Dolby Atmos coming soon for home use

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by slimdude

What's the use of listening to a Dolby Atmos soundtrack in 7.1? It will just be equivalent to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, not real Dolby Atmos sound. A person won't need a Dolby Atmos receiver, if that's the case.

Um, for someone with just a 7.1 setup?

[BozQ]

Originally Posted by slimdude

What's the use of listening to a Dolby Atmos soundtrack in 7.1? It will just be equivalent to Dolby TrueHD 7.1, not real Dolby Atmos sound. A person won't need a Dolby Atmos receiver, if that's the case.

You misunderstand his point.
They were discussing the release for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Blu-ray with a 5.1 soundtrack only. He believes that with an Atmos mix available behind the scenes, they could have easily used it and down mix to 7.1 and release on Blu-ray.

[pentatonic]

Originally Posted by kenoh

That's what I mean, it's more precise at distributing the sound whether you have 32 speakers or not! Now more speakers mean more immersion but that doesn't mean it wouldn't sound just as good if your in a small/medium space using less speakers then what the source is actually encoded in.

Say you don't have any height speakers but the source requires them for the full experience? Then the decoder will have to assign the sounds accurately through the rest of the system so it doesn't sound unnatural, for example, 128 audio sources being outputted accurately through a 7.1 surround system, without proper downmixing there would be missing audio!

Yep, but I guess many were thinking discrete channels, which BD couldn't do anyways. Even with as little as 5.1.2 it should still be fairly good, but somehow I think 7.1.4 will be the norm on average, unless your room is quite big that is, and even then

[HDTV1080P]

Therefore, in summary one only needs 24 floor speakers and 10 ceiling speakers for the home version of Dolby ATMOS if they have an extremely large room. Dolby ATMOS with its object based sound technology should be able to mix all 32 audio channels into a small 7 speaker setup (5.1 + 2 ceiling speakers). The bigger the room the more speakers one should add. Those with huge home theater rooms might be interested in a 32 speaker setup.

[HDTV1080P]

I would like to see a sound system in the future support two discrete subwoofers. There are many A/V receivers with two subwoofer outputs, however all the sounntracks on Blu-ray currently max out at 7.1 lossless. I was hoping Dolby ATMOS would have used both a rear and front subwoofer, however it appears Dolby ATMOS will use only one subwoofer channel. A rear center channel with wide speakers would also be nice to have in the future. One of my family members is wired for a rear center channel and rear subwoofer if that technology is used in the future.

[MoulinBlu]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

I would like to see a sound system in the future support two discrete subwoofers. There are many A/V receivers with two subwoofer outputs, however all the sounntracks on Blu-ray currently max out at 7.1 lossless. I was hoping Dolby ATMOS would have used both a rear and front subwoofer, however it appears Dolby ATMOS will use only one subwoofer channel. A rear center channel with wide speakers would also be nice to have in the future. One of my family members is wired for a rear center channel and rear subwoofer if that technology is used in the future.

Low frequencies reproduced by a dedicated sub should be non-localizable. Any and all directional low frequencies should be directed to the speakers the mix designated them for, otherwise you're going to hear sounds awkwardly coming from directions that don't fit the scene. Unlike being able to uniquely calibrate multiple subs, discretely, taking into consideration acoustic discrepencies related to room boundaries, distances and such unique to where each is located in the room, there is absolutely no point whatsoever in providing for multiple discrete low frequency effects channels themselves.

[kenoh]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

A rear center channel with wide speakers would also be nice to have in the future.]

That's what I've been saying for the last ten posts! We should have gotten support for the original 11.1 specification with two wide/two height speakers added on top of the original 7.1 surround setup.

A matter a fact I have a 7.1 receiver that has those input's and if I wanted I can trade my rear surround for height speakers or wide speakers, it's always advertised that the wide speakers get the most use compared to height speakers or ceiling speakers!

Those should be the most important in this whole Atmos setup! IMOO.

[sega3dmm]

Originally Posted by BozQ

I pretty much agree until you mentioned "Diet Atmos."
If done right, I think Atmos for home as a format, will deliver. It is only limited by the hardware receivers can offer. Currently, it looks like the first wave of Atmos receivers will offer 12 channels of audio. In various configurations. I can understand why Dolby recommends 7.1.4
Most of the Atmos sound mixes uses a 7.1 sound bed. Having a 7.1 original setup means no down or up mixing of the soundtrack is necessary. While 4 height channels allows for the most complete surround coverage.

The difference between Auro 11.1 and 9.1 is quite significant.
Auro 11.1 consists of your regular 5.1 plus its height satellite channels and an overhead (or VOG/Voice of God) channel. FL, FC, FR, LFE, SL, SR, FLh, FCh, FRh, SLh, SRh and OvH.


You're missing out on the Front-Center Height and Overhead channel with Auro 9.1. Honestly, I wouldn't be able to truly accept it, it's like down mixing 7.1 to 5.1 on regular Blu-ray.

The theatrical Atmos system comprises up to 64 individual speaker outputs and the new Atmos AVRs will cover just a fraction of that. Furthermore, there is no home Atmos configuration that supports 5 front channels and two extra LFE channels to accompany the surrounds, as does its theatrical counterpart. The panning in Gravity wouldn't be replicated as well at home.

Usually a Dolby Atmos bed is 9.1, the extra two channels is mostly used as stereo overhead, and rarely used for a five-channel front configuration with no overhead beds.

In regards to Auro, what do you think would be a bigger loss of information? 61.3 folded down to 7.1.4, or 11.1 folded down to 9.1? Although the latter compromises the height, there are plenty of 2-channel stereo mixes that have a dead center phantom imaging where the vocals are usually positioned. There are even some Quadrophonic (2F/2R/0LFE) mixes that do well without discrete center, so especially being a height channel mostly consisting of reflections, you won't miss much. Voice of God may be missed, however. That is sort of a sacrificial lamb not unlike the missing surround LFEs and pan-through arrays of (dare I say again ) Diet Atmos.

And after watching Gravity in 5.1, things are missed from 7.1, let alone Atmos, but it remained faithful to the experience, yet on a budget. I remember having some possibly psychoacoustic height moments during the film on Blu-ray, but that could just be me.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by sega3dmm

In regards to Auro, what do you think would be a bigger loss of information? 61.3 folded down to 7.1.4, or 11.1 folded down to 9.1?

Apples and oranges. You're comparing a purely channel based system (Auro) with an object based system (Atmos). All the extra speakers do is give more precision to a sound's location. The sounds are still there in a "minimum" configuration, so you're not losing anything.


You need to stop thinking of Atmos in the same terms as the older systems.

[FilmFreakosaurus]

Originally Posted by sega3dmm

The theatrical Atmos system comprises up to 64 individual speaker outputs and the new Atmos AVRs will cover just a fraction of that. Furthermore, there is no home Atmos configuration that supports 5 front channels and two extra LFE channels to accompany the surrounds, as does its theatrical counterpart. The panning in Gravity wouldn't be replicated as well at home.

Usually a Dolby Atmos bed is 9.1, the extra two channels is mostly used as stereo overhead, and rarely used for a five-channel front configuration with no overhead beds.

In regards to Auro, what do you think would be a bigger loss of information? 61.3 folded down to 7.1.4, or 11.1 folded down to 9.1? Although the latter compromises the height, there are plenty of 2-channel stereo mixes that have a dead center phantom imaging where the vocals are usually positioned. There are even some Quadrophonic (2F/2R/0LFE) mixes that do well without discrete center, so especially being a height channel mostly consisting of reflections, you won't miss much. Voice of God may be missed, however. That is sort of a sacrificial lamb not unlike the missing surround LFEs and pan-through arrays of (dare I say again ) Diet Atmos.

And after watching Gravity in 5.1, things are missed from 7.1, let alone Atmos, but it remained faithful to the experience, yet on a budget. I remember having some possibly psychoacoustic height moments during the film on Blu-ray, but that could just be me.

First generation consumer processors (that don't cost an arm and a leg) are 7.1.4, but that can change in subsequent gear releases. They're limited due to processor power. If they added another DSP, they could probably have a pre-amp with 13.1 or something like that for the upper-middle price range. That would cover your wide fronts, fronts, sides, rears, and four ceilings.

[kenoh]

I was looking into getting me this Onkyo 9.2 channel receiver with upgradability to 11.4-multichannel through pre-outs but now that I heard 32 channel receivers are coming out in a few months, I don't know what to do!

I figure I wait the few month's till these super receivers come out and even if there unaffordable I could hope to get me a 11.2 channel receiver cheaper when these companies start to cannibalize each other over new and improved game in the high end A/V business?

What do you guys think, best to wait it out? I mean it's not like there's going to be content till early next year anyways?


Basically I would have gone with Onkyo TX-NR1030 for it's Pre-out's and upgradability to 11.4 but Yamaha and Pioneer has something similar for about the same price. I need help clarifying a few things....

Onkyo TX-NR1030 (MSRP: $1,699) - http://www.onkyousa.com/Products/mod...urce=prodClass

Yamaha RX-A3040 (MSRP: $2,199) - http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio..._u/?mode=model

Pioneer SC-85 (MSRP: $$1,600) - http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PU...eceivers/SC-85


As you can see there are some differences like, the Pioneer is the only one that uses Class D3 Amplification and both the Pioneer and Yamaha use 32 bit DACs, the Onkyo only uses 24bit DACS but the Pioneer can't be upgraded to 11.2 channels like the Onkyo and Yamaha and the Yamaha has the most power at 150 W per channel and the Onkyo has 135 W per channel.

The main question I want to ask "Besides power deference's" does the Class D3 Amplification sound superior over Class AB amps and is there a big difference between the Sabre32 Ultra DAC Vs the 24-bit TI Burr-Brown DACs ?

[HDTV1080P]

If you did not own an A/V receiver already, then the time to purchase one would be now. However since you do already own an A/V receiver you might want to wait until 2015+ before upgrading. The 2014 A/V receivers from many companies are Dolby ATMOS ready and will receive a firmware update by the end of the year to activate the Dolby ATMOS feature. Also who knows maybe the Dolby Atmos Blu-ray titles might have a delayed release.

Personally, I am looking at 2015+ to upgrade since there will be a bigger selection of A/V receivers in theory with both HDCP 2.2 and Dolby ATMOS. If I do upgrade it might be a Yamaha, Denon, or Pioneer. 32 bit DAC’s is better then 24 bit DAC’s. I have had good experiences with both Yamaha and Pioneer. I heard Denon is really good also but I have not tried their A/V receivers yet. Professional reviews claim that the Onkyo amp has a little better sonics then the Pioneer. However back in 2011 I had a real bad experience with the top of the line Onkyo and switched it out for a top of the line 2011 Pioneer Elite SC-57. I was getting to many handshaking issues with the Onkyo and also I did not like the clicking noise. Also the Onkyo upconvert feature that allows 24 bit sources to be upconverted to 36 bit deep color was not working with my equipment. So personally it might be awhile before I try another Onkyo A/V receiver model.

I really wanted the ONKYO to work out and I tried to make it work but there were too many problems and I had to replace it with a Pioneer.

[MoulinBlu]

Originally Posted by HDTV1080P

If you did not own an A/V receiver already, then the time to purchase one would be now. However since you do already own an A/V receiver you might want to wait until 2015+ before upgrading. The 2014 A/V receivers from many companies are Dolby ATMOS ready and will receive a firmware update by the end of the year to activate the Dolby ATMOS feature. Also who knows maybe the Dolby Atmos Blu-ray titles might have a delayed release.

[SIZE=3][FONT=Calibri][COLOR=#000000]Personally, I am looking at 2015+ to upgrade since there will be a bigger selection of A/V receivers in theory with both HDCP 2.2 and Dolby ATMOS. If I do upgrade it might be a Yamaha, Denon, or Pioneer. 32 bit DAC’s is better then 24 bit DAC’s. I have had good experiences with both Yamaha and Pioneer. I heard Denon is really good also but I have not tried their A/V receivers yet. Professional reviews claim that the Onkyo amp has a little better sonics then the Pioneer.

Marketing would have us believe that 32 bit is better, but real world practicality is nowhere near so black and white. The likelihood of anyone hearing even a subtle difference between 32 bit ESS DACS and 24 bit Burr Brown has a far greater chance of being provoked by the placebo effect than something more tangibly qualied. Of course, considering you'd likely be comparing two different components as well - unless you know of some manufacturer that chose to implement both DACs in the same machine, implenting identical circuitry for both so that they are precisely affected by the same processing and same signal path - would make any assumption that the DACs themselves are the sole or even primary cause for any appreciable sonic discrepancies assumptively naive. I currently use a Yamaha 3030 btw, with ESS DACS, and have ample experience using 24bit Burr Brown over the past decade or so.

Even professional reviewing of audio "quality" is far too subjective to ascribe much merit, beyond the more qualifiable aspects of design like supported features and elements that can be measured in a lab. I wouldn't put any stock in any reviewers claim of one AVR sounding better than another. Any experienced reviewer worth their salt can only relay the experiences they had with the unit, qualified as best they can with whatever control components they used (room, speakers, listening material, etc), with further accommodation for discrepencies in such. Should they dare to attempt to make direct comparisons with another piece of gear unrelated to performance enhancements related to features, they would need to further qualify the experience with consideration of our very fallible, short-term memory for sonic subtleties, if they're genuinely learned in their craft or at all honest.

[pentatonic]

Originally Posted by MoulinBlu

Marketing would have us believe that 32 bit is better, but real world practicality is nowhere near so black and white. The likelihood of anyone hearing even a subtle difference between 32 bit ESS DACS and 24 bit Burr Brown has a far greater chance of being provoked by the placebo effect than something more tangibly qualied. Of course, considering you'd likely be comparing two different components as well - unless you know of some manufacturer that chose to implement both DACs in the same machine, implenting identical circuitry for both so that they are precisely affected by the same processing and same signal path - would make any assumption that the DACs themselves are the sole or even primary cause for any appreciable sonic discrepancies assumptively naive. I currently use a Yamaha 3030 btw, with ESS DACS, and have ample experience using 24bit Burr Brown over the past decade or so.

Even professional reviewing of audio "quality" is far too subjective to ascribe much merit, beyond the more qualifiable aspects of design like supported features and elements that can be measured in a lab. I wouldn't put any stock in any reviewers claim of one AVR sounding better than another. Any experienced reviewer worth their salt can only relay the experiences they had with the unit, qualified as best they can with whatever control components they used (room, speakers, listening material, etc), with further accommodation for discrepencies in such. Should they dare to attempt to make direct comparisons with another piece of gear unrelated to performance enhancements related to features, they would need to further qualify the experience with consideration of our very fallible, short-term memory for sonic subtleties, if they're genuinely learned in their craft or at all honest.

It is much shorter to explain than that in reality. The actual DAC chip has really little to do in the resulting quality outside of having defined specs. It is the manufacturer's implementation of this DAC chip that yields the biggest differences in quality. Many very expensive DAC units out there use these "antiquated" 24 bits chip and still sound light years better than many with the ESS. Remember, the actual wholesale price of these chips is relatively inexpensive and very small fraction of the price of the unit.

And, at an extreme opposite, you take a DAC like Light Harmonic's Da Vinci who actually uses a 1 bit chip (nothing like SACD here). But to get this non over-sampling 1 bit to work wonders they had to built a tank of a unit that would make any voodoo upsampling et al unnecessary. Yes, it is a $32k DAC, but still proof that there is no real meaning in all this marketing if you don't build the right machine for it.

[Blu-Dog]

This whole thing is total BS. This kind of array will never be popular, since it makes no auditory sense.


What will happen is quite transparent. Audio signals will go to a proprietary box, where the signal will be processed and fed to a standard receiver for the 7.1 side of the audio signal. The proprietary box will feed some "chandelier" rig to be hung from the ceiling, or placed somewhere, with some dodecahedron shaped array to play the "height" sounds. Either that, or it will have an structure that looks like the spines on a stegosaurus.


No doubt this rig will cost a fortune, weigh a ton (or less, if cheap speakers are used) and the processing will take place somewhere in this mystery box.


There will be all kinds of charts and graphs, telling you where to sit and what your furniture must be made of (throw away that expensive marble table and the leather couch, they're too reflective) and make sure you have the expensive custom microphone to check for optimum performance of all of your speakers.


The whole direct/reflecting theory behind this mess would have anyone scratching their heads. What environment in a standard home is this supposed to fit in? Active wiring is out of the question - clearly this means active, matrixed speakers, with very questionable sound mixes by content producers.


This thing is going nowhere, fast.

[Flatnate]

I could maybe pull this off in my room with an self powered active speaker that screwed in to my par can light fixtures. I know Klipsch made something like that for a while. However, if it needed a Bluetooth or a different kind of wireless method for signal you can bet their would be delay that just screws the whole thing up. Retrofitting wiring in to those locations is possibly doable but no normal human would take that on. I am very skeptical of the ability to use the ceiling as a reflection point with front speaker add-ons. How much sound directionality can you really get with this kind of method?

This sounds like a real stretch for something, anything new that they can sell in the next generation of A/V receivers. I can't imagine it will go over well.

[slimdude]

I can very well see, Dolby Atmos as a niche market! Overhead sound is not anything new. Ceiling speakers, have been installed in various commercial buildings for years.

[Scarriere]

Too bad you guys are a bit jaded at this point. Hopefully that turns around as it gets closer to reality.
As for me, I am stoked about this and can't wait until Atmos is in my home. I had my a/v guy get me a quote (I get friend prices) on a Yamaha RX-A2040. He hasn't gotten back to me yet, but will at some point. I also mentioned that I'll be needing four more Paradigm speakers and he said whenever I'm ready, they'll order 'em up. Although on the small side, I've got the room for four more speakers.
I can't wait!

[MoulinBlu]

Originally Posted by pentatonic

It is much shorter to explain than that in reality. The actual DAC chip has really little to do in the resulting quality outside of having defined specs. It is the manufacturer's implementation of this DAC chip that yields the biggest differences in quality. Many very expensive DAC units out there use these "antiquated" 24 bits chip and still sound light years better than many with the ESS. Remember, the actual wholesale price of these chips is relatively inexpensive and very small fraction of the price of the unit.


And, at an extreme opposite, you take a DAC like Light Harmonic's Da Vinci who actually uses a 1 bit chip (nothing like SACD here). But to get this non over-sampling 1 bit to work wonders they had to built a tank of a unit that would make any voodoo upsampling et al unnecessary. Yes, it is a $32k DAC, but still proof that there is no real meaning in all this marketing if you don't build the right machine for it.

I didn't know there were "many" models using ESS yet, at least not in this country. But saying 24 bit Burr Brown sounds "light years better" than 32 bit ESS is hyperbole to the extreme, regardless of implementation. In my experience you're not going to hear that magnitude of difference even comparing a high end AVR to a relatively budget model. Such profound sonic discrepancy is almost exclusively the domain of speaker design, speaker placement, and room acoustics. Of which better auto room EQ or more flexible manual EQ is the only place one AVR is likely to have a seemingly dramatic impact over another model, assuming they all support the same compulsory codec/processing support. Don't misunderstand, I'm not one to argue that all AVRs sound the same. But "light years better" is a too broad a statement, even by subjective standards, IMO.

Originally Posted by Scarriere

Too bad you guys are a bit jaded at this point. Hopefully that turns around as it gets closer to reality.
As for me, I am stoked about this and can't wait until Atmos is in my home. I had my a/v guy get me a quote (I get friend prices) on a Yamaha RX-A2040. He hasn't gotten back to me yet, but will at some point. I also mentioned that I'll be needing four more Paradigm speakers and he said whenever I'm ready, they'll order 'em up. Although on the small side, I've got the room for four more speakers.
I can't wait!

I wouldn't expect much, if any, bump in price over their current line. Adding Atmos is a necessity for manufactures to remain viable, but the market isn't going to be anywhere near substantial enough to charge much, if any more for it - they'll lose too many sales if they do, or at the very least drive sales away from their upper lines, encouraging more people to settle for cheaper units that have less profit margin. Prices didn't spike for TrueHD/DTS HD or DTS ES/DDEX units when they were introduced. Such decoding was just left to higher end models at first, where there is much greater profit margin for manufacturers to absorb any added expense.

Atmos doesn't look like it'll be exclusive to high end components out of the gate, even though the market is such it probably should, as the AVR alone is only a portion of the upgrade expense (unlike going from lossy DD/DTS to modern DTS HD MA and TrueHD, both of which will likely prove profoundly more significant than adding more speakers in all but rather large HT setups), you've still got speakers (potentially a LOT of speakers, if this is actually implemented anywhere near 32 channels - which the pictures of the announced Onkyo doesn't appear to even provide half that many preouts) and more amplification to buy. But the AVR industry has gotten so tight, they don't really make high end AVRs anymore, just higher priced boutique brands. Even the Yamaha 3030 is really only a upper mid-end AVR compared to yesteryear, despite inflation. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Assuming Yamaha doesn't decide they can afford to gouge the early adopter market just for a feature relatively few will be able to use, I'd expect the price from any respectable dealer that'll deal with you honestly, not just rigidly quote MAP like big box mega stores (Best Buy, Amazon) will likely be in the 1000 to 1300 dollar range for a new 2040, which is the price range I was quoted on the 2030 from all the authorized dealers I called when I was shopping for a new AVR early this year. Amazon, of course, advertised the unit at full MAP, and despite multiple visits to Best Buy their sales reps wouldn't budge on the 1700 dollar MAP either, which I ended up buying the 3030 for less than that.

[Scarriere]

Originally Posted by MoulinBlu

I didn't know there were "many" models using ESS yet, at least not in this country. But saying 24 bit Burr Brown sounds "light years better" than 32 bit ESS is hyperbole to the extreme, regardless of implementation. In my experience you're not going to hear that magnitude of difference even comparing a high end AVR to a relatively budget model. Such profound sonic discrepancy is almost exclusively the domain of speaker design, speaker placement, and room acoustics. Of which better auto room EQ or more flexible manual EQ is the only place one AVR is likely to have a seemingly dramatic impact over another model, assuming they all support the same compulsory codec/processing support. Don't misunderstand, I'm not one to argue that all AVRs sound the same. But "light years better" is a too broad a statement, even by subjective standards, IMO.



I wouldn't expect much, if any, bump in price over their current line. Adding Atmos is a necessity for manufactures to remain viable, but the market isn't going to be anywhere near substantial enough to charge much, if any more for it - they'll lose too many sales if they do, or at the very least drive sales away from their upper lines, encouraging more people to settle for cheaper units that have less profit margin. Prices didn't spike for TrueHD/DTS HD or DTS ES/DDEX units when they were introduced. Such decoding was just left to higher end models at first, where there is much greater profit margin for manufacturers to absorb any added expense.

Atmos doesn't look like it'll be exclusive to high end components out of the gate, even though the market is such it probably should, as the AVR alone is only a portion of the upgrade expense (unlike going from lossy DD/DTS to modern DTS HD MA and TrueHD, both of which will likely prove profoundly more significant than adding more speakers in all but rather large HT setups), you've still got speakers (potentially a LOT of speakers, if this is actually implemented anywhere near 32 channels - which the pictures of the announced Onkyo doesn't appear to even provide half that many preouts) and more amplification to buy. But the AVR industry has gotten so tight, they don't really make high end AVRs anymore, just higher priced boutique brands. Even the Yamaha 3030 is really only a upper mid-end AVR compared to yesteryear, despite inflation. They don't make 'em like they used to.

Assuming Yamaha doesn't decide they can afford to gouge the early adopter market just for a feature relatively few will be able to use, I'd expect the price from any respectable dealer that'll deal with you honestly, not just rigidly quote MAP like big box mega stores (Best Buy, Amazon) will likely be in the 1000 to 1300 dollar range for a new 2040, which is the price range I was quoted on the 2030 from all the authorized dealers I called when I was shopping for a new AVR early this year. Amazon, of course, advertised the unit at full MAP, and despite multiple visits to Best Buy their sales reps wouldn't budge on the 1700 dollar MAP either, which I ended up buying the 3030 for less than that.

I see on the Canadian site that the msrp is $1799.95. I don't recall what I paid for my 2010 but it definitely wasn't that high. I've been dealing with the same a/v store for over a decade now and we have a good relationship. They'll definitely not charge me anywhere near msrp and I'm not worried about that at all.

I'm not sure about amplification yet, but know I'll need 2-4 amps for the ceiling speakers or better yet, a three channel for the front three and use the internal ones for the celling. There seems to be enough possibilities.

Any idea if you'll be wanting a 3040? It kinda sucks upgrading so soon after that expensive (and very fine) purchase.

If movies like Godzilla and Edge of Tomorrow are going to be having an Atmos track, I want to be all over it!