I saw this movie this afternoon, with my wife, eldest son and his wife. We had premium seating for the best sound. This was my first 3D movie experience. We saw the movie in the only theater in the Twin Cities that has Dolby Atmos installed. This is the first movie they have screened using Atmos. The theater is the Icon at St. Louis Park.
First of all the movie kept me entertained enough I did not go to sleep. It held my interest even if the story line was fat fetched in fact way out of bounds in terms of plausibility.
The 3D effects were stunning. Early on I had a little nausea, but it soon passed. Yes, I ducked!
The sound I thought was astonishing. The ability to locate sound to any point inside the theater and boyond was amazing. I never was drawn to a particular speaker. The sound was so good I never had the sound system intrude. I could forget it and enjoy the movie. This has never happened to me in a movie theater before. There have always been significant issues that bug me. The dialog was clear, but ever so slightly "shouty"' It was never "chesty." I suspect it is set the way it was because people are conditioned to quite a bit of shout in movies, among many other vices. However this was by far the best quality dialog I have yet heard in a movie theater.
The subs were very well balanced, no boom and not too loud which I find is usually the case. A good balance. I have heard deeper bass. I'm pretty sure the subs were sealed and did not plumb the depths, but they were very good. I never had the resonance in my chest cavity, that my TLs produce without even pushing them. However, this was clean well balanced bass, well beyond what is usually on offer.
It seems to me that the paper with all this math appeared in the AES journal not very long ago, I think less than two years. It is clever, as you don't need 64 channels in the traditional sense. It is a geometric matrix system that keeps up in real time to make the speakers accurately pin point a sound to any point in the volume matrix. So the points are defined first and the speakers respond accordingly. The math was beyond me, but I got the drift, and made a mental note that this could revolutionize "surround" audio. I would say it has and it will. Congratulations to all the brilliant engineers involved in this development.