By "ill applied" I'd say that means the guys mixing these films are afraid to go all out on immersion. They're still of the mind set that surround effects are DISTRACTING and therefore should be minimized. I don't know how many films I've watched lately where atmospheric things like insects or the wind or birds are at VERY LOW VOLUME in the surround channels and sometimes NOTHING is there until a major action part where a car door breaks off and flies off to the right and then suddenly, "Hey! I have a right side surround channel!" 7.1 movies are notorious for ignoring the rear channels at levels you might actually be able to hear them at (remember your ears are fighting the much larger sounds in the main front channels for attention so even though there might very well be "sounds" in those channels, you can't hear them because they're are being drowned out by the front channels). I dare say it does NOT work that way in real life. If someone is talking and some guy on the street behind you decides to honk his horn, by god, good luck hearing what the person is saying!
So there's this conflict between "what's important" and "what's realistic" going on and I think several films go in opposite directions. One example of an extremely immersive soundtrack in Atmos is GROUNDHOG DAY, believe it or not. Whomever remixed it went out of their way to make every sound on the street AUDIBLE during outdoor scenes. It's unbelievable. It IS distracting, but I LOVE IT! It's a comedy! It doesn't even "need" surround sound as the jokes are supposed to take center stage. But that's just it. This movie is what IMMERSIVE is SUPPOSED TO BE/DESIGNED TO BE!
I think it's really simple. Include TWO surround tracks on movies. One is a truly no-holds barred IMMERSIVE track that by god uses ALL the surround speakers as much as would happen if that was the real world! The other can be the "I can't take it" track with mostly center dialog and nothing else. IT doesn't even need to be stereo. Just a mono center channel. That's what some people WANT, believe it or not (gauging by comments from people at work). Their older parents struggle to tell one sound from another so dialog is all the want. Everything else is NERVE DEAFNESS. My own mother is getting that way. She can't focus on individual elements. I made and mixed my own rock album. I can hear every instrument and mix decision in it. I can't get my mother to hear a sound to save my life that I think is LOUD. If I use Logic Pro to remove all the other instruments, she's SHOCKED this or that bit is in the song! "You should use that!" I DID use it! It makes me wonder what other people hear or even see, really. Is what I call "blue" appear as "green" to you but since you are told it's blue you call it blue but if I had your brain/eyes I'd call it green? It's impossible to know. There is no way to know for certain what another person sees/hears. We can do ink blot tests galore, but that just screens out the spectrum, not the actual PERCEPTION.
In any case, Atmos was designed to do more than just overhead sound at the theater. Theaters went from giant zones of left wall, right wall, rear wall to actual points along the wall that sound can physically move now. But at home, it's different. We don't need 64 speakers to move sound around. 9 or 11 speakers can often do the same as 64 in a large theater. The ONLY real speakers that make a huge difference compared to 7.1 before Atmos are the overhead ones. Everything else could be phantom imaged already.
So the ONLY thing we find ourselves really listening for (some strange front wide people aside who apparently have poor imaging in that area without the wides) are things overhead. People like FilmMixer at AVS might think 60% overhead and 80% overhead make a real differnence, but I don't hear DIRECT ABOVE sounds until it's MOSTLY IN PHASE at least 45-135 degrees in angle (i.e. halfway between front heights and top middle and the same behind) and at 90-100% mix (otherwise, it starts blending with the side channels and things imaging in the middle of the room near my head sound very odd and hard to distinguish from the visual reality of nothing being there). Very VERY little material images in that quadrant. That is WHY I think Auro-3D chose to have a single overhead "Voice of God" channel with height speakers instead of these front/middle/back/rear "TOP" speakers. Mixing for Auro-3D leaves little doubt when you want something to be DIRECTLY OVERHEAD. It should be in the Voice of God channel.
Now a typical Atmos theater will have the surround speakers at "height" levels (30 degrees up or so) and the overhead speakers are WAY up on the ceiling overhead with 20-50 foot ceilings or more. THERE ARE NO "EAR LEVEL" speakers WHATSOEVER in an Atmos cinema theater. That only exists at home because your entire ceiling is only 8-10 feet at most in a typical room and to get separation you need the bed surrounds LOWER. This creates a problem, though if you have more than one row as ear level speakers tend to be blocked by chair backs! That is why some theater guys commented in early articles that about 1-3 feet ABOVE ear level would be best at home, even if you lose a bit of separation because otherwise, you're compromised with multiple viewers blocking the sound...even with their heads! That can be hard to do with a drop down screen of any size as unless it's audio transparent, the speakers need to go UNDER it or off to the sides. Both create ERRORS in imaging rendering. The home experience is COMPROMISED in most setups. Fortunately in that regard and most unfortunate for guests at their homes, most people only really care about ONE spot, their own at the MLP location.
But my point is where *I* want to hear overhead sounds is actually a narrow window (sound wise) between front and rear heights all across the ceiling. But that leaves AT speaker and out-of-phase out of the question and mixing with bed channels at locations in-between which typically just sound like a larger side surround speakers. Those may use height/top speakers in combination with beds to phantom at locations in-between, but they're not really on the ceiling and our OLD SETUPS with 5.1/7.1 had surrounds typically 3 feet above head level anyway, which created this diffuse surround field above us anyway. So did I really hear something "NEW" with Top Gun in Neural X compared to in 6.1 with my old setup? NO, I did not. I was happy that the jets were at least still ABOVE my head in the new setup (They are NOT using DSU or true direct 6.1 rendering as those speakers are now at ear level where they were above my head before!) No, the "NEW" speaker locations are BED LEVEL/EAR LEVEL for those of us with the old setups and directly on the ceiling. Everything in-between was already in play to some extent.
My screen is at eye-level up (hanging from ceiling). Any lower and I'd be blocking my speakers below them. So in a way it's weird hearing "ear level" sounds when the typical car on-screen was already a bit above ear level before. The regular surround speakers could handle that 3 feet above my ears in the old setup. What's NEW pussycat?
I think THAT is the real reason some of us find so many Atmos/X soundtracks underwhelming. They're not REALLY delivering as many new sound locations as they'd have you believe at home. Only lower bed (if you had the correct over ears surrounds before) and directly overhead (on the ceiling between the speakers) is really new and even there just the height has changed. Movies COULD image in-between overhead (albeit 3 feet overhead) with the old 7.1 system, but they just DIDN'T because that would mean using 7.1 fully (in-phase between side and rear surrounds to get sounds in those places and most movies avoided using in-phase material in surround because in a 5.1 setup that meant the "6.1" or "7.1" "REAR" surround locations, which may or may not be overhead. You couldn't count on any of it. Movies like Top Gun just did what they did and hoped for the best at home, but counted on surround speakers behind overhead in the theater, at least. They could have used binaural recorded helicopter sounds played back in 5.1/7.1 speakers and they would sound overhead without any height speakers. You can use DTS Virtual X and at the MLP, it sounds almost as good as real speakers!
Where's the NEW? Where's the sounds UNDER MY FEET??? Yeah, it's not really a 360 degree bubble when there's no floor speakers! They still can't make a pair of scissors appear to give me a haircut with Dolby Atmos! It's too imprecise at imaging out in the seating area because the speakers are all on the side walls! Human hearing doesn't "phantom" the same in all directions to do it properly with just speakers. You need BINAURAL effects.
Frankly, we'd all be 1000% better off having headphone mixes that truly use binaural sounds to place them literally ANYWHERE a real sound could be! Then people would WHINE about having to wear headphones the same way they whine about having to wear 3D glasses to create a more immersed reality. It would be one hell of a lot CHEAPER to implement, though, especially for only a few viewers. You wouldn't need ANY speakers, just 3-6 pairs of wireless headphones. But it'd never truly catch on because of the headphones.
