channel for these discussions)locations for the purpose of simplification for theater installations that preexisted before immersive sound. Atmos for Home only has 7 max fixed channels - that's a fact. So yo may or may not get sound in wides because wides are considered as object coded apeakers only (however a given mixer can do just about any thing he wants with wides, you just cannot count on wides being specifically programmed for channel type information, but it can be. Object sound is not aimed at specific speakers, but the renderer uses the locally available speakers in conjunction with each other to pinpoint a sound in a specific x.y.z or a moving x.y.z location.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Oct 3, 2019 16:17:28 GMT -5
Also bear in mind that the standard itself has already been updated and will surely see more updates in the future. This means that, even if the current version of the Dolby Atmos home renderer has a certain limitation, the next updated version may well support more speakers. And, because Atmos objects occupy a position in space, rather than being assigned to a speaker, current Atmos recordings WILL be able to utilize those additional channels once the updated renderer supports them.
Whether certain current "pinned" discs can override those extra capabilities, or the other way around, is something I wouldn't even claim to know....
However, you can bet that future discs will come along that do.... And, as consumers of those discs, rather than producers.... All we can do is to hope the changes come soon and lots of producers take advantage of them....
Would you REALLY not buy a new movie you've been looking forward to seeing simply because it didn't use all your speakers?
That would be like refusing to watch your favorite classic movie because it displayed black bars on your new wide-screen TV.
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Post by nospam on Oct 4, 2019 1:34:54 GMT -5
Refer to section 24.3 Spatial Coding for info on the home implementation. There are some key differences for the home. With Dolby TrueHD Atmos I believe the main core is always 7.1 but with streaming DD+ it can be 5.1 or 7.1. There are a few titles on Vudu that have 5.1 + Atmos.
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Post by hsamwel on Oct 4, 2019 3:27:43 GMT -5
Also bear in mind that the standard itself has already been updated and will surely see more updates in the future. This means that, even if the current version of the Dolby Atmos home renderer has a certain limitation, the next updated version may well support more speakers. And, because Atmos objects occupy a position in space, rather than being assigned to a speaker, current Atmos recordings WILL be able to utilize those additional channels once the updated renderer supports them.
Whether certain current "pinned" discs can override those extra capabilities, or the other way around, is something I wouldn't even claim to know....
However, you can bet that future discs will come along that do.... And, as consumers of those discs, rather than producers.... All we can do is to hope the changes come soon and lots of producers take advantage of them.... Would you REALLY not buy a new movie you've been looking forward to seeing simply because it didn't use all your speakers?
That would be like refusing to watch your favorite classic movie because it displayed black bars on your new wide-screen TV.
What are actually pinned discs? Are the atmos track still using xyz coordinates or are these tracks mastered to locked channel positions? If still objects then it should be ”easy” for the atmos renderer to unlock these pinned masterings to use more speakers if the setup has it. It’s then just upto Dolby to unlock the pinning in the hardware.. To me these ”features” of atmos is just causing confusion. They should never have added the possibility of pinning.. Just simply render to as many speakers the setup has (upto the format limit 24.1.10).. One format! What’s the benefit of pinned ”atmos”? Is it file size? Then surely it cannot be true objects anymore.. How is pinned atmos handled if you have different setups than normal 7.1.4? For example wides+top middle instead of normal top front+top rear? Do you get playback from wides+top middle? Like you do from DTS:X just as long as you keep within the 11 ch limit. Here’s another question.. If a DTS:X bluray is mastered with objects, when DTS:X Pro arrives will it unlock use of more channels? If I understood DTS:X Pro correctly it’s not a ”new format” but rather an unlock of the channel limit.. Btw does the ”limit” of DSU still exist in the latest updates? Not playing sound from speakers direct outside of LR (wides) and direct inside of LR and center back? As I understood by reading the pdf it’s not a limit per say but a design choice because how they extract sound from channels. It would sound bad if wides were used. They don’t matrix between two channels as I understand it.
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Post by TDifEQ on Oct 4, 2019 12:39:36 GMT -5
...
Would you REALLY not buy a new movie you've been looking forward to seeing simply because it didn't use all your speakers?
That would be like refusing to watch your favorite classic movie because it displayed black bars on your new wide-screen TV.
... We would still buy the movie because we'll have an audio processor with 2 to 3 upmixers, BEQ and we'll mux in an alternative DTS sound track ... all ready to go in case this happens. Bottom line: all our crazy number of speakers will have audio coming out of them no matter which movie we buy. lol
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Post by TDifEQ on Oct 4, 2019 12:58:08 GMT -5
Watched 4k DV/ATMOS X-Men Dark Pheonix with 9.1.6 config. Widths had a small to medium amount of (not full range, just a couple of instruments) music, voice, voice songs and special effects ... better than Spider Man Far from Home ... not as good as John Wick 3.
Hans Zimmer composed the music in Dark Phoenix ... and widths were used with the music at times (usually the action scenes) ... unlike Hans Zimmer "Live in Prague".
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Post by TDifEQ on Oct 4, 2019 15:22:26 GMT -5
Nice .pdf. Never realized audio objects can be almost any sound like full range music, voice dialog/songs and special effects ... heard all of this thru the width speakers via ATMOS ... this all assumes the width channels only have audio objects as mgbpuff stated.
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 4, 2019 15:36:47 GMT -5
Quote: If the studios keep on releasing titles that are not "full atmos" (limited) channel counts, that is going to lead to another stumbling block for high speaker count setups. I am still dumbfounded about Wonder Woman (given their budget) and the release of fixed channel count Atmos. SdRucker: Right now, it's the studio (Disney), not the studios in the plural as the biggest offenders, and it's for two releases to be sure: The Last Jedi and Thor: Ragnarok that are apparently fixed to 7.1.4 on our Input meters. Other Disney movies listed as "7.1.4 Dolby Atmos" are suspect until proven otherwise. And even there, Guardians of the Galaxy Part 2 was listed as 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos, but the top middles are used semi-occasionally, so 7.1.6 is a better description. We need to be aware of this, obviously, as an issue in our world, and monitor movies as much as we can with our toolkit, but it's not quite at the "Sky is Falling" level. Wonder Woman is effectively 7.1.4 but there's a few instances where the wides light up, from a few seconds to maybe 10 to 15 seconds max. It's more of a poor use of Atmos objects for speaker locations beyond the obvious than a printed to 7.1.4 mix. Saving Private Ryan, OTOH is 7.1.6, no wides or anything else, and the .6 is about 80% the top middles at that, with the top front and rears used for ambient effects. And other movies like Source Code are only using the 9.1.6 palette, rather than liberal use of objects that can be take fuller advantage of the higher channel count of native Atmos scaled to what we have in the 24.1.10 layout. See Oblivion, Star Trek: Into Darkness, War for the Planet of the Apes, Hacksaw Ridge etc. for examples of "full Atmos". Or if you really want crazy busy object use for anything you're likely to have (as least in my own case of 13.4.6), check out REM's Automatic for the People or Luca Terilli’s Rhapsody’s Prometheus. www.google.com/amp/s/www.avsforum.com/forum/86-ultra-hi-end-ht-gear-20-000/1516103-trinnov-altitude-147.html%3famp=1
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Post by lrobertson on Oct 4, 2019 15:42:42 GMT -5
I ran into this on avsforum but it’s from 2018. I think it’s murky. Like all movies from cinema are 7.1.2 beds plus objects 11-128 then it gets weird with how studios can utilize the renderer. And it seems that what nospam pointed out that either way all things end up being treated as objects and I’m assuming the choice of bed versus objects on 11-128 in the renderer isn’t actually creating more beds but maybe it’s converting objects to the chosen bed layer. I think technically it’s correct objects are technically what goes to the wides except if wides are chosen as a speaker group with beds. The 9.1.6 fixed layout rendered for movies like source code makes it all seem like semantics and I didn’t realize it was already being utilized. I think mgpuff is right though. It’s usually 7.1 Atmos beds. I think we get the 2 Atmos OH beds also though. And sometimes like nospam mentioned we may get 5.1 with say streaming. And then I’m not sure if we get the speaker groups that can group the beds with say the wides. That might be a feature of the cp850. If we don’t have it hopefully we will as it evolves like Keith mentioned.
It does seem like Emotiva or even Neural:X with pro should be able to target tracks 1-2 and 5-10 being the 7.1.2 bed channels minus LFE and center to do some sort of upmixing without affecting objects by ignoring tracks 11-128. You would think this is theoretically possible if Atmos is consistently 7.1.2 beds and if they now allow other formats to manipulate their track layer. If that track layout changes if say it’s a 5.1 base on a streamer like nospam mentioned that may throw a wrench in it but I imagine the first 10 tracks are always related to the same designated speaker beds.
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