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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 10, 2014 9:36:32 GMT -5
I've noticed a growing number of you beginning to discuss the ins and outs of Dolby's new Atmos system and its proposed application(s) in the consumer space. Rather than spread the conversation out over a dozen or so different threads I thought I'd create one specifically for ALL DOLBY ATMOS talk going forward. So, what do you all think of Atmos -good idea, or just another gimmick designed to get enthusiasts to part with their hard earned money?
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DYohn
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Post by DYohn on Jun 10, 2014 10:05:03 GMT -5
I vote B.
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Jun 10, 2014 10:26:08 GMT -5
But the same could have been said with HD Audio (both DTS and Dolby's version) and the different flavors of HDMI needed to support. With bluray all we needed to get HD Audio was PCM yet we all clamor to light up those silly lights on our AVRs. ...and Dolby and DTS gets to charge us 2x for the licenses. (one on the player and one on the AVR/AVP.  Should I start on 3D? Hey OEMs have to eat too I guess. |
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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 10, 2014 10:49:18 GMT -5
A few things, not to be argumentative, but rather to help kick start the conversation. One, Atmos is not about the number of loudspeakers one can employ either in a commercial or consumer space. Yes there is a lot of talk about additional speakers, mainly ones located above the viewer, but the crux of what makes Atmos compelling isn't the quantity of speakers, but rather how loudspeakers are treated. With discrete surround if you want a sound effect to travel from your left front speaker to your left surround you had to pan it from one speaker to the next, but you were limited to two points so to speak. With Atmos you can let the sound go from left front of the stage to the left rear of the stage without having to, necessarily, confine it to just two speakers. This way if you have a 5.1 setup or a 15.1 setup, left front to left back is the same. It's, for lack of a better descriptor, location-based sound. Atmos would therefor work as well in a 5.1 system as it would in a 50.1 setup for left is left, right is right, so on and so forth.
Another member commented on certain tracks being "discrete" from the mix, tracks containing dialog for example. This may be the case and if it is, this could be a huge advantage for Atmos to supplant our current high-res surround formats quicker as it would showcase a clear benefit to users -especially older listeners. As for your processor having to have Atmos, that has yet to be seen. It's possible for those with "legacy processors" that Atmos could be decoded at the source, which would potentially save folks money opposed to having to buy a whole new processor. In the pro world, Dolby has made the transition to Atmos as inexpensive and easy as possible for theater owners. The Atmos processor for commercial use is only a couple grand and can be retrofit into existing systems. I have no reason to believe that Atmos' consumer roll out can't be equally simple.
As for the number of homes running a multi-channel setup, the OP quoted 50%. I feel that figure is extremely generous. 7.1 setups at 40% is even more so.
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Post by novisnick on Jun 10, 2014 10:59:57 GMT -5
A few things, not to be argumentative, but rather to help kick start the conversation. One, Atmos is not about the number of loudspeakers one can employ either in a commercial or consumer space. Yes there is a lot of talk about additional speakers, mainly ones located above the viewer, but the crux of what makes Atmos compelling isn't the quantity of speakers, but rather how loudspeakers are treated. With discrete surround if you want a sound effect to travel from your left front speaker to your left surround you had to pan it from one speaker to the next, but you were limited to two points so to speak. With Atmos you can let the sound go from left front of the stage to the left rear of the stage without having to, necessarily, confine it to just two speakers. This way if you have a 5.1 setup or a 15.1 setup, left front to left back is the same. It's, for lack of a better descriptor, location-based sound. Atmos would therefor work as well in a 5.1 system as it would in a 50.1 setup for left is left, right is right, so on and so forth. Another member commented on certain tracks being "discrete" from the mix, tracks containing dialog for example. This may be the case and if it is, this could be a huge advantage for Atmos to supplant our current high-res surround formats quicker as it would showcase a clear benefit to users -especially older listeners. As for your processor having to have Atmos, that has yet to be seen. It's possible for those with "legacy processors" that Atmos could be decoded at the source, which would potentially save folks money opposed to having to buy a whole new processor. In the pro world, Dolby has made the transition to Atmos as inexpensive and easy as possible for theater owners. The Atmos processor for commercial use is only a couple grand and can be retrofit into existing systems. I have no reason to believe that Atmos' consumer roll out can't be equally simple. As for the number of homes running a multi-channel setup, the OP quoted 50%. I feel that figure is extremely generous. 7.1 setups at 40% is even more so. FWIW Im running 11.4 sound in my HT and enjoy it very much. There is a market for Atmos, but for now,,, I'm happy with the job my Yamaha does. I know that the extra speakers are fed a matrix instead of discreet data, but I do love the sound. just need YOU to come out with your own video on REW of the other speakers in my HT. Yes all speakers are configurable in EQ on my AVR. Please do the video.  . . Nick |
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Post by novisnick on Jun 10, 2014 11:01:58 GMT -5
But the same could have been said with HD Audio (both DTS and Dolby's version) and the different flavors of HDMI needed to support. With bluray all we needed to get HD Audio was PCM yet we all clamor to light up those silly lights on our AVRs. ...and Dolby and DTS gets to charge us 2x for the licenses. (one on the player and one on the AVR/AVP. Should I start on 3D? Hey OEMs have to eat too I guess. Love 3-D, they just need to make more QUALITY movies !!!!!! |
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Post by geebo on Jun 10, 2014 11:11:47 GMT -5
But the same could have been said with HD Audio (both DTS and Dolby's version) and the different flavors of HDMI needed to support. With bluray all we needed to get HD Audio was PCM yet we all clamor to light up those silly lights on our AVRs. ...and Dolby and DTS gets to charge us 2x for the licenses. (one on the player and one on the AVR/AVP. Should I start on 3D? Hey OEMs have to eat too I guess. Love 3-D, they just need to make more QUALITY movies !!!!!! We really like our 3D as well. And you're right about quality movies. Too many are poorly converted 2D - 3D although some conversions can be quite good. Others are just too gimmicky. But I digress. I currently have no interest in Atmos other than maybe as a curiosity and not that much of one. Heck, I still very much enjoy good two channel listening. |
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Post by Jim on Jun 10, 2014 11:22:01 GMT -5
I have no doubt that Atmos has some merit, an object oriented codec sounds like a good idea.
But for the most part, I think its a gimmick. The most common argument seems to be "even for you 5.1 and 7.1 users, it'll make it so much better". I don't buy it. Changing how it's stored might make it sound more consistent between 5.1 and 7.1 and 99.1 users, but it's still the same audio.
It's like hard drive densities. Just because you can pack more bits per inch, doesn't mean that your bits are any "better".
EDIT: Actually. I changed my mind. Now I have to own it, because Atmos has a cool sounding trailer.
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Post by bobcel on Jun 10, 2014 11:27:08 GMT -5
This may be the case and if it is, this could be a huge advantage for Atmos to supplant our current high-res surround formats quicker as it would showcase a clear benefit to users -especially older listeners.
Hey, I resemble that remark! Ha
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Post by audiosyndrome on Jun 10, 2014 11:36:13 GMT -5
If we're talking MORE speakers this thread needs to be renamed The OFFICIAL Dolby Atmos Thread (for single or divorced people only).  Russ |
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Jun 10, 2014 11:45:53 GMT -5
EDIT: Actually. I changed my mind. Now I have to own it, because Atmos has a cool sounding trailer. Now you have done it. I want it too. (see how gullible us lemmings are!) If we have to wait another 6 months for some love around here I'm blaming this trailer.  |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jun 10, 2014 11:46:15 GMT -5
I'm going to start this with my opinion about Atmos.... I think Atmos is a cool new paradigm (way of thinking about things), and has a whole bunch of interesting capabilities and implications, but I'm tempering my excitement with a healthy dose of cynicism. For those who haven't heard this before, Atmos treats each "track" as an "entity"... To take a simplified stereo analogy: instead of putting someone in the center "half in the left and half in the right", he is treated as a separate "object" which you then "place" in the front center. This is really useful for the mixing engineer, since you can independently move that object around, or adjust it, and Atmos supports a lot of objects. With normal multi-track mixing, at some point you have to "pin" each track to a location. If you want Captain Jack talking off to the left, you mix his track equally into the Left Front and Left Surround. To move him forward, you raise his level in the Left Front and lower his level in the Left Surround. With Atmos, you simply position his object where you want him, and you can move him around later if you want to. Then, when you're playing that track back, the Atmos decoder decides what speakers to play him through, and at what levels, so he sounds like he's in the correct location. This is amazingly powerful because, no matter how many speakers your theater or home theater has, or where each one is located, the decoder will decide which speakers will do the best job of making Captain Jack sound as if he's in the right place - based on where he is supposed to be. (Of course, there are physical limitations; Atmos can't place a falling satellite directly over your head unless you have "height speakers" up there to play it... although it will try to get as close as it can with what you have.) There's a little bit of confusion here because Atmos can be used to mix audio (basically what I described above); you can then take that Atmos mix to a theater with an Atmos audio system and play it (together that would give you what I described); and you can record it on a disc so you could play it at home on your Atmos-equipped AVR. However, you could also MIX in Atmos, then render the results to a standard 5.1 or 7.1 channel mix. (You would get the benefits of using Atmos to create the original mix but, once you convert it to 5.1 or 7.1, you can no longer reposition or adjust each object; much like, once you render a CGI object, it becomes an ordinary 2D picture.) If you do that, then the mixing engineer gets all the benefits of Atmos but, as far as the theater and the end user are concerned, it is simply a "regular" 5.1 or 7.1 sound track. On their website, Dolby offers a long list of features "mixed in Atmos" - but we are left to wonder which of these were actually distributed in Atmos, how many theaters currently have Atmos "running", and how many will ever be released on a disc in Atmos format. (At least some engineers have been mixing in Atmos, but delivering the result as a standard mix. This gives them the benefits of using Atmos to create the mix, but fails to pass those benefits on to the theater or home theater.) We might like to assume that every feature that is mixed in Atmos, will be played in Atmos by all theaters equipped to do so, and will finally end up on an Atmos Blu-Ray disc - but this may not be entirely true. (It would also be nice to hope that, assuming both Atmos and non-Atmos versions must be produced to satisfy both types of theaters, the Atmos version will end up being available on a disc.) It is my opinion that, eventually, Atmos will "win" its way into wide (significant) use... but I believe the process will take a while for several reasons. 1) Dolby dominates the theatrical sound market - but not the home disc market (at the moment about 85% of discs are DTS and about 15% to 20% are Dolby TrueHD). In the past, Dolby Digital dominated this market, but DTS has almost pushed them out. Atmos is cool, and the ability to "translate" theatrical Atmos to home Atmos should help Dolby win back some market share there, but it will be an uphill battle. In other words, even studios who use Atmos for theatrical releases may decide not to do so for Blu-Ray releases - for various reasons. Obviously, Dolby is hoping to improve demand by encouraging people to "buy Atmos for home so they can have the same experience they have in a real theater". 2) Currently, many sound engineers seem to be "mixing in Atmos" - because the entity-based paradigm is very convenient and flexible for mixing - but it remains to be seen how much content is actually delivered in Atmos, and how much of that is delivered on disc in Atmos. (There may be "extra work" involved in converting something mixed in Atmos so it can be put on an Atmos Blu-Ray disc; there may also be extra licensing fees; some may choose not to bother.) 3) A lot of the potential "power" of Atmos is somewhat complicated to actually use. If I want to be able to boost only the dialog, how do I do so? Is there a category that includes all the dialog entities? (If there is, did the guy who mixed the disc I have follow the standard and give it the right name?) And my AVR or pre/pro will need to know the locations of multiple speakers in three dimensions. (This can be trickier than it sounds. Measurements will have to be made and/or manually entered in three dimensions. This is not prohibitively complex, but is a significant step up in complexity from what we have now. As I said in another post, this would be dead easy if your AVR had a nice 3D color screen and you could see the layout in 3D perspective  ) One alternative would be to assume that you have 5.1 or 7.1 speakers "in normal locations" - but, if you do that, then you've thrown away a lot of what differentiates Atmos. In short, in my opinion, Atmos is a complex technology which has many virtues - and so will eventually overtake its predecessor (Dolby TrueHD) and end up in wide use. However, I see adoption of it, and the ability to access the various features and capabilities, as likely to be a gradual process - with theaters leading the change since they are where the major obvious benefits currently lie . (Dolby has also priced the theater Atmos decoder very reasonably - as such things go - in an obvious attempt to place encouraging adoption of Atmos above short-term profit. Good ideas there.) I suspect that, in the short term, we'll see discs and AVRs with "Dolby Atmos" stickers on them - but the functionality won't be significantly different than what we have now... and the changes will come later. We WILL, however, see most theaters adopting Atmos pretty soon - and lots of theatrical Atmos releases. What will remain to be seen is how rapidly this trickles down to home discs - and how many of the significant potential benefits show up - and how soon. (All the preceding are MY opinions and predictions. We shall see  .) And, for those who think that everything happens overnight... and technology is obvious.... Who can tell me the actual differences between Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA? (What can one do that the other cannot - that matters - and why, if you were producing a disc, would you choose one over the other?) Can you, personally, actually tell the difference? ('ll break the ice here; to me they sound the same and seem to do pretty much the same stuff.) And, assuming you had 7 speakers and a sub, located in more or less standard locations, what would Atmos gain you? |
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stiehl11
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Post by stiehl11 on Jun 10, 2014 11:47:43 GMT -5
FWIW Im running 11.4 sound in my HT and enjoy it very much. Nick I can just imagine adding another $8,000+ worth of speakers, not including amplification, to get where you are. |
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stiehl11
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Post by stiehl11 on Jun 10, 2014 11:55:56 GMT -5
With discrete surround if you want a sound effect to travel from your left front speaker to your left surround you had to pan it from one speaker to the next, but you were limited to two points so to speak. This is where I need someone in marketing to come up with a pitch to make me want to spend $1,000 per channel (speaker and amplification) to add more points along the line from LF to LR. Regardless of how many points you have between the start and end, you still have to pan between the points. While more points make it more lifelike; short of an infinite amount of points, you'll never achieve "lifelike" sound. You can only get closer. For some, they may be able to spend $1,000 per channel (speaker and amplification) or more. Some may only spend a couple hundred per channel; but are they really getting quality sound or just a gimmick? |
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Post by novisnick on Jun 10, 2014 11:59:18 GMT -5
FWIW Im running 11.4 sound in my HT and enjoy it very much. Nick I can just imagine adding another $8,000+ worth of speakers, not including amplification, to get where you are. Didn't cost anywhere near that amount of money to get there, four , not the greatest surround speakers in the world ( don't need to be ) and a pair of Sherbourn 2/150 amps (used). the hight matrix from the Yamaha handles the rest. gives a great added UMPH! to the HT, not bad in party mode either,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,,,he,,,,,, Edit: pair of used Bose 901s for the front heights and a pair of used Klipsch surrounds for the rear. |
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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 10, 2014 12:02:01 GMT -5
IMHO, the type of loudspeaker that would be ideal for Atmos would be in-wall speakers. If I were a manufacturer of in-wall or in-ceiling speakers I would be all over Atmos like white on rice -it's the only way you'd get me to embrace having more than 5 speakers in a room. To this day the best HT experience I've ever had was when I was never aware there were any speakers in the room/system at all. That and in-walls are dirt cheap compared to the alternatives. Just my 2 cents.
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stiehl11
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Post by stiehl11 on Jun 10, 2014 12:02:50 GMT -5
I (think) have a BD-Audio disc that had both TrueHD and DTS-HD MA on it. To my ears, I prefer the DTS-HD MA. But is that a function of the recording or the codec? I can't say with certainty. I'll double check when I get home.
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Post by monkumonku on Jun 10, 2014 12:05:43 GMT -5
Thanks Keith, for the lucid explanation. While I understand the advantages it gives those who do the mixing, in terms of the final result how many of us are really going to be able to hear any real difference between Atmos and the other codecs currently in use? It sounds like Atmos may be easier to use for the engineer since it is object-based rather than having to mix levels of different channels in order to create the illusion of where something is placed in the sound field, but will the end result really be appreciably better (or even distinguishable) from a competently mixed track using a different codec? I can see how Atmos is easily adaptable to adding more speakers to an HT system but for those of us with the standard 5.1 or 7.1, I don't see how it will make that much difference.
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Jun 10, 2014 12:06:41 GMT -5
...and Emotiva sells four different models of in-wall and in-ceiling speakers. Do I sense a future promotion deal brewing? But all kidding aside I do agree with you. I personally can't fit a dozen stand alone speakers in my family room. I know few that can besides those planning to build a dedicated room. |
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stiehl11
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Post by stiehl11 on Jun 10, 2014 12:13:25 GMT -5
I can just imagine adding another $8,000+ worth of speakers, not including amplification, to get where you are. Didn't cost anywhere near that amount of money to get there, four , not the greatest surround speakers in the world ( don't need to be ) and a pair of Sherbourn 2/150 amps (used). the hight matrix from the Yamaha handles the rest. gives a great added UMPH! to the HT, not bad in party mode either,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,,,he,,,,,, For me, to go with matching speakers, would be an additional $8,000. If I could find less expensive speakers that deliver the same performance (to my ear, not someone else's) I might look into it. But, I'd have to weigh the cost of replacing what I already have against the $8,000 of just adding to it. In other words; 11.4 equates to 15 speakers which would have to have an average cost of just over $500. Even Emotiva's towers didn't retain that low back in the day (before being put on clearance). |
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) One alternative would be to assume that you have 5.1 or 7.1 speakers "in normal locations" - but, if you do that, then you've thrown away a lot of what differentiates Atmos. 
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