The Dolby Atmos, DTS-X, and Auro-3D Discussion Thread

Elmonoborracho

Elmonoborracho

Audiophyte
It doesn't "hurt" to have more speakers.

I think Ceiling speakers should be close enough to your ears so you can hear them. If they are too far away, you might not be able to hear them, especially when all the other speakers are playing loud sound.

So the front Ceiling speakers are already installed? They are above the Main Front Left and Right speakers?
No, but there will be a dropped ceiling in the sides and the top front speakers and the top back speakers cannot be placed more in the center.

Look the images attched.This would be my dining room with the 7.2.6 speaker configuration.
 

Attachments

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Denx4100

Audioholic Intern
For many contents, the 14' overhead speaker distance doesn't seem to be an issue.

As for level-matching, of course, we are level-matching only with simple pink noise and with the microphones or SPL meters.

Pink noise from an 8" ceiling speaker vs pink noise from a Big Tower may have the same level when level-matched. But when actual loud complex sounds are played through them, I think there is going to be a difference.

I think there are more variables than I can try to account for. :D

But I do believe the main reason why people have different impressions of the same movies is because our Atmos speakers are all placed differently.

Your experience, and explanation in the last 2 posts has been very interesting! I've been wrestling with this myself. It's one thing to have a system level matched with pink noise, that only has 1 frequency, but when listening to a movie that has a lot more going on that's quite different!!!
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Your experience, and explanation in the last 2 posts has been very interesting! I've been wrestling with this myself. It's one thing to have a system level matched with pink noise, that only has 1 frequency, but when listening to a movie that has a lot more going on that's quite different!!!
Yeah, it sounded pretty good when I said that. :D

But I think it simply comes down to adjusting those ceiling speaker levels loud enough so that you can hear the Atmos ceiling speakers.

We cannot control how the sound engineers mix the sounds, especially for Center Dialogue and Atmos. But we can control the sound levels of our Center speaker and Ceiling speakers.
 
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Denx4100

Audioholic Intern
S@$! I just can't wait to rewatch it in Atmos cus it sounded epic in dts upmixed!

Plus I've done the final tweaking on the system the last couple weeks and now that I have the levels balanced and subs optimally placed I went the last 3 week's with Audyssey and all eq turned off all of it. And I literally sat up in my chair. I won't go into too much detail it's a post for another thread but my system took a huge boost for the better with it all turned off. Stuff just got epic
Do you mean that the audio is actually better with dynamic EQ OFF! I've never tried it before
 
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Denx4100

Audioholic Intern
Its not even near or close to demo disc. I may have to hide it. :D

I'd rather watch Alien 3 than torture myself with MI-6 again. Okay chapter 13 is just about watchable :D.
I'm sorry you went through sssooo much trouble to install your setup
 
VonMagnum

VonMagnum

Audioholic Chief
Account still mega slow for unknown reason. I think maybe a delete/reset is needed to fix whatever is corrupted in the profile/account....

Anyway, if you want a MEGA Dolby Atmos demo album, get Booka Shade's "Dear Future Self" music album. It's available at Amazon UK as a pure audio blu-ray. It's pretty much techno/house music, but it puts sounds literally everywhere possible in the room. It even sounds pretty crazy in just 5.1 upstairs, but in Atmos, there are sounds all over the ceiling, back of the room and everywhere in-between!

Similarly, Lichtmond 4 - The Journey is awesome in Dolby Atmos. It's more Enigma/Delerium meets Pink Floyd with 2D or 3D CGI visuals of space and strange planet surfaces. Vocals and instruments appear everywhere and even rotate around you in circles at times.

Lichtmond 3 - Days of Eternity is also quite good, but it's in Auro-3D (Neural X does a reasonable job with the 5.1 DTS-HD track if you don't have Auro-3D decoding).
Mando Diao's Aelita is also great in Auro-3D with sounds all over the place (closer to synth-rock).



Movies.... (some recent ones I've watched that come to mind; I find it odd I actually have several Auro-3D reviews....)

Disappointments

Back to the Future 4K 1-3 in Atmos. 2 at least has the cars overhead, but 1 & 3 are mostly ear level + thunder overhead and most of the sound effects in the movie are arrayed through front/middle/back. This means how immersive the sounds are is entirely dependent on where you sit in the room relative to your speakers. If you sit in the middle or back, there's a lot more going on in the surrounds. If you sit closer to the front, a lot of the surround effects (e.g. clocks chiming at the beginning) appears more in the front wide speaker location and seems more like a very large front soundstage. I'd prefer discrete sounds that aren't dependent on where I sit. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on. Obviously, some of the bigger effects are more discrete like the steam venting into the back of the room, but it's quite odd really.

Top Gun 4K/Atmos - On the plus side, it puts things where they need to go without requiring Neural X to get the jets overhead and it's still an awesome soundtrack, but Neural X already had the jets overhead and there's not much new in terms of imaging beyond the obvious improvements in placement up/down that Neural X pretty much already handled just fine. On the down side, the LFE channel is like 4-6dB lower than the DTS-HD 6.1 version on the previous Blu-Ray and 3D Blu-Ray. You pretty much have to crank up your LFE channel to get it in the same ballpark.

Middling (Better than 5.1, not totally awesome, but has some nice moments)

Beetlejuice 4K/Atmos. It has some nice surround and overhead moments, but they're kind of infrequent.

Jumanji - The Next Level - Awesome fun movie (just as funny as the last one believe it or not), but while it has decent surround effects at ear level, the overhead effects are most noticeable for the "new life" ping more than anything else, same as the last one. The original with a retrofit Atmos soundtrack is truly awe-inspiring, though (animals all over the room and flying bugs right above your heads, etc.!)

Domino (2019)(Netherlands Auro-3D version) - This one was a pain to get a hold of. I had a hard time finding a place that would ship the Auro-3D version to the USA and then it has no forced English subtitles (they're in Dutch and not forced; they don't say a whole lot you couldn't imagine anyway, IMO; I've ordered the US Blu-Ray to rip the subtitles (or move the Auro-3D soundtrack to it). The Auro-3D soundtrack is in English, however. The movie is just OK. It seems closer to a decent B-movie than a Class A thriller, but if you enjoyed Game of Thrones, it has two popular actors from it, including the extremely attractive Carice Van Houten. Anyway, it does put several sounds overhead throughout the movie (e.g. buzzer upstairs, planes, drones, music). If anything, it seemed heavy on overhead and lighter on ear level to me. This makes Auro-3D movie #13 for me along with 5 music albums and 2 demos discs (not too bad for a format that's not doing well; more titles are still coming out, mostly music, but movies seem limited to Dutch film versions and German Turbine releases lately (although both usually have English soundtracks where that's what the native movie had). Sony seems to have abandoned it.

Pretty Good

Charlie's Angels
4K/Atmos (2000 original movie). This had a pretty good Atmos remix with some excellent overhead helicopter and rocket sounds along with explosions, birds, etc. and improved rear channel support. I wasn't disappointed in this one. It's not made for Atmos, but it fits. Ironically, it has Crispin Glover in it from Back to the Future as The Thin Man.

Salyut-7 (Russian Federation version in Auro-3D with 3D visuals) had a surprisingly good immersive soundtrack in Auro-3D with decent depth in 3D visuals. It's a compelling story, but the dialog is in Russian. I had to snag some English subtitles off the Net and mux them into the file to display with my Zidoo X9S to be able to understand what they were saying. It makes pretty decent use of overhead and other surround sounds when it's called for. It was certainly not disappointing for a foreign (Russian) title.

Death Machine from Turbine was actually a pretty good remix for an old horror movie (walls of sound floor to ceiling) in Auro-3D.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
Account still mega slow for unknown reason. I think maybe a delete/reset is needed to fix whatever is corrupted in the profile/account....

Anyway, if you want a MEGA Dolby Atmos demo album, get Booka Shade's "Dear Future Self" music album. It's available at Amazon UK as a pure audio blu-ray. It's pretty much techno/house music, but it puts sounds literally everywhere possible in the room. It even sounds pretty crazy in just 5.1 upstairs, but in Atmos, there are sounds all over the ceiling, back of the room and everywhere in-between!

Similarly, Lichtmond 4 - The Journey is awesome in Dolby Atmos. It's more Enigma/Delerium meets Pink Floyd with 2D or 3D CGI visuals of space and strange planet surfaces. Vocals and instruments appear everywhere and even rotate around you in circles at times.

Lichtmond 3 - Days of Eternity is also quite good, but it's in Auro-3D (Neural X does a reasonable job with the 5.1 DTS-HD track if you don't have Auro-3D decoding).
Mando Diao's Aelita is also great in Auro-3D with sounds all over the place (closer to synth-rock).



Movies.... (some recent ones I've watched that come to mind; I find it odd I actually have several Auro-3D reviews....)

Disappointments

Back to the Future 4K 1-3 in Atmos. 2 at least has the cars overhead, but 1 & 3 are mostly ear level + thunder overhead and most of the sound effects in the movie are arrayed through front/middle/back. This means how immersive the sounds are is entirely dependent on where you sit in the room relative to your speakers. If you sit in the middle or back, there's a lot more going on in the surrounds. If you sit closer to the front, a lot of the surround effects (e.g. clocks chiming at the beginning) appears more in the front wide speaker location and seems more like a very large front soundstage. I'd prefer discrete sounds that aren't dependent on where I sit. It took me awhile to figure out what was going on. Obviously, some of the bigger effects are more discrete like the steam venting into the back of the room, but it's quite odd really.

Top Gun 4K/Atmos - On the plus side, it puts things where they need to go without requiring Neural X to get the jets overhead and it's still an awesome soundtrack, but Neural X already had the jets overhead and there's not much new in terms of imaging beyond the obvious improvements in placement up/down that Neural X pretty much already handled just fine. On the down side, the LFE channel is like 4-6dB lower than the DTS-HD 6.1 version on the previous Blu-Ray and 3D Blu-Ray. You pretty much have to crank up your LFE channel to get it in the same ballpark.

Middling (Better than 5.1, not totally awesome, but has some nice moments)

Beetlejuice 4K/Atmos. It has some nice surround and overhead moments, but they're kind of infrequent.

Jumanji - The Next Level - Awesome fun movie (just as funny as the last one believe it or not), but while it has decent surround effects at ear level, the overhead effects are most noticeable for the "new life" ping more than anything else, same as the last one. The original with a retrofit Atmos soundtrack is truly awe-inspiring, though (animals all over the room and flying bugs right above your heads, etc.!)

Domino (2019)(Netherlands Auro-3D version) - This one was a pain to get a hold of. I had a hard time finding a place that would ship the Auro-3D version to the USA and then it has no forced English subtitles (they're in Dutch and not forced; they don't say a whole lot you couldn't imagine anyway, IMO; I've ordered the US Blu-Ray to rip the subtitles (or move the Auro-3D soundtrack to it). The Auro-3D soundtrack is in English, however. The movie is just OK. It seems closer to a decent B-movie than a Class A thriller, but if you enjoyed Game of Thrones, it has two popular actors from it, including the extremely attractive Carice Van Houten. Anyway, it does put several sounds overhead throughout the movie (e.g. buzzer upstairs, planes, drones, music). If anything, it seemed heavy on overhead and lighter on ear level to me. This makes Auro-3D movie #13 for me along with 5 music albums and 2 demos discs (not too bad for a format that's not doing well; more titles are still coming out, mostly music, but movies seem limited to Dutch film versions and German Turbine releases lately (although both usually have English soundtracks where that's what the native movie had). Sony seems to have abandoned it.

Pretty Good

Charlie's Angels
4K/Atmos (2000 original movie). This had a pretty good Atmos remix with some excellent overhead helicopter and rocket sounds along with explosions, birds, etc. and improved rear channel support. I wasn't disappointed in this one. It's not made for Atmos, but it fits. Ironically, it has Crispin Glover in it from Back to the Future as The Thin Man.

Salyut-7 (Russian Federation version in Auro-3D with 3D visuals) had a surprisingly good immersive soundtrack in Auro-3D with decent depth in 3D visuals. It's a compelling story, but the dialog is in Russian. I had to snag some English subtitles off the Net and mux them into the file to display with my Zidoo X9S to be able to understand what they were saying. It makes pretty decent use of overhead and other surround sounds when it's called for. It was certainly not disappointing for a foreign (Russian) title.

Death Machine from Turbine was actually a pretty good remix for an old horror movie (walls of sound floor to ceiling) in Auro-3D.
I did check out Top Gun 4K Atmos and think the Atmos is pretty good.
 
S

snakeeyes

Audioholic Ninja
Happy to see Denon is fixing both the cross upmixing and restoring the center spread option to DSU. Hopefully these issues are a thing of the past.

 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
You check out Days of thunder 4k? The first major race when they fire up the cars was damn good!
I'll do that next. :D

I do love my Tom Cruise movies. :D

I even love the Tom Cruise "The Mummy 2017" movie in 4K/Atmos. :D
 
E

Erod

Audioholic
Jumanji - The Next Level - Awesome fun movie (just as funny as the last one believe it or not), but while it has decent surround effects at ear level, the overhead effects are most noticeable for the "new life" ping more than anything else, same as the last one. The original with a retrofit Atmos soundtrack is truly awe-inspiring, though (animals all over the room and flying bugs right above your heads, etc.!)
The helicopter scene was crazy active overhead in the previous one.
 
S

Sal1950

Audioholic Intern
The Meg 2018
The Atmos soundtrack in the underwater screens can be really excellent with a full 360 degree soundfield that fully envelopes you with the sounds of being in a sub. Close to a Atmos worthy demo film IMHO, be sure to see it at least once.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
The Meg 2018
The Atmos soundtrack in the underwater screens can be really excellent with a full 360 degree soundfield that fully envelopes you with the sounds of being in a sub. Close to a Atmos worthy demo film IMHO, be sure to see it at least once.
It was good. But I think “Hunter Killer” has a much much better submarine/underwater 360 degree 3D Atmos effect. Experience that at least 3 times. :D
 
S

Sal1950

Audioholic Intern
It was good. But I think “Hunter Killer” has a much much better submarine/underwater 360 degree 3D Atmos effect.
I'd have to see it again to rate the sound quality to compare it, but I'd agree Hunter was a much better movie over all for writing, acting, etc.
 
AcuDefTechGuy

AcuDefTechGuy

Audioholic Jedi
I haven't watched the remastered Resident Evil Franchise 4K Atmos BD yet, but I saw about 5 minutes of Resident Evil Afterlife 4K Atmos last night.

Wow. That's my first impression of the sound quality. Ceiling Atmos speakers are active. And the BASS is just WOW.

If you are wondering if your subwoofers sound great with both Movies and Music, I think this is the movie to watch.

OMG. We're talking major chest-pounding, heart-throbbing, freight-train-from-hell MUSICAL bass here.

Well, I actually saw the first 5 minutes about 3 times because it sounded so awesome. :D

So I'm gonna have to watch the rest of the RE Afterlife movie and the rest of the Resident Evil movies in 4K Atmos just in case all of them have awesome Musical Bass like that.
 
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