I agree that object-based rendering is a useful technology.... at least for mastering. I also agree that Atmos and DTS:X are probably here to stay (but Dolby Digital is also here to stay; Dolby and DTS pretty much don't ever officially end-of-life formats - they just get "absorbed" into the next latest and greatest format). (And I'm not aware of any specific drawbacks, like the loss of brightness, and need for special glasses with 3D.)
HOWEVER, I do think it will be interesting to see what
FORM both take in a few years.
Let me explain. The cool thing about Atmos is that it lets the producer master a recording for an "arbitrary" number of channels (the same master will work well with however many speakers and channels you play it through). This is great for cinema use, where different theaters may have different numbers and arrangements of speakers. However, it will remain to be seen how useful it is for home use.
Current systems like TrueHD and DTS MA assume that your speakers are placed in certain specific locations - which is their "weakness". However, if you take a Dolby Atmos master and "decode" it for those same speaker positions, then you will basically get the same result. (Or, to say it a different way, as long as your speakers are in the standard locations, you will get
EXACTLY THE SAME THING whether you have an Atmos decoder yourself, or I use my Atmos decoder to produce a mix for those speakers, in those locations, then send you that mix using TrueHD. The great benefit of Atmos is that you can change the decoding parameters for speakers in different locations; if you don't
PUT your speakers in different locations, then that benefit is useless to you.)
Now, part of the problem here is what we call "unrealistic expectations". A "full implementation" of Atmos can most certainly optimize itself for different specific speaker placements - but there are limits - serious limits. Look at those height speakers; if you want height sounds from Atmos, you need to either have ceiling speakers, or side speakers that bounce off the ceiling - and a ceiling and room that this works well with. To take it to an absurd point... take ten speakers, put them all any place you like, but all on the right side of the room, and then try and get a good stereo image. It's just not gonna happen. There is no amount of processing or decoding that will fix that. Likewise, Atmos can do the equivalent of interpolation, and move sounds to specific spots
between speakers, but the operative word is
between. It can't make sounds go where there are no speakers. (You can use phase tricks to push images "past the speakers" - but this isn't what Atmos does.)
Here's what I'm getting at..... if it turns out that there's no huge benefit to putting speakers anyplace than where we currently put them for 7.1, then Atmos isn't going to do anything for us beyond what TrueHD or DTS MA do right now.
How, how about those ceiling speakers? Well, how many people do you really know who've drilled the holes and run the wires? And how many people do you know with good systems who've spent the money for good "bounce speakers" to go with them? I find it interesting that, in their press release, DTS was making vague statements like "DTS:X will give you benefits from however many speakers you have - wherever they're located". Am I the only one who reads this as "code speak" for "we've noticed that nobody really wants to add ceiling speakers for Atmos, so we figured we'd better claim that DTS:X will work just fine without any"?
As of now, only about 1/3 of "serious home theater owners" have moved from 5.1 to 7.1 .... My guess is that not very many of that 1/3 are going to add height speakers. And, if that turns out to be the case, then I'm not really clear about how the Atmos decoder in your 2020 pre/pro, decoding an Atmos disc for the 5.1 or 7.1 speakers you have, in the same old locations, is going to do anything that ends up sounding different than TrueHD. Of course, as I also said, since Atmos will be a required capability of every pre/pro and receiver that wants a Dolby license, it isn't going to matter much - your new AVR or pre/pro
WILL have Atmos, and DTS:X, anyway. (And, that being the case, the disc you buy that year will have either Atmos or DTS:X encoding.)
Now, let's all be honest......
When you bought that last Blu-Ray disc, was it really a major consideration whether it had Dolby TrueHD, or DTS Master Audio, or both?
(OK, thinking back to the last disc you bought, do you actually
REMEMBER whether it has sound tracks in Dolby TrueHD, or DTS Master Audio, or both?)
Were you really
going to NOT buy it if it only came out in 5.1?
Really?
Do you actually know or care whether Dolby TrueHD is better than DTS Master Audio or why?
DTS:X and Atmos, or object-based rendering is certainly no passing hype. And it's a certitude that the XMR-1 will be able to handle these formats. Otherwise the 16 channels of it would be 50% obsolete.
The questions are when will we see the XMR-1 (hopefully by mid-2016) and when will other devices get the technology (your guess is as good as mine). I guess that mid-priced AVR's will get 9 or 11 channels as standard (no problem with class-D amps) so why not Emotiva. But I am thinking it will be 2017...
