Atmos

[William Lemmerhirt]

Well, my SR7009 must be ignorant, it works fine with Atmos demo material but actual Atmos movies don't use the front wides... When it's time for me to upgrade to a new AVR, it's going to be hard because they're all doing away with front wides.... bastards.

Hey KH, I'm going to ask a dumb question, just because I may have missed it earlier. Are you selecting atmos on the movie disk menu? I know some you have to choose manually.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Yes, discrete sound. This is not matrixed sound; the sound is mixed as separate sound objects, not channels, so every channel is totally discrete in Atmos. Atmos can also do multiple center channels, look at page 34 on that guide I linked to. It is all a matter of what your processor will support. Every Atmos mix can scale up to a lot of front stage speakers if the processor can handle it.

Atmos is much superior to SDDS, at least as a sound mixing platform.

Interesting. So the hardware is present. The only question is, will there be BD's encoded with discrete multiple front channels?

Are there any multiple discrete center channels in commercial ATMOS theaters?

 

[Klipschhead302]

Hey KH, I'm going to ask a dumb question, just because I may have missed it earlier. Are you selecting atmos on the movie disk menu? I know some you have to choose manually.

Unlike older movies where you select it, it defaults to it if the AVR supports it. So for the movie Passengers it defaults to Atmos or I can manually change it in the AVR to another format. Since the front wides aren't showing up in Atmos for that movie, I change it to Dolby D +Neo:X C.

 

[shadyJ]

Interesting. So the hardware is present. The only question is, will there be BD's encoded with discrete multiple front channels?

Are there any multiple discrete center channels in commercial ATMOS theaters?

You kind of have it reversed. The software is present. All Atmos sound mixes support multiple front channels. They can basically support any number of channels. It is all a matter of what a particular piece of hardware support.

Think about how sophisticated first-person perspective video games handle sound. Lets say you are playing a game that takes place in the jungle and a bird flies past you. The sound of the bird and the position of the bird sound is what is in the mix. It is not all sound mixed down to a certain number of prerecorded tracks that your source players has to playback. It is objects like that bird whose sound is sent to the proper speaker at the proper sound levels. THAT is Atmos. It is not extra channels of speakers. It is sound mixed and mastered as independent objects that has a position in a 3D soundscape relative to the audience. In theory such a sound mix can scale from one speaker of sound to hundreds of different speaker channels, and they would all be totally discrete.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Unlike older movies where you select it, it defaults to it if the AVR supports it. So for the movie Passengers it defaults to Atmos or I can manually change it in the AVR to another format. Since the front wides aren't showing up in Atmos for that movie, I change it to Dolby D +Neo:X C.

So the BD player checks to see if the avr supports atmos playback?

 

[panteragstk]

You kind of have it reversed. The software is present. All Atmos sound mixes support multiple front channels. They can basically support any number of channels. It is all a matter of what a particular piece of hardware support.

Think about how sophisticated first-person perspective video games handle sound. Lets say you are playing a game that takes place in the jungle and a bird flies past you. The sound of the bird and the position of the bird sound is what is in the mix. It is not all sound mixed down to a certain number of prerecorded tracks that your source players has to playback. It is objects like that bird whose sound is sent to the proper speaker at the proper sound levels. THAT is Atmos. It is not extra channels of speakers. It is sound mixed and mastered as independent objects that has a position in a 3D soundscape relative to the audience. In theory such a sound mix can scale from one speaker of sound to hundreds of different speaker channels, and they would all be totally discrete.

So, based on this, do you know of any AVR/Processor that supports anything other than the height speakers? Width channels would be very nice for my room since it is so wide. My Onkyo supports width, but only for DSX so it'd be matrixed and I'd rather have actual support than magic mixing.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

You kind of have it reversed. The software is present. All Atmos sound mixes support multiple front channels. They can basically support any number of channels. It is all a matter of what a particular piece of hardware support.

Think about how sophisticated first-person perspective video games handle sound. Lets say you are playing a game that takes place in the jungle and a bird flies past you. The sound of the bird and the position of the bird sound is what is in the mix. It is not all sound mixed down to a certain number of prerecorded tracks that your source players has to playback. It is objects like that bird whose sound is sent to the proper speaker at the proper sound levels. THAT is Atmos. It is not extra channels of speakers. It is sound mixed and mastered as independent objects that has a position in a 3D soundscape relative to the audience. In theory such a sound mix can scale from one speaker of sound to hundreds of different speaker channels, and they would all be totally discrete.

Oh, so if an AVR (hardware) were to come out with ATMOS: Left Front, Left Center, Middle Center, Right Center, Right Front, plus all the surrounds, then it would be like SDDS plus more.

But it seems like I don't hear of any ATMOS theaters having multiple Center channels. I only hear people talking about having 40 SURROUND speakers above and behind the audience.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

So the BD player checks to see if the avr supports atmos playback?

I'm dumb. I think I answered my own question. BD had to use bitstream for atmos. Therefore it's decoded by the avr. I didn't realize newer titles default to atmos.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

So, based on this, do you know of any AVR/Processor that supports anything other than the height speakers? Width channels would be very nice for my room since it is so wide...

Yeah, having 5 discrete Main FRONT speakers would be nice. That's SDDS right there.

If ATMOS had emphasized having more discrete speakers in the front (like SDDS), I would have been on board from the start.

 

[shadyJ]

So, based on this, do you know of any AVR/Processor that supports anything other than the height speakers? Width channels would be very nice for my room since it is so wide. My Onkyo supports width, but only for DSX so it'd be matrixed and I'd rather have actual support than magic mixing.

There are some very expensive, high-end home audio Atmos processors that do like 20 channels. I don't remember the details, because they were like over $20k.

One cool product one the distant horizon is Emotiva's RMC-1. This will support 16 channels. It is very expensive at $5k but still in reach for those who really want a heavy-duty Atmos system. It should support a wide variety of setups, including wides.

 

[panteragstk]

There are some very expensive, high-end home audio Atmos processors that do like 20 channels. I don't remember the details, because they were like over $20k.

One cool product one the distant horizon is Emotiva's RMC-1. This will support 16 channels. It is very expensive at $5k but still in reach for those who really want a heavy-duty Atmos system. It should support a wide variety of setups, including wides.

I figured as much. Out of my range for sure. Dumb that other manufacturers just want to add height speakers. Oh well.

 

[shadyJ]

Oh, so if an AVR (hardware) were to come out with ATMOS: Left Front, Left Center, Middle Center, Right Center, Right Front, plus all the surrounds, then it would be like SDDS plus more.

But it seems like I don't hear of any ATMOS theaters having multiple Center channels. I only hear people talking about having 40 SURROUND speakers above and behind the audience.

Yes, Atmos could match or exceed SDDS for front channel sound. It all depends on the processor. Yes people think that hearing stuff overhead is neato. People sure do love their gimmicks. Think about how many home you have been to where the surrounds levels were set way too high.

The power of Atmos is its scalability. It may also eventually make surround sound mixing easier to do so that a lot more people could make naturalistic sounding surround sound mixes. 'Height' channels isn't the point of Atmos, its just a gimmick to help sell it.