XMR-1

[danr]

The XMR-1 is not just about Atmos. Everyone is all hot & bothered about Atmos as it relates to both the XMC-1 (lacking Atmos) and XMR-1 (will have Atmos). For some of us, its all about getting the best out of a 5.1 or 7.1 system.

[tuning]

Anyone have any idea on approximate release timeframe for the xmr-1?

[novisnick]

Mar 1, 2015 23:49:26 GMT -5 tuning said:

Anyone have any idea on approximate release timeframe for the xmr-1?

AH!!,,,,,,, the $64,000.00 question!!!, only those of us with grey hair/no hair will get this one!!,,,,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,he

[wizardofoz]

When it's done...just like a good cake it's not going to be half baked from Dan's oven...not ever again, and rightly so.

[bootman]

Mar 1, 2015 20:13:49 GMT -5 Jim said:

So, rather than wait for the XMR-1, who here is going to make an offer?

www.ebay.com/itm/Datasat-RS20i-High-End-Audio-Cinema-Processor-With-Microphone-/291261843930?_trksid=p2054897.l4275#viTabs_0

Ha!

To be fair the Datasat is an excellent unit and at the offered price, 25% off retail.
This only shows to point out the potential value (since it isn't out yet) of the XMR, not that this unit itself is lacking in any way.


Thanks for the link.

[bootman]

Mar 1, 2015 23:10:08 GMT -5 danr said:

The XMR-1 is not just about Atmos. Everyone is all hot & bothered about Atmos as it relates to both the XMC-1 (lacking Atmos) and XMR-1 (will have Atmos). For some of us, its all about getting the best out of a 5.1 or 7.1 system.

Exactly.
If Atmos was the main sought after feature, there are other much more affordable options available now.
I would point the interested buyer to those.

[Thunderduck]

Mar 2, 2015 0:43:20 GMT -5 novisnick said:

Mar 1, 2015 23:49:26 GMT -5 tuning said:

Anyone have any idea on approximate release timeframe for the xmr-1?

AH!!,,,,,,, the $64,000.00 question!!!, only those of us with grey hair/no hair will get this one!!,,,,,,,,he,,,,,he,,,,he

Dr. Joyce Brothers was a winner and I believe her category (?) was prize fighting.

We watched this show all the time.

Steve

[mgbpuff]

The challenge for the XMR-1 will be for an automatic speaker setup that discovers, calibrates, and makes allowance for any speaker location within sensible reason to create a hemisphere of sound necessary for any of the immersive codecs. At least that's what I'll be looking for!

[hifiaudio2]

I imagine to do that the mic would have to be changed to something similar to what Trinnov uses (without infringing on any possible patents I assume they may have).

[KeithL]

I agree - kind of - but the situation is a bit different than you seem to think - and this will affect how you look at things.

In the general meaning of the term, a CODEC is simply a way of storing information. So, for example, Dolby TrueHD can be used to store 7.2 channels of content. Now, with Dolby TrueHD, the content that is stored in each of those channels is determined by the mix itself. Since the mix was created with the expectation of being played out of speakers in certain locations, you are pretty well obligated to put your speakers in the locations the mix "expects" them to be in if you want to hear what the engineer intended you to hear. If you wanted to use speakers in different places, but hear the same thing, you would need a different mix made specifically for speakers in your new locations. The point here is that the Dolby TrueHD CODEC is only going to give you one possible output from that disc - there is only one "correct" way to implement the CODEC (it's a little more complicated; the CODEC standard includes a spec for playing a 7.2 channel recording out of 5.1 speakers, but it does NOT include a way to decode it so it plays correctly if you put your speakers in unusual places). So, if you wanted to be able to do so, you would need to apply some sort of post-processing, and the result would no longer be "technically correct". However, at least in theory, your pre/pro could include some sort of post processing that allowed it to "virtually move speakers around" to accommodate unusual speaker locations to at least some degree.) The point is that it would not be part of the CODEC; it would be some additional processing capability applied after the audio was initially decoded (for which there is no standard).

Now, when you talk about new technologies like Dolby Atmos, this changes. The "full theatrical Atmos soundtrack" contains content that is intended to be played through specific channels - at specific locations - called "the Bed channels"; but it also contains individual "objects" - which are sounds which are intended to be played in specific LOCATIONS rather than out of specific channels (like 22 degrees behind your head and up 39 degrees). So, in a full theatrical implementation of Atmos, you will have Bed channels playing out of certain groups of speakers, but you will also have certain sounds that the processor can put into different individual speakers, depending on where your specific speakers are, so as to put that object in the correct location in the room. So, in a theater with Atmos, speakers #1 thru #8 could all be in the back left corner of the theater, and the "rear left surround Bed channel" could be playing out of all of them, while "Object #26" might be playing out of only speakers #4 and #5 (and, in a different theater, with a different arrangement of speakers, Object #26 might be playing from different speakers that happen to be located in the correct physical location in that theater).

In principle, the home implementation of Atmos CAN have that capability as well; the standard specifies that a disc can contain both Bed channels and Objects, and that the decoder should be able to decode both. It is this theoretical capability that you're talking about (the ability to play the disc, tell the pre/pro where all your speakers are, and have it "arrange things" so they were routed to the appropriate speaker - in your unusual configuration - that would make them sound like they were in the correct locations). However, even beyond that, there are a few "catches". First, even theatrical Atmos seems to expect the Bed channels to be played from sets of speakers in more or less fixed locations; second, being able to do this fully would require a huge amount of processing power, and I'm not aware of any "Home Atmos" equipment that can currently do it; third, doing that sort of processing would almost certainly require some sort of very complex configuration (it's almost certain that you'll have to "tell" the decoder where each of your speakers is in 3D space, using some sort of drawing program, because it would be very difficult to measure that type of information accurately enough acoustically). And, finally, it will be interesting to see how much of the necessary information is actually encoded on "home Atmos" discs. (The home version of the standard supports fewer objects than the theatrical version. This means that some sort of intelligent human intervention will be required to manually "fit" the theatrical Atmos information onto the home disc while retaining as much flexibility as possible. If they take the lazy way out and mix the theatrical version down to a single "fixed Bed mix", then you'll have a disc that plays out of an Atmos decoder, but has the same exact content as its Dolby TrueHD equivalent.)

My point, though, is that the sort of capability you're talking about, as well as how it is configured and controlled, will almost certainly fall under the capabilities of the Atmos processor (or DTS-X processor, or whatever other standard we're talking about), rather than being something that the pre/pro would do outside of it - just as there are now lots of different versions of "Audyssey", which have widely differing abilities, you can expect to see a whole slew of "Atmos levels" that have more or less flexibility as well as fewer or more channels. (And, of course, DTS-X will almost certainly have its own capabilities, limitations, and ways of doing things.) And, yes, it will be interesting to see how much of this capability makes its way to the majority of home equipment, and how much of it turns out to be just too complicated for people to want to deal with, but we shall see.

Mar 2, 2015 9:06:10 GMT -5 mgbpuff said:

The challenge for the XMR-1 will be for an automatic speaker setup that discovers, calibrates, and makes allowance for any speaker location within sensible reason to create a hemisphere of sound necessary for any of the immersive codecs. At least that's what I'll be looking for!

[chaosrv]

Feb 26, 2015 16:49:00 GMT -5 Bonzo said:

Feb 26, 2015 15:32:04 GMT -5 socketman said:

Dude , that's a lot of amps channels to have on hand. Anyone doing this would be calling the electric company ( more power Scotty ). Makes for some good dreaming though .

I heard that by Christmas 2015 the XPR-16 will be available to go along with the RMC-1.

300 wpc x 16 baby!!!!

That won't just be delivered by truck, it will be the truck!
















Of course that's just a rumor........that I made up.

[KeithL]

But, sadly, EVERY unit you can buy today at any price will be obsolete in four months or so when DTS-X comes out... because NONE of them have it.
(That's if "not having all of the latest features" means "obsolete" to you.)
Then we can all have this conversation all over again...

I much prefer the definition that something is "obsolete" when it no longer does what you need it to do.
(Since the XMC-1 will almost certainly continue to sound very good playing the vast majority of available discs for quite a while, I don't see it's becoming obsolete any time soon by my definition.)

Mar 2, 2015 7:27:55 GMT -5 bootman said:

Mar 1, 2015 23:10:08 GMT -5 danr said:

The XMR-1 is not just about Atmos. Everyone is all hot & bothered about Atmos as it relates to both the XMC-1 (lacking Atmos) and XMR-1 (will have Atmos). For some of us, its all about getting the best out of a 5.1 or 7.1 system.

Exactly.
If Atmos was the main sought after feature, there are other much more affordable options available now.
I would point the interested buyer to those.

[chaosrv]

Feb 28, 2015 7:48:49 GMT -5 wizardofoz said:

And must come with a clock and sleep fuction and alarm too like my ancient sunfire processor did...im joking about the Sunfite but not the feature

I would LOVE a sleep function. I tend to fall asleep with the television on in the bedroom. i set the sleep timer on the TV but my poor Fusion 8100 has to stay turned on all night.

[FilmMixer]

Mar 2, 2015 11:01:20 GMT -5 KeithL said:

And, finally, it will be interesting to see how much of the necessary information is actually encoded on "home Atmos" discs. (The home version of the standard supports fewer objects than the theatrical version. This means that some sort of intelligent human intervention will be required to manually "fit" the theatrical Atmos information onto the home disc while retaining as much flexibility as possible. If they take the lazy way out and mix the theatrical version down to a single "fixed Bed mix", then you'll have a disc that plays out of an Atmos decoder, but has the same exact content as its Dolby TrueHD equivalent.)

Keith.. you don't manually fit in objects for Home Atmos.. the encoding software lets you define the max number of objects, and then uses "spatial coding" to "fit" them in.. herein lies probably the biggest difference between the theatrical version (118 discrete objects) vs. the home (less than 118 objects and the use of spatial coding..)

No objects are thrown out, or down mixed into the bed in any detrimental way.

[flatpicker]

Mar 2, 2015 11:13:58 GMT -5 chaosrv said:

I would LOVE a sleep function. I tend to fall asleep with the television on in the bedroom. i set the sleep timer on the TV but my poor Fusion 8100 has to stay turned on all night.

I would too... I know I can and have used the sleep function on the tv sometimes to shut everything down via hdmi, but it would be nice to do it straight from the control center of the system...

[flatpicker]

Feb 26, 2015 16:49:00 GMT -5 Bonzo said:

I heard that by Christmas 2015 the XPR-16 will be available to go along with the RMC-1.

300 wpc x 16 baby!!!!


I want to see the truck and crew that brings that one to your door... take pics!















Of course that's just a rumor........that I made up.

[Erwin.BE]

Keith, stop wasting time here on the Lounge and get that XMR-1 up and running.

Okay, just this: is there a pre-order list? I want one, period.

[novisnick]

How to prepare for 4 subs with the MRC-1?,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,OH! Wait,,,,,,,,,,I'm early,,,,,,,,,,,,he,,,,,,he,,,,,,,,he,,,,,,,,,.  

My bad!,,,,,,,,

[KeithL]

Correction noted... thanks...

In terms of spatial encoding, you're certainly right - no actual objects are being lost - although some of the detailed level of control is lost when they are aggregated (regardless of how it's done). I hadn't realized that they already had an algorithm that would do this automatically - I think it's an excellent idea. (Sadly, I've seen a lot of disc remasters where the sound was poorly encoded, or incorrectly flagged, or otherwise "botched" into something much less than it could have been. It will be interesting to see whether, ten years down the road, we find $5 discs at Walmart where the purported "Atmos remaster" is simply Dolby Digital 5.1 sound stuffed into the bed channels of an "Atmos" disc.)

My other point, however, was pretty simple... and was that, if you only have a 5.1 or 7.1 channel system, and have no plans to add more channels, then there is no particular benefit to Atmos (because you will be forced to locate your speakers at the traditional locations for surround sound speakers so they can play the bed channels correctly, and Atmos will then be forced to render all the object information it has to play through those same seven speakers, located at the standard "bed speaker" locations - which is functionally equivalent to rendering all of the Atmos content to play through seven fixed channels) . In other words, while it has all sorts of other benefits that are valuable to sound engineers and video producers, Atmos is only worthwhile to the end user if they want height channels, or more than the seven surround channels already offered by Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio.

(I also seem to recall hearing conjecture that, because the way objects and classes of objects are handled in Atmos, we might eventually be able to configure objects and classes of objects in an intelligent manner - for example, setting "voices" to be louder if you have trouble understanding them, or setting all voices to "silent" if you just want to hear the sound track. A feature like that would be useful to many people, even without the promise of extra channels.)

Mar 2, 2015 12:02:01 GMT -5 FilmMixer said:

Mar 2, 2015 11:01:20 GMT -5 KeithL said:

And, finally, it will be interesting to see how much of the necessary information is actually encoded on "home Atmos" discs. (The home version of the standard supports fewer objects than the theatrical version. This means that some sort of intelligent human intervention will be required to manually "fit" the theatrical Atmos information onto the home disc while retaining as much flexibility as possible. If they take the lazy way out and mix the theatrical version down to a single "fixed Bed mix", then you'll have a disc that plays out of an Atmos decoder, but has the same exact content as its Dolby TrueHD equivalent.)

Keith.. you don't manually fit in objects for Home Atmos.. the encoding software lets you define the max number of objects, and then uses "spatial coding" to "fit" them in.. herein lies probably the biggest difference between the theatrical version (118 discrete objects) vs. the home (less than 118 objects and the use of spatial coding..)

No objects are thrown out, or down mixed into the bed in any detrimental way.

[danr]

Mar 2, 2015 13:51:14 GMT -5 Erwin.BE said:

Keith, stop wasting time here on the Lounge and get that XMR-1 up and running.

Okay, just this: is there a pre-order list? I want one, period.

I'll second this. For whomever at Emotiva is reading this, please let us know as soon as we can get on the pre-order list.