LCSeminole
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Post by LCSeminole on Jun 27, 2014 19:14:26 GMT -5
I realize that Dolby and the manufacturers of the Atmos enabled processors/receivers have yet to reveal the full capabilities of these components. Having said that, knowing that Atmos is object based, I've not yet seen mention of any of the upcoming components from Denon/Onkyo/Pioneer that indicated that the end user would have independent volume control over a certain objects, say dialogue for instance. Since this is one of the talking points of Dolby Atmos, I'm just curious as to how much control over these different objects the end user will have in a home environment.
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Jun 27, 2014 19:55:56 GMT -5
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 27, 2014 20:09:11 GMT -5
You could literally one day be surrounded by billions and billions of microscopic speakers and have sound all around you and coming from your piehole, snot hole, and butt hole! What a tremendous power the power of sound evolution!   |
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bootman
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Post by bootman on Jun 27, 2014 20:18:04 GMT -5
An Onkyo video on Atmos:
And one from Peter Jackson:
And a panel discussion from CinemaCon 2014.
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2014 20:58:17 GMT -5
I realize that Dolby and the manufacturers of the Atmos enabled processors/receivers have yet to reveal the full capabilities of these components. Having said that, knowing that Atmos is object based, I've not yet seen mention of any of the upcoming components from Denon/Onkyo/Pioneer that indicated that the end user would independent volume control over a certain objects, say dialogue for instance. Since this is one of the talking points of Dolby Atmos, I'm just curious as to how much control over these different objects the end user will have in a home environment. I wonder if the configurable feature set will be rather minimal. If sacrifices have to be made just to implement it - I would imagine that it would take even more processor or code to implement those features. Hopefully it's not a barebones implementation on most AVRs! But since we don't know what a minimal or full blown implementation looks like yet... Those features could make or break the usefulness of the codec. |
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Post by Jim on Jun 27, 2014 21:02:48 GMT -5
Thanks for posting that FAQ. Interesting. |
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Post by deltadube on Jun 28, 2014 2:39:54 GMT -5
I went to the movies tonight saw transformers
in 3d in the avx theater
staring Dolby Atmos
pretty good movie awesome sound and visual effects.. could of used a tad more bass.. the sound was so real...
cheers
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Post by FilmMixer on Jun 28, 2014 5:40:58 GMT -5
^^^^^ Before we move on, let's ask Roger just one more question: will Atmos-enabled AVRs benefit people who have just 5 satellite speakers and 1 subwoofer? So now that the NDA has lifted. I reiterate my original point. Atmos offers no benefit to users using only 5.1 speaker setup. Will you now concede that I was correct? There are something's that are still under wraps at this point. But I can tell you that when I was first asked to a demo back in February I was very exited about what I heard. I'm very well aware of what has been changed vs. the theatrical implementation but very little will be lost in the translation. Remember that this is the first generation of processors and AVRs out of the gate... |
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LCSeminole
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Post by LCSeminole on Jun 28, 2014 7:37:13 GMT -5
^^^^^ Before we move on, let's ask Roger just one more question: will Atmos-enabled AVRs benefit people who have just 5 satellite speakers and 1 subwoofer? So now that the NDA has lifted. I reiterate my original point. Atmos offers no benefit to users using only 5.1 speaker setup. Will you now concede that I was correct? There are something's that are still under wraps at this point. But I can tell you that when I was first asked to a demo back in February I was very exited about what I heard. I'm very well aware of what has been changed vs. the theatrical implementation but very little will be lost in the translation. Remember that this is the first generation of processors and AVRs out of the gate... filmmixer you may have missed this but Roger/srrndhound more or less has already answered this question when "bootman" asked the following: My take is that if you have a 5.1 setup (the vast majority of the installed home base) this is initially a wasted upgrade. Now if you have more speakers than that then maybe some fancy processing can help a bit. It isn't until you get to 9 or greater with heights and/or wides in the mix that the real benefits can kick in. Is this a correct assumption for the masses? To be perfectly clear, there's no "fancy processing" unless there's a new processor in the equation. With that assumed, even when driving a 5.1 (or stereo) speaker system, the masses may appreciate benefit #3 in the cases post. It's a continuing problem for many folks watching Blu-ray movies. Other than that, I'd agree with your conclusion. |
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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 30, 2014 13:54:11 GMT -5
  A few new tidbits have begun to emerge about Dolby Atmos for the home. First let's start with the good -okay the great. Pioneer's new Andrew Jones designed Atmos speakers are beginning to appear on the web, complete with details and high res photos. I LOVE Andrew Jones' loudspeakers. I thought his last few speaker designs were utterly fantastic -I even owned a complete 5.1 setup for a spell. The new Atmos speakers by Jones are no exception, they too look great! I was surprised to see just how much they were compared to his prior designs for Pioneer (TAD excluded). The towers are $699 each whereas the bookshelf speakers will retail for $749 a pair. While these are not outrageous by any stretch, they seemed a little high given Jones' reputation for superior affordability. But they appear to be made to a higher standard than his previous Pioneer speakers and, well, they're Atmos branded, which I'm sure isn't free. I had sort of hoped that I could pick up a full 5.1 setup of these beauties without having to really budget but alas I'll have to plan ahead should I want to play with these. So that's the good news. Andrew Jones has some new speakers and Atmos or not, that is always good news -to me at least. Now for the bad or at least the not so great -in my humble opinion. In order for Atmos speakers to work best they need to be used in an environment where there is a level ceiling with a height no greater than 14 feet, with 9 feet being optimal. Much like a soundbar needing walls in order to reflect sound to simulate rear channels, Atmos speakers need a level ceiling to simulate ceiling channels. This means, in my current theater, Atmos, or at least Atmos loudspeakers, are not likely to work as my ceiling is not symmetrical. Also, based on the diagrams I've seen and the papers I've read, in a 5.1 Atmos system the surrounds are now placed somewhat behind the listener opposed to the side. This is done to help those rear mounted Atmos channels simulate ceiling speakers more effectively. Sounds good, except 5.1 mixes are done with the understanding that surround channels are to the side of the viewer. By moving the surrounds back and somewhat behind the viewer it's anyone's guess how that will disrupt the surround experience. My initial guess would be that sound, at least surround channels, will become far more localized when utilizing this configuration. You may get simulated ceiling channels this way, but you may trade away normal surround transparency as a result. This is just my thinking based on my experiences with poorly placed surrounds, I could be wrong. |
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Post by wizardofoz on Jun 30, 2014 19:52:08 GMT -5
Andrew I assume that these Atmos speakers are setup with 2 inputs for each speaker one for the original channel and one for the atoms channel?
As no link is provided and no rear image views its hard to determine the actual details. I will maybe go and google for it...
If so this would also imply that a new cable runs will be required to each speaker for Atmos - otherwise the same sound will be coming out all the drivers. Or am I missing something here?
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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 30, 2014 20:06:39 GMT -5
Andrew I assume that these Atmos speakers are setup with 2 inputs for each speaker one for the original channel and one for the atoms channel? As no link is provided and no rear image views its hard to determine the actual details. I will maybe go and google for it... If so this would also imply that a new cable runs will be required to each speaker for Atmos - otherwise the same sound will be coming out all the drivers. Or am I missing something here? You are correct, there are two different sets of binding posts, which are NOT to be confused with speakers that are able to be bi-wired. For Atmos speakers there is a pair of binding posts near the top of the speaker and a pair near the bottom, the bottom being for the front main channel and the top for the virtual ceiling channel. This means that two pairs of speaker cable will now have to be run to your left and right front speakers as well as your left and right surrounds for your Atmos receiver or processor is going to see them as two unique speakers each! |
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Post by wizardofoz on Jun 30, 2014 20:11:45 GMT -5
That is going to p!$$ off a lot of HT owners with existing setups and concealed cables.
May as well just run new ceiling speakers and keep the old speakers as is if that is the case for existing setups. At least you don't throw away your existing gear...well not all of it anyway.
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Post by Andrew Robinson on Jun 30, 2014 20:17:19 GMT -5
That is going to p!$$ off a lot of HT owners with existing setups and concealed cables. May as well just run new ceiling speakers and keep the old speakers as is if that is the case for existing setups. At least you don't throw away your existing gear...well not all of it anyway. In custom install situations I think you might be onto something. I too think that installing in-ceiling speakers is the easier way to go, but for renters or the not so handy the 2-1 Atmos speakers do have some merit -provided your ceiling is parallel with your floor and not too high. |
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Post by sme on Jul 1, 2014 2:44:58 GMT -5
What kind of driver is on the top? I think a tweeter would make the most sense. Do you think Atmos will do an active crossover / bass management type of thing to send frequencies below the tweeter range to the front-facing woofer(s)?
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Post by jmilton on Jul 1, 2014 8:36:35 GMT -5
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Jul 1, 2014 8:58:50 GMT -5
The Atmos top speakers seem destined to carry pretty much the same sort of signals as surrounds do - so I would expect the separate top speakers (and the "top sections" of speakers that combine both) to be more or less equivalent to regular surrounds. This would suggest a midrange and tweeter in most cases. I haven't seen any specific specs, so they may not have to go as low as normal surrounds, in which case a smaller mid-woofer might suffice, but it seems simpler to use the same settings for them. The second question is more interesting. Bass management is used because, in a normal surround system, any given speaker could be full range or small. If the Atmos spec specifically limits the top speakers to being "small" (maybe limiting the frequencies they receive to above 100 hz or 200 Hz), then there would be no need for bass management. However, I think this is sort of a moot question. As far as I know, all of those top speakers are wired as entirely separate speakers - with their own binding posts - and requiring their own amplifier channels. As such, it makes sense to handle the bass management for them (if any is needed) in the pre/pro or AVR - along with the bass management for the other speakers, and the decoding functions. (You would simply treat each "top section", even if it is attached to a regular speaker, as a completely separate top surround.) Since they are really only useful with Atmos content, being played on an Atmos-enabled AVR or pre/pro, which is going to be driving them as separate channels, and which is going to include any bass management that may be necessary for them, I don't see any benefit to their having autonomous bass management. What kind of driver is on the top? I think a tweeter would make the most sense. Do you think Atmos will do an active crossover / bass management type of thing to send frequencies below the tweeter range to the front-facing woofer(s)? |
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Post by sme on Jul 2, 2014 3:00:41 GMT -5
The Atmos top speakers seem destined to carry pretty much the same sort of signals as surrounds do - so I would expect the separate top speakers (and the "top sections" of speakers that combine both) to be more or less equivalent to regular surrounds. This would suggest a midrange and tweeter in most cases. I haven't seen any specific specs, so they may not have to go as low as normal surrounds, in which case a smaller mid-woofer might suffice, but it seems simpler to use the same settings for them. The second question is more interesting. Bass management is used because, in a normal surround system, any given speaker could be full range or small. If the Atmos spec specifically limits the top speakers to being "small" (maybe limiting the frequencies they receive to above 100 hz or 200 Hz), then there would be no need for bass management. However, I think this is sort of a moot question. As far as I know, all of those top speakers are wired as entirely separate speakers - with their own binding posts - and requiring their own amplifier channels. As such, it makes sense to handle the bass management for them (if any is needed) in the pre/pro or AVR - along with the bass management for the other speakers, and the decoding functions. (You would simply treat each "top section", even if it is attached to a regular speaker, as a completely separate top surround.) Since they are really only useful with Atmos content, being played on an Atmos-enabled AVR or pre/pro, which is going to be driving them as separate channels, and which is going to include any bass management that may be necessary for them, I don't see any benefit to their having autonomous bass management. I believe psychoacoustic theory regards localization in the height dimension to be possible only with high frequency content, like 5 kHz and above. Perhaps actual experiments indicate otherwise, but I wonder if a ceiling facing mid-woofer is even necessary. Either way, that 4" mid woofer is going to lose its directivity in the vicinity of 3 kHz, so frequencies below this will sound essentially the same coming from either the front or the top. Then, one possible design is to only provide a tweeter in top and use active (or passive?) circuitry to send the lower frequencies (below the tweeter range) in each overhead channel to the front facing woofers of the speaker that handles that channel. I can imagine a few reasons to want to keep a mid woofer up on top, depending on how Atmos works and what features are available on the receivers that implement it. Most likely, the overhead channels will be full-range, or at least restricted to something like 200 Hz, and receivers will not offer the option to redirect sound below the tweeter range to the front-facing mid and bass woofers. (I wonder if this could be accomplished passively in the speaker?) Supposing such clever "mids & bass management" technology did exist, one might want the top-facing mid-woofer to reduce comb filtering in the crossover response, even though, ironically the presence of the reflective ceiling is itself a contributor of comb filtering at and below roughly 3 kHz. Also, the notion that surrounds need not handle the same duties as the fronts is largely outdated, in my opinion. Many if not most modern film sound tracks, not to mention surround music, treat the surrounds as full-range. I believe theaters calibrate their surrounds 3 dB lower than they do the fronts, but Blu-ray releases don't necessarily preserve this level difference, especially since many "for the home" remixes get boosts to the surrounds to correct for the psychoacoustic effect of diminished loudness at lower playback levels. Of course, plenty of people out there use speakers with weak response below 200 Hz in conjunction with a sub woofer, albeit with localization problems and poor quality upper bass. From a sound quality standpoint, I believe most would be better served with 5 channels that perform well down to 80 Hz than a setup with more channels but higher crossovers on the surrounds or overhead speakers. That's just my opinion. |
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jul 2, 2014 4:34:31 GMT -5
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Post by FilmMixer on Jul 7, 2014 22:48:03 GMT -5
Andrew..
I saw your video on Home Atmos..
You seem to have some misconceptions of how it works, and how it compares to the cinema version.
You state "instead of using discrete channels like we've been used to with the sound codecs this far, sound engineers now have a new level of flexibility in that sounds are location or object based."
It's both, not one or the other.
Theatrical Atmos allows you to use both channels and objects.
So does the home version...
Here are the key differences:
In the cinema we can access the overheads as arrays within the channel bed... for the home there is no channel reserved for the overheads (9.1 vs. 7.1 for the bed..)
The total number of objects will be less (max number in the cinema is 118, don't have an exact number yet for the home.)
The objects will still be rendered on the fly..
The announced products so far are indeed limited to 7.1.4.. or 9.1.2
However the home version supports 24 room and 10 overhead speakers vs a total of 62 discrete speaker outputs for the cinema...
If there was information that was in the discrete 9.1 bed in the OH, it can be rendered as a stationary object..... if there was an object that was to move overhead it will render on the fly as needed.
Where did Dolby say the ceiling information was not discrete? There certainly isn't a channel bed dedicated to it, but there will be discrete OH information from objects placed there..
You are intimating that the home version will change the intent of where I place a sound... if I want it locked to the right channel I can do so by placing it in the R channel of the bed or playing it as an object with it's panner sent there..
However, as in your example, if I want it to be a little more in the room, it will render as such and not only come out of the R speaker..
All of the products so far are just updates to existing SKU's in the respective makers line up... it was an easy change for them..
There are those that will want to add even more channels than the "reference" 7.1.4 setups that are quickly coming down the pike... and the sound scape will expand to fit the capability.
It can be argued that the differences from what we have not over 7.1 might not be that revolutionary... however, some of the benefits become much more apparent when the available speaker outputs exceed the size of the channel bed payload (i.e. the panning of an object from front L to rear L without the overheads, won't sound any different if played back as an object or it is rendered into the 7.1 bed in a 5.1 or 7.1 system... add more speakers like front wide and some surround and now the difference becomes much more audible..)
Make no mistake that while there are differences, but I think your categorization of them is a little misinformed, and from what I've heard of the codec so far, I'm impressed... and that's only based on the first generation of products....
I think it's an easy conceit to agree that it's hard enough to get people to setup a 5.1 system, no less 7.1, properly... Dolby Elevation is a really great solution for many existing consumers...
While the initial product roll out might indeed not be revolutionary, Dolby seems to be taking a difference approach for their launch and going inside out....
I'm excited...
You seem to be skeptical.
Can't wait for you to experience it...
And to think we're only at the tip of the iceberg.... I can't wait to see what MDA, DTS-UHD, AC4 and all the other innovations coming down the pipeline have to offer us.
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