I was talking about him, he says that a lot and many repeat it.
My impression was that people believe every word he says and many are too lazy to learn anything on their own. They've been reading that forum for years and get all their information from the articles and discussion and he "leads" it all. He didn't like one bit that I questioned some of the things he was saying and he copped an attitude towards me very quickly with all his minions jumping in to basically tell me to sit down and shut up so I can "learn something". I didn't like that one bit. While I was new to Atmos/X/Auro, I was NOT remotely new to home theater (I had been running 6.1 for 12 years prior and 5.1 since 1995...Goldeneye was my first DD movie and Jurassic Park on laserdisc was my first DTS one). I also had lots of experience with bipolar speakers in the front and back and dipolars as my main speakers since the end of 1995 (the Carver AL-IIIs). I've got active crossovers, bi-amping, etc. and big and little amps and several DACs. I followed Stereophile until I realized they were hucksters selling ads and went to rec.audio.high-end and rec.audio.opinion when I had newsgroup access in the early 1990s.
So for someone to basically tell me to shut up and sit down really cheesed me off. What makes those others on there think this guy knows more than me about things OTHER than Atmos? So I read a ton of crap about Atmos/X/Auro and had some questions and things to work out and Sanjay's buddy tells me literlaly to go to the Atmos thread and read 10,000 PAGES of messages to catch up before asking questions. Holy crap Batman. That had to be the dumbest thing I've ever read. The same guy also told me I should build like a 5.1.4 or 7.1.4 theater first and then baby-step up from there. WHY? Are speaker arrays or pro logic decoder wiring too complex to build right from the start? I can switch my theater to ANYTHING from 2.0 to 11.1.6 with a push of a few buttons and do "true" Auro-3D, copied or "stretched" (top middle extraction). It wasn't that hard to do, just lots and lots of wiring. No comments from them when I finished my theater. Silence. Dead silence. They remind me of cliques from high school or something. Stuart Bowling from Dolby Corporation personally complimented my rig on the RPF forums and I made it quite clear how I expanded from 7.1.4 to 11.1.6 without something like a Trinnov and used bipolar top middles mounted as side heights. I figure if one of the fathers of Dolby Atmos endorsed my setup, it can't be as "wrong" as Sanjay and the gang would like people to think (I've got all the REW graphs, etc. here from EVERY SEAT even). Yeah, I'm an idiot, Sanjay. Even so, I don't act that way around them. But several ignore everything I say and worse yet will parrot what I just said as if they thought of it and brought it up.
I've really come to despise those forums for that reason. I had a moderator give me a warning for "insulting a member" in the bass movie thread (I asked them to point out where I did that and nothing because it never happened. The TRUTH is I said I didn't really care for Mad Max Fury Road as a movie (not the sound or picture) and I gave specific reasons why even and my god, you'd think I just insulted someone's mother.... People would make points and I would counter and someone else would practically SCREAM at me why was I still talking about it (well because someone commented or asked me a question; are these people MORONS or something? And that's when the unsubstantiated BS warning came I just left. Screw them and the moderators running the place if they're going to just make crap up like that.) Generally speaking, it's SO much more pleasant here (of course those guys think we are simpletons here or something). I want to talk about movies and Atmos not get a lecture on my speaker angle being below 30 degrees from the rear sitting at the MLP (well yeah, the room is 24 feet long, it can't be above 30 for every single seat; that's why I have top middle speakers to bridge it together. Do they think real theaters rear speakers are at 30 degrees from the back in the front row? Of course not. But that's how LITERAL they take the Dolby "guidelines" for home theater. Like you can't do more than one or two rows or look at the real theaters?
Did they even notice that the side surrounds in actual theaters are mounted as SIDE HEIGHTS, not ear level? Only Auro theaters have speakers just above ear level and another set at height level plus VOG speakers at "top" level (which are individual speakers in Auro-Max). it's actually a VASTLY SUPERIOR speaker setup, IMO as Auro-Max than Dolby. Too bad it's losing the race. A home Auro-Max would challenge Atmos/X on every level, IMO and be far more flexible to setup in an average room.
It depends upon the music. With close-mic'd studio recorded popular stuff that contains little ambient sound, it doesn't do much (at default settings), and can be hard to tell you're not listening in 2 channel--I need to switch back and forth to even tell a difference--auromatic can add just a bit more "depth," but it's not a large effect; if you put your ear to a surround speaker, very little is coming out.
But with large-venue live recordings (usually classical of some type, some jazz) it really comes alive. I haven't found anything that comes as close to making a stereo recording sound like a native Auro recording (which are absolutely fantastic). Neural X is like a box of chocolates with such stuff, sometimes sounding much like all channel stereo. DSU often seems to surround you with the band when that wasn't the original intent. Auromatic does the best job of placing you in the venue and giving you a first row seat. Not as good as a natively recorded track obviously, but pretty darn close with some things.
Anyway, those are my impressions from much experimentation. And they're strong enough, any future upgrade I do has to have it, even if not another single movie ever gets made with it.
I'll have to try some different types of music with it if I ever get my hearing back in my left ear (still clogged up four days later). I've got the Auro Demo Disc 2 for music and an album by Lichtmond in Auro-3D. They're amazing sounding. The dual quad miked recordings are like binaural for the room (the walls just disappear). Sadly, that's not how movies are mixed which I think is one of the reasons Auro doesn't make quite the same splash playing movies as it does those music recordings. Atmos isn't really set up to do locked channel recordings like that, although it "could" the same way Disney locks objects. But they don't promote that and Auro does for music. It's about as natural as music can sound in playback system, IMO. Yes, you can mix Atmos music to sound good, but it's still a mix, not a snapshot of reality. That's why I was kind of rooting for Auro-3D to at least get some following in Europe or whatever so at least the music recordings would continue. Dolby plays dirty, like all large corporations, though. I have little doubt they stepped on some toes to make sure Auro went nowhere, especially in the USA.
