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

[andyblackcat]

^ Still the best sounding mix with directional dialouge panning that I have listened too in over 40 years.

Disc funnily acted up when the doctor was checking the "coms panel" some 4mins + into the movie it froze on the Panasonic DMP-U900 with pixel. Cleaned the disc with lens cleaner tried it few more times then moved the disc to the Sony BDP-S550 no troubles. I think its first time I played the film in more less on the Panasonic. Oh well it happens. Total Recall (2012) acts up with lots of freezing and Dolby TrueHD audio dropouts but has no trouble in Panasonic just one of those things get a slight scratch some players are sensitivity than others or could be the player. Panasonic is cheap may get a second one or get second "diamond" pressing as they are sort of cheap. I guess it will get a 4k release but the bluray picture looks startlingly crystal clear.

Shariff, voice heard to right rear back while Dr. Stone and Kowalski voices heard on left-centre and right-centre.

Dialogue moving across left-centre right-centre

Mission control (Ed Harris) and Shuttle Explorer voices moving around sides or could be up front or above during while the camera and everything else rotating around.

1:16:56 space station finally breaks apart with escape capsule still attached spinning dangerously out of control. Hit that release button, girl! The spinning inside the capsule with warning alarms sounding tensions the danger of reenter with all rest of the stations broken diaries all around the capsule. Relief hearing the chute open up above on the heights as it pulls the capsule up slightly.

The water entering the capsule I don't get that deep pressure in the ear canal as I would with real liquid water its close without getting wet. Instincts buzzing around on the heights as Dr. Stone swims to the shoreline and standing up while her muscles struggling after being in space for week.

A satisfying 90 min tour de sound experience that I doubt will be equaled in any other film before end of this decade.

 

[yepimonfire]

That sounds like a very cool place for a field trip.

I would most definitely love to visit a Dolby Cinema.

I guess in contrast to the Dolby Cinema, all the commercial Atmos theaters I've been to kind of sucked.

This was one of the biggest reasons it has taken me so long to jump on board with Atmos - I was never impressed at the commercial theaters I went to in Dallas, LA, and OKC. I thought Atmos just sounded louder. I didn't get that 3D soundstage- not even any significant Overhead "Voice of God" sound.

So again, as @Drunkpenguin pointed out, the Home Atmos experience has been 100% better than the commercial Atmos experience.

But I imagine a true Atmos Cinema where Atmos is optimized would be 100% different than all these commercial Atmos theaters many of us have been to.

I don't think the problem lies with the speakers or even the room. Obviously people who are really into HT will buy and use pro cinema speakers, since short of the likes of JTR, Procella, PSA, Klipsch etc etc, nothing comes close to being able to reproduce that kind of dynamic range. Heck, I don't even think it's the sweet spot, because the theater is optimized at a point 2/3rds back, where a good amount of people sit near.

I blame the outdated xcurve and lousy implementation of it. While I personally don't like room eq outside of the Schroder range, the xcurve and the use of pink noise to approximate a flat response with an rta is far from ideal and will likely result in a wildly inaccurate response. Steady state pink noise causes midrange reverberation to build up, but the amount of reverb and level of high and low frequency roll off is different based on the directivity control of the speaker, quality of acoustic treatment, proximity of speakers and the listener to room boundaries, and the size of the room. There's no one size fits all.

Modern home theaters utilize things like Audyssey, which uses an impulse response of a very short burst. This allows audyssey to see both the speakers direct response, and the variation to that response introduced by the room, allowing it sort out and correct both the speaker and rooms response. Audyssey also uses FIR filters, which allow it to correct problems in the time domain independently from the frequency domain. One example of where this is useful is when a listener or speaker is near a boundary. If you're seated along the back wall for example, the problem bass frequencies are likely to be 180 degrees out of phase with the rest of the frequencies. This is why people describe bass as slow and sloppy in a bad room. Audyssey can flip the phase back at a single problem frequency and almost entirely eliminate the ringing, a standard Peq used in the cinema cannot.

In addition, audyssey uses multiple points of measurement to sort out the speaker from the room. A single measurement point may display a random peak or dip that disappears an inch to the left or the right. This isn't audible, and shouldn't be corrected, and audyssey ignores stuff like this, and only corrects problems that occur across multiple measurement points.

A cinema eqed at a single point with pink noise may be correcting something that only appears in one seat that shouldn't be corrected. In addition, many cinemas rush through this process, and don't even take the time to stop and listen to it to see if it sounds good or not. Don't know about you, but Everytime I've run audyssey, I sat down and listened to it on and off, if it sounded bad, I redid it.

I believe IMAX has started using audyssey, so they're likely to have less problems. IMAX also continuously monitors their system to make sure its calibrated properly. So many theaters I've been to are running wildly out of spec, a few even had blown out speakers or subs.

http://sound.whsites.net/articles/cinema-sound.htm has a great article explaining the failures of the xcurve and why so many cinemas fail to perform as well as home theaters. There is no reason that a cinema consisting of massive horn loaded speakers, designed and engineered to be much better than many consumer offerings, in a room of ideal size and dimensions, should not in every way at least match the home theater experience.

Sent from my LGMP260 using Tapatalk

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

[Gravity] Still the best sounding mix with directional dialouge panning that I have listened too in over 40 years...

A satisfying 90 min tour de sound experience that I doubt will be equaled in any other film before end of this decade...

Definitely fun to watch.

 

[Bookmark]

I watched A Quiet Place last night. Sound is good but I thought the film was pointless. Is it bad I just wanted them all toast after the first 5 mins?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I watched A Quiet Place last night. Sound is good but I thought the film was pointless. Is it bad I just wanted them all toast after the first 5 mins?

I felt the same way. Let’s see, can’t make any noise, but I’m going to leave this young child with a toy that makes loud noises with batteries right next to the toy, plus we’re going to walk far ahead of him and hope he doesn’t do what most kids will do. Stupid.

 

[Auditor55]

^ Still the best sounding mix with directional dialouge panning that I have listened too in over 40 years.

Disc funnily acted up when the doctor was checking the "coms panel" some 4mins + into the movie it froze on the Panasonic DMP-U900 with pixel. Cleaned the disc with lens cleaner tried it few more times then moved the disc to the Sony BDP-S550 no troubles. I think its first time I played the film in more less on the Panasonic. Oh well it happens. Total Recall (2012) acts up with lots of freezing and Dolby TrueHD audio dropouts but has no trouble in Panasonic just one of those things get a slight scratch some players are sensitivity than others or could be the player. Panasonic is cheap may get a second one or get second "diamond" pressing as they are sort of cheap. I guess it will get a 4k release but the bluray picture looks startlingly crystal clear.

View attachment 25750

View attachment 25751
Shariff, voice heard to right rear back while Dr. Stone and Kowalski voices heard on left-centre and right-centre.

View attachment 25752

Dialogue moving across left-centre right-centre

Mission control (Ed Harris) and Shuttle Explorer voices moving around sides or could be up front or above during while the camera and everything else rotating around.

View attachment 25753

1:16:56 space station finally breaks apart with escape capsule still attached spinning dangerously out of control. Hit that release button, girl! The spinning inside the capsule with warning alarms sounding tensions the danger of reenter with all rest of the stations broken diaries all around the capsule. Relief hearing the chute open up above on the heights as it pulls the capsule up slightly.

The water entering the capsule I don't get that deep pressure in the ear canal as I would with real liquid water its close without getting wet. Instincts buzzing around on the heights as Dr. Stone swims to the shoreline and standing up while her muscles struggling after being in space for week.

A satisfying 90 min tour de sound experience that I doubt will be equaled in any other film before end of this decade.

Nice system. Gravity was kind of a sleepy movie to me, so it kind of amazes me that some are saying it has a great sound mix because its usually the loud bombastic sci-fi and action movie with the great sound mixes.

 

[Drunkpenguin]

I never saw gravity cause both Sandra Bullock and George Clooney bug me.

 

[snakeeyes]

Nice system. Gravity was kind of a sleepy movie to me, so it kind of amazes me that some are saying it has a great sound mix because its usually the loud bombastic sci-fi and action movie with the great sound mixes.

It was a boring movie for me but I think that maybe the space scenes would be cool with overhead speakers.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

“Gravity” without a great Arnos setup is boring.

“Gravity” with a great ATMOS setup is fun.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I watched “The Matrix” (remastered with Atmos) yesterday.

I think they did a very good job with the Atnos mix.

The movie itself is already fun to watch, but the ATMOS definitely makes it even more fun.

 

[Bookmark]

Valerian with the 4 heights is better than when I watched with 2. A lot of it is subtle but still noticeable. Cats loved it too.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Valerian with the 4 heights is better than when I watched with 2. A lot of it is subtle but still noticeable. Cats loved it too.

Hmm. I couldn't stomach the regular version after 15 minutes. Had to turn it off. But I'll give the Atmos version a shot.

If Atmos can "save" this movie for me, that's something there because I couldn't even stand this movie.

 

[andyblackcat]

I watched “The Matrix” (remastered with Atmos) yesterday.

I think they did a very good job with the Atnos mix.

The movie itself is already fun to watch, but the ATMOS definitely makes it even more fun.

It was okay but the 4k colour was dire it was worse than the bluray. Laserdisc and early DVD better as the studio didn't overkill the contrast/brightness levels tat would have left a colour overexposed.

 

[andyblackcat]

Hmm. I couldn't stomach the regular version after 15 minutes. Had to turn it off. But I'll give the Atmos version a shot.

If Atmos can "save" this movie for me, that's something there because I couldn't even stand this movie.

The 4 overheads not the best mix its an okay mix. The 4 overhead not always active some overhead sounds didn't make sense in some scenes due to what I was looking at that scene where they go into some sort of "open market" its a film I wouldn't watch much.

 

[Bookmark]

This is the problem with re-issues of older material on UHD. Studio see this as a way to resell the old stock. Get some content on the shelves to make it look like this is something long term to invest in.

Without the content or capable hardware any new format will struggle. Sony played the blinder with the PS3 and blu ray. Microsoft made the mistake of wasting the time with Dvd then addon Red drives. When studio saws the cheap box with the bluray drive they got behind the bluray. Bluray was a never superior format to Red discs but the content was there and the player was too. The majority of the early releases were rubbish, just up scaled Dvds. Now we have usually a good print from a good source and the audio is very good. Where the investment was worth it then the re-issues are good too. I still await the remastered Abyss as the current dvd release is rubbish and there are a number of others too.

Sony made the mistake this time around and Microsoft got it right for once. However the current re-issued content is as bad as the original Vhs/Dvd days, Dvd/Blu-ray and should we ever reach this the UHD days for the 8K replacement.

Harry Potter, The Matrix, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings etc.. Anything of that sort just now is a pointless purchase on UHD. There probably isn't a 4K original master and the audio was never mixed for Atmos/Dts:X. In a few years time once the format is established and releases are regular then the older content will be redone properly and if the original source material is available then the audio will be remixed correctly for Atmos/Dts:X. The video will be correctly scaled and colour corrected as required and the older releases will be worth the purchase.

For now if you have the bluray I would not bother with the repurchase just stick with the new releases. If you don't have it or just want to rent/stream it go ahead, just don't expect miracles.

As always YMMV.

 

[Bookmark]

As an addendum

Ted Turner of TCM fame, the BFI here in the UK and a few other organisations around the globe do sterling work on old material. I both admire and hate Ted Turner's efforts, this is the idiot that colourised Casablanca and It's a Wonderful Life, however a lot of the old RKO, Univeral, MGM, Ealing, etc black and white films have been very well restored to the point they probably look better now than they did when first released in the Cinemas. These are the films of my childhood and I have a lot of fond memories for Jimmy Cagney, Clark Gable, Basil Rathbone, Bogart & Bacall, Tracy & Hepburn, Jimmy Stewart, Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy and William Powell, Charles Laughton and the list goes on and on.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

This is the problem with re-issues of older material...if you have the bluray I would not bother with the repurchase just stick with the new releases....

I totally agree.

Movies that are/were originally made with Atmos will definitely sound the best in our Atmos home systems.

These UHD-Atmos "Remastered" movies that were NOT originally mixed with Atmos are not worth buying again.

Save the money for the new movie releases.

 

[TechHDS]

I worry that home theaters themselves are in jeopardy. let alone atmos. I would bet that most of us in this forum are middle aged or older. The young generations are happier watching content on 5" phone screens. I dont see them growing up and installing massive sound systems in their homes.

Your post speaks volumes, I’m 60 and my younger friends think I’m crazy for spending what I’ve spent on my gear. I know of No One not One is remotely interested in a AVR over 300 bucks unless it’s a HTIB unit. All of the ones much younger than I have 65” or bigger HDTV’s and None have even a sound bar much less a system. Just this passed Sunday I was invited to go watch the Saints/Browns game at my neighbor in the back. He has a nice 65” HDTV No sound bar nothing! Setting there watching that game on a nice TV with nothing more than them lil tiny tv speakers was murder I tell you!!

Mike

 

[Drunkpenguin]

In the future they'll all be watching the games on phones with headphones and snap chatting about it from different places.

But there are older people that don't get it too. My father has a 65" TV and doesn't even subscribe to HD yet!?! And hes a big time sports fan!

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

And here we are talking about our home Dolby Atmos Systems that sound better than the commercial movie theaters.

This is truly a 100% niche market.

But we didn’t do all this for everyone else. We did it for us.