Emotiva RMC-1 processor

[mgbpuff]

Maybe it would help if we view 'channel' as simply as a single hardware amplified circuit, and a bed as a combination of many sounds that all come from a single predetermined direction. That way every sound does not necessarily have to have accompanying directional metadata, but those same fixed location speakers can be sent additional metadata encoded object sounds a la the principle of superposition. This is a RMC-1 thread, we should cease and desist from this general immersive sound discussion here!

[lrobertson]

I think with Atmos they are embracing a diffuse sound field by purposefully placing information they’d like to see on multiple speakers on the bedded 7 dare I say it channels because it is how theaters have had a diffuse sound field for years but also now it allows for individual speakers to play their part in the localized audio. Which is also why if we are limited to 7 or even 9 lower speakers we will never get the diffuse sound field as intended due to speaker restraints. So when you say the many sounds meant to come from a single predetermined location I’m suggesting that the center bed involves speakers 15 degrees center left to 15 degrees center right. Speech is object audio usually at 0. Right front bed channel is 30 degrees to 60 degrees. Right surround 75-105 etc. So if you mean single point source I’d bet against it. You’re essentially creating a dipole speaker or diffuse effect for the beds when you have multiple speakers playing the same content. The master handbook of acoustics talks about this effect and the maximum speaker angles preferred. The narrower the angles the better the result.

[lrobertson]

If Rmc-1’s selling point is expandability then until we find out if we are limited to 9.1.6 this is very relevant for the RMC-1 thread/discussion.

[lrobertson]

No one is supposed to care how many bedded channels there are. Just do you have enough speakers to get the best effect possible. I guess we are just butting heads over wording over everything else. I’m suggesting for the people who want to say they prefer a pure 7 speaker layout because that’s the bed limit that would be a misrepresentative statement for Atmos’s intent.

[lrobertson]

The statements we hear about wides shouldn’t really be it’s cool for object audio but the only thing is it’s not discrete bed content. It should be it’s cool for object audio and we start to develop that diffuse sound field as intended by grouping another speaker for the beds. There is just too many negative associations with matrixing and non discrete expansion and that is kind of old logic locked around how people have looked at channels. We just have different outlooks on the purpose of the bed channels which kind of challenges whether it’s as beneficial to see them as channels for anyone who associates a 7 channel bed layer as 7 channels being ideal.

[andersmi]

May 9, 2018 13:08:29 GMT -5 musicfan said:

monopoles.....will 100% work

my room is 11x16x7.5 I use monos and it is wonderful

Good to hear 😊 Thanks 👍

[goozoo]

Well...considering that Disney Studios, WB, and others are now neutering their home ATMOS mixes to 7.1.4 what is the purpose of 9.1.6? This was going to be a separate thread, but decided what the hey, let's start the sh#@#! storm here. The logic behind the studios is to have only one mix for streaming as well as home disc content. Given that the ATMOS up-mixer does not engage the width channels, and more studios doing 7.1.4, what will the benefit of more discrete expansion bring if not being fully implemented by the studios for the home consumer?

[lrobertson]

May 9, 2018 18:45:39 GMT -5 goozoo said:

Well...considering that Disney Studios, WB, and others are now neutering their home ATMOS mixes to 7.1.4 what is the purpose of 9.1.6? This was going to be a separate thread, but decided what the hey, let's start the sh#@#! storm here. The logic behind the studios is to have only one mix for streaming as well as home disc content. Given that the ATMOS up-mixer does not engage the width channels, and more studios doing 7.1.4, what will the benefit of more discrete expansion bring if not being fully implemented by the studios for the home consumer?

That’s what we’ve been discussing. Going over 7.1.4 in an Atmos mix to 24.1.10 isn’t actually upmixing. It’s playing the content as intended. Upmixing occurs with non Atmos material. There is no such thing as upmixing Atmos in this context. The bed channels aren’t meant to play discretely on one channel as point source material and the object material behaves as normal. The bed channels are not meant for one channel per one speaker. I’m happy to see any official description of this but from all documentation the number of bed channels are not associated with speaker numbers only how they are assigned bed info. They are associated with non object based audio that is meant to envelop the listener or involve a larger sound field not participate in a point source application. Larger sound fields can and should be played with multiple speakers. The more the better or you’re not immulating the way sound behaves in the real world. Luckily for us the bed channels have this ability as you add speakers without adding the demand that the sound mixer copy and paste every speakers channel information when that’s all he’d be doing to satisfy people’s want to see 24.1.10 on the back of a disk over 7.1.4. Instead they are all linked to the bed channels. I’d go back and review what Keith wrote.

[lrobertson]

Are we really starting to suggest audio engineers were intended to write 24.1.10 bed channels or even more for cinema to fully utilize Atmos. Gotta kinda grasp that implication. This has never been a codec that was meant to take more money and time by more than quadrupling mixing demands but rather a simplified process and better result. Come to think of it if you did add a width bed channel you’d be decreasing the number of speakers you can play per bed channel which theoretically would actually hurt its diffuse nature. As of now with 7 it looks like each bed channel can pair with 3 speaker arrays up towards the front. These arrays are what dipoles were built to mimick. If they were going to add bed channels for 9 they should theoretically throw them in back so that Atmos home speaker arrays aren’t limited to 2 speakers per bed channel.

[mgbpuff]

Atmos home only has 7.1 bed (fixed sound direction)channels period. Movie Atmos has 9.1 beds (two are overhead). Movie sounds of up to 118 objects is encoded accompanied with with x,y,z coordinate metadata to locate a sound in space and its movement without regard to the number of speakers. Movie Atmos can support 9.1 bed channels and 118 objects into 64 amp channels. Home processors are limited by the number of amplifier channels the manufacturer cares to support or a max of 34 separate amp channels. The rendering software (by either the manufacturer such as Trinnov, or the DSP provider or both, but not Dolby which has provided a complete 128 channel possibility from the getgo), must steer the sound to the number of amplified channels they wish to support or can support. The original movie Dolby mix can use up to 9.1 beds and 118 objects via 64 amp channels and all that information is possible in any given movie, but is is downgraded to a max of 7.1 beds, and 34 amp channels max for home use via BluRay authoring. Less can be done as streaming providers seem to want to do to reduce bandwidth, but the movie sound engineers will, if they use Atmos, always provide the max for the largest of commercial theaters. Arrays are something else altogether. If the space is large enough you can parallel amps and add arrayed speakers in any of the 34 home channels or 64 movie channels making the actual number of amps and speakers very large even though the independent channels are limited to 34 home and 64 commercial. I'm sure I made some mistakes or created some misunderstandings so fire away!

[lrobertson]

I still don’t see anything there that discredits the fact 7 bed channels can be interpreted as speaker arrays over the old ways we’ve interpreted channels. I guess I just don’t understand how we can continue to have this debate without more info coming in. We already know all that. Are you then suggesting the only true 24.1.10 Atmos system has to have 24.1.10 bed channels? We are just going around in circles now. I can see how having wides could benefit from some matrixing because a 2 channel speaker array prob doesn’t have that beneficial of an affect but when jumping to 9 speakers for the front 3 bed channels having these arrays would follow acoustical properties that would show benefit. I guess I just don’t know why we limit bed channels to our old understanding of channels even though the diffuse nature of speaker arrays is how Atmos chooses to describe the bedded content without going into the tech which is what we really want to know. My question is if it’s possible and it follows sound principle is there a reason they’d limit the system when it’s just using the same content for speaker arrays? Other than writing bed and object attributes you’re not acknowledging that the cinema having the ability to have 9 is also allowing for a ton of more speakers in their arrays. Having 9 will never limit them to under 3 per bed channel. Now are you suggesting all other speakers don’t perform as speaker arrays when only a mere 9 bed channels fill a 64 speaker system? Now would this speaker array method cross over to the home? Would less than 3 speakers be ideal for any speaker array? Really 7 channel bed layer makes perfect sense for the speaker array model as well as being easily cross compatible to 7 channel dolby hd.

[mgbpuff]

Arrays don't contain any more information than the discrete channel from which they are driven. Forget arrays, it is confusing you. Arrays are only for really large rooms like movie theaters.

[lrobertson]

Or for rooms with 24.1.10 speakers. I think the fact that I could do this in my room if RMC-1 allows it is not acceptable to you. It contains no more information but the way it is perceived by the brain is very different because it is in an array. We are so close to seeing the light..

[mgbpuff]

Argggh! I'm out!

[lrobertson]

This is why I’ve always said a cool way to go past say 7.1.4 for your arguments sake without the processing demands of increasing object audio channels would be to simply be able to use the bed content without the objects because then in essence you are able to put dipoles up above your monopoles and mimic the desired speaker arrays that they would want us to have in the ideal 24.1.10 system. This wouldn’t add to the object panning ability cus it’s still 7.1.4 with the object monopoles but it would allow for the diffused soundfield. A speaker array for non object audio is the new desired diffusion technique with the new codec that finally supports it. They will no longer recommend dipoles to simulate speaker arrays because it will mess up the object audio. I think that is confusing you that indeed dipoles were recommended to recreate the theater at home and once again they are recommending we recreate the theater at home only this time it’s 64 channels. Anything under 24.1.10 is a lesser system because it won’t have the same diffusion properties. Lesser doesn’t mean still great though so don’t get bent out of shape over this stuff. If you want discrete bed channels to match your systems channel layout that is really your personal choice but to say it’s because the codec was neutered and therefore not intended to go to 24.1.10 is just wrong.

[lrobertson]

Simplified version. More is always better. 9.1.6 might not be 24.1.10 but it’s a few steps closer than 7.1.4 and discrete bed content no longer has to be discrete during playback on speakers because the discrete content that is designed to be discrete upon playback Is the object audio. All discrete bed channels seem to be broken down to speakers that fall within 45 degree increments towards our front soundstage. If you want to argue against speaker arrays cool but it doesn’t change a bed layer’s intent.

[goozoo]

May 9, 2018 23:09:56 GMT -5 lrobertson said:

This is why I’ve always said a cool way to go past say 7.1.4 for your arguments sake without the processing demands of increasing object audio channels would be to simply be able to use the bed content without the objects because then in essence you are able to put dipoles up above your monopoles and mimic the desired speaker arrays that they would want us to have in the ideal 24.1.10 system. This wouldn’t add to the object panning ability cus it’s still 7.1.4 with the object monopoles but it would allow for the diffused soundfield. A speaker array for non object audio is the new desired mainstream diffusion technique. They will no longer recommend dipoles to simulate speaker arrays because it will mess up the object audio. I think that is confusing you. It would have to be proprietary systems that allow for dipoles or ways to mimick this and anything under 24.1.10 is a lesser system because it won’t have the same diffusion properties. Lesser doesn’t mean still great though so don’t get bent out of shape over this stuff.

I think he is getting bent out of shape because you have to have the last word.  Speaker arrays have been employed in commercial theaters for many years and very effectively well before ATMOS.  I have it setup in my own personal theater and limited number of residential installations where the budget allowed.  At the end of the day, as long as you are able to create an immersive experience, that's all that counts regardless of the channel count.  For some, having sound come out of a specific channel is everything, while others are happy with a more diffuse sound.  It's just that for $5K, you want to take full advantage of the processor.  Like having a Ferrari but only driving it when it's sunny.  

[Gary Cook]

Let's do some research, gather the facts. Get your Dolby Atmos or DTSX discs out and tells us what it says about the configuration. I'll kick it off (all 4K discs);
Thor Ragnarok - Dolby Atmos 7.1.4
Wonder Woman - just says Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD 7.1
Justice League - just says Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD 7.1 + DTSHD MA 5.1
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 - Dolby Atmos 7.1.4
The Last Jedi - Dolby Atmos 7.1.4
Blade Runner 2049 - Dolby Atmos 7.1.4

I have seen (but don't own) one movie on the shelf that quoted 7.1.6 but I can't recall which one it was.

So dig out your BD's flip them over and let us know what they quote for Atmos.


Cheers
Gary

[lrobertson]

I agree and I tried my best to show that in that edit I just wrote. I am not against someone enjoying 7.1.4. I’m against them discrediting going past that when public demand is what drives the production.

[lrobertson]

How is there the ability to not have the inclination to not keep talking when we are still referencing 7.1.4 on the back of a disk as the Atmos limit rather than understanding it’s just the bed content meant to be expanded on.