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

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I don't think your criticisms are totally inaccurate. I'm starting to feel the same way about HDR and Dolby Vision, gimmicks. They make content look artificial and not natural. They hype formats like immersive audio, 4K HDR/DV through the roof and then its a let down we they don't meet expectations.

All this stuff that we're doing is really like toys for boys.

They can be viewed as "gimmicks" to anyone who don't feel like playing with them.

Some love Atmos/DTSX more than others. We don't need them, but they're there if you want.

Same with all the HDR-varieties. Don't need them, but they're there if you want.

We don't need 4K and 8K resolution either because we can't tell the difference. But they're there if you want.

 

[Good4it]

I don't think your criticisms are totally inaccurate. I'm starting to feel the same way about HDR and Dolby Vision, gimmicks. They make content look artificial and not natural. They hype formats like immersive audio, 4K HDR/DV through the roof and then its a let down we they don't meet expectations.

Like my Yamaha RX A3080. The AI IS (I think) a joke.

 

[VonMagnum]

I'm having issues now with KODI freezing up since I upgraded my Mac Mini server to Mojave after putting in a 2TB SSD drive. First it was the "put hard drives to sleep when possible" button, which never interfered before seemed to try to shut down my external media drives every 20 minutes like clockwork. I thought maybe it was an issue with Apple's SMB 3 so I rescanned my library to NFS (what a PITA) and it didn't fix it. Once, I found the sleep thing, next it was Apple doesn't recognize NFS as a sleep token to not sleep the entire system so it shut down after 3 hours (sleep setting when nothing is going on). My program "caffeine" that kept it awake no matter what doesn't work with Mojave so I found a new one that does called amphetamine. Then one of my movies (Super Mario Brothers) wouldn't play no matter what on my Nvidia Shield but played fine on my FireTV 4K upstairs. I eventually figured out it was the "change refresh on monitor to match movie" setting that I had enabled downstairs but no upstairs. If I turned it of, it played fine then. I even tried re-encoding the movie with Handbrake. No difference. No idea why. Now I've been watching Harry Potter movies and it still freezes randomly (last time after 54 minutes of playback) as if the server isn't sending it the data for some unknown reason. I tried turning off the refresh sync and now I'm trying it with no hardware decoding on the NVidia Shield (which is powerful enough to play back 2K without hardware decoding), but I don't hold much hope out....

What a PITA. I hate to go back to the old operating system (still have it on my backup drive) as Mojave uses a different file system for SSDs so I'd have to prep it again, etc. and who knows how long the 3-year old OS will be supported in the future, but it SUCKS to have the movie freeze up at all when you're watching it.... even for a few seconds. It RARELY acted up before so I can't help but suspect it's the new OS somehow.... I've tried posting to Mac and even KODI forums. ZERO replies. My vacation is over after today so it's nice to see I screwed up my home theater in my time off instead of improving it (didn't get a damn thing done I planned to do except this computer upgrade which isn't turning out to be much of an upgrade). Had other problems to deal with like the air conditioning breaking, lawn mower breaking, fridge breaking and now this. Life is fun....

 

[Rajith]

Good Day all!!!
For me the some of the reference movies for a well mixed audio are as follows.
1.Blade Runner (Both Atmos & Auro3d has a stunning mix)
2.Ready Player one
3.Terminator Geneysis
4.Aquaman
5.13 Hours :The secret soldier of Benghazi
6.Great Wall
7.Gravity
8.Jurrassic World :Fallen Kingdom

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I'm having issues now with KODI freezing up since I upgraded my Mac Mini server to Mojave after putting in a 2TB SSD drive. First it was the "put hard drives to sleep when possible" button, which never interfered before seemed to try to shut down my external media drives every 20 minutes like clockwork. I thought maybe it was an issue with Apple's SMB 3 so I rescanned my library to NFS (what a PITA) and it didn't fix it. Once, I found the sleep thing, next it was Apple doesn't recognize NFS as a sleep token to not sleep the entire system so it shut down after 3 hours (sleep setting when nothing is going on). My program "caffeine" that kept it awake no matter what doesn't work with Mojave so I found a new one that does called amphetamine. Then one of my movies (Super Mario Brothers) wouldn't play no matter what on my Nvidia Shield but played fine on my FireTV 4K upstairs. I eventually figured out it was the "change refresh on monitor to match movie" setting that I had enabled downstairs but no upstairs. If I turned it of, it played fine then. I even tried re-encoding the movie with Handbrake. No difference. No idea why. Now I've been watching Harry Potter movies and it still freezes randomly (last time after 54 minutes of playback) as if the server isn't sending it the data for some unknown reason. I tried turning off the refresh sync and now I'm trying it with no hardware decoding on the NVidia Shield (which is powerful enough to play back 2K without hardware decoding), but I don't hold much hope out....

What a PITA. I hate to go back to the old operating system (still have it on my backup drive) as Mojave uses a different file system for SSDs so I'd have to prep it again, etc. and who knows how long the 3-year old OS will be supported in the future, but it SUCKS to have the movie freeze up at all when you're watching it.... even for a few seconds. It RARELY acted up before so I can't help but suspect it's the new OS somehow.... I've tried posting to Mac and even KODI forums. ZERO replies. My vacation is over after today so it's nice to see I screwed up my home theater in my time off instead of improving it (didn't get a damn thing done I planned to do except this computer upgrade which isn't turning out to be much of an upgrade). Had other problems to deal with like the air conditioning breaking, lawn mower breaking, fridge breaking and now this. Life is fun....

Yeah, many of us know the huge PAINS of PC and OS.

Took me a while to get the right KODI and setup to play all my 4K movies.

Hopefully you will find a cure.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Good Day all!!!
For me the some of the reference movies for a well mixed audio are as follows.
1.Blade Runner (Both Atmos & Auro3d has a stunning mix)
2.Ready Player one
3.Terminator Geneysis
4.Aquaman
5.13 Hours :The secret soldier of Benghazi
6.Great Wall
7.Gravity
8.Jurrassic World :Fallen Kingdom

I need to watch Blade Runner in 4K/Atmos. Von says it's awesome, I think even more awesome than BR-2049, which I think is one of the best already.

I thought Aquaman 2K/Atmos was decent, but it didn't make my Atmos list. I'll have to rewatch Aquaman in 4K/Atmos this time.

But Everything else on your Atmos list is on my Atmos list too.

1. Pacific Rim 2013 Atmos
2. Blade Runner 2049 2017 4K Atmos
3. Cloverfield Paradox 2018 Atmos
4. The Equalizer 2014 Atmos
5. The Great Wall 2016 Atmos
6. Hunter Killer 2018 Atmos
7. The Matrix Trilogy 1999, 2003, 2003 4K Atmos
8. Oblivion 2013 Atmos
9. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 2016 Atmos
10. Salt 2010 Atmos
11. Sully 2016 Atmos
12. Twilight 2008 Atmos
13. Underworld 2003 Atmos
14. Underworld Blood Wars 2016 Atmos
15. Atomic Blonde 2017 DTSX
16. Harry Potter franchise (8 movies) 2001-2011 4K DTSX
17. Black Hawk Down 2001 4K Atmos
18. 13 Hours 2016 4K Atmos
19. Gravity 2013 Atmos
20. Ready Player One 2018 Atmos
21. Robin Hood 2018 Atmos
22. Jurassic World 4K DTSX
23. Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom 4K DTSX
24. Terminator Genisys 4K Atmos

 

[VonMagnum]

Original Jumanji in Atmos FTW.

I don't get all the praise for The Matrix movies in Atmos. I heard very little overhead and the dynamics sucked compared to the Cinema DTS track (that's available on the fan version with corrected colors). It shows how much some studios squash the home soundtracks compared to the cinematic versions (let alone Disney).

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I don't get all the praise for The Matrix movies in Atmos. I heard very little overhead and the dynamics sucked compared to the Cinema DTS track (that's available on the fan version with corrected colors). It shows how much some studios squash the home soundtracks compared to the cinematic versions (let alone Disney).

It possible that bias might have played a role.

I've seen The Matrix trilogy many times.

The first time I saw them in 2K/Atmos was great to me. I think I must have heard a lot of overhead sounds.

I will watch them again in 4K/Atmos and see if they still make my Atmos list.

 

[VonMagnum]

I don't recall any real completely overhead sounds in the first movie and I was listening for them.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I don't recall any real completely overhead sounds in the first movie and I was listening for them.

Hmm, and this is all using KODI?

I'll have to rewatch at least a little bit of The Matrix 4K/Atmos tonight and see again.

 

[VonMagnum]

Hmm, and this is all using KODI?

I'll have to rewatch at least a little bit of The Matrix 4K/Atmos tonight and see again.

Kodi, 4K UHD, 2K BD, iTunes streaming. They all have the Atmos soundtrack version here. Kodi just plays my drive dumps of the disc version. They are identical soundtrack wise (well lossy container on iTunes). I can play the 4K discs on my 2K projector as well.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Kodi, 4K UHD, 2K BD, iTunes streaming. They all have the Atmos soundtrack version here. Kodi just plays my are drive dumps of the disc version. They are identical soundtrack wise (well lossy container on iTunes). I can play the 4K discs on my 2K projector as well.

What about Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions? I can't recall, but maybe I thought they were the good ones.

 

[VonMagnum]

What about Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions? I can't recall, but maybe I thought they were the good ones.

I watched the Reloaded movie and don't recall anything specific standing out. I couldn't bare to watch Revolutions again....ugh.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I watched the Reloaded movie and don't recall anything specific standing out. I couldn't bare to watch Revolutions again....ugh.

On "Matrix Reloaded" toward the end when Neo fries all the Sentinels with his powers. Then one of the ships hovers above Neo and Trinity. The whole ceiling should be filled with sound. It sounds like the ship is hovering on the roof.

 

[VonMagnum]

Now that you mention it, I think that scene was overhead. It's just compared to movies like Harry Potter or Fury that have overhead sounds throughout, I didn't think it was that great. I mean I LOVE the first Matrix movie, but the Atmos track didn't wow me. People were singing its praises at blu-ray.com and I had an issue with the "cyan push" to the picture in 4K and the Atmos track wasn't anything that special sounding to me and when I compared it to the DTS Cinema soundtrack, it was night and day for sheer dynamic volume (setting voices to the same volume, the explosions, etc. were SO much louder on the Cinema track).

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

Now that you mention it, I think that scene was overhead. It's just compared to movies like Harry Potter or Fury that have overhead sounds throughout, I didn't think it was that great. I mean I LOVE the first Matrix movie, but the Atmos track didn't wow me. People were singing its praises at blu-ray.com and I had an issue with the "cyan push" to the picture in 4K and the Atmos track wasn't anything that special sounding to me and when I compared it to the DTS Cinema soundtrack, it was night and day for sheer dynamic volume (setting voices to the same volume, the explosions, etc. were SO much louder on the Cinema track).

I have not revisited the matrix series since my atmos install and am quite curious. One thing I wonder about is older films with Atmos upgraded tracks, is that the stems that older films were mixed from can’t always provide a mixer with a way to add/code objects. I think most of the older remixed titles will be ho hum, and the fact that Blade Runner is so fantastic is interesting. I wonder how they did that...

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I have been watching The Matrix 4K/Atmos.

I hear plenty of overhead sound. For example, from about 22 minutes - 32 minute, I can hear rain and thunder throughout.

Every time there’s thunder throughout the movie, I hear it from overhead.

When Neo leaves the Matrix the first time, I hear all kinds of overhead sounds. When the hovercraft pulls Neo up, I hear the hovercraft overhead and hear the door closes overhead.

Plenty of overhead sounds. A lot.

So, I would still put Matrix on my list.

 

[VonMagnum]

I don't quite get it. You call that a "lot" (a few thunder effects and the hovercraft),but don't think a movie like Venom in Atmos has a "lot". I don't see much difference between the two. If anything, I think Venom had more overhead effects. I guess I'll have to watch the Matrix again and see if anything has changed (due to setup changes since I last watched it). Maybe that was before I moved my furniture closer, etc.?

Meanwhile, I TRIED to get KODI to access my media shares from Windows 10 (installed MacDrive which lets Windows 10 read my HFS+ media volumes) and it just doesn't work unless I downgrade Windows 10 to SMB1, which isn't safe. I gather Leia can use SMB3 in Android, but I wasn't quite ready to move to Leia just yet. I looked into NFS (since I made the database for the Mac to try earlier),but Windows 10 Pro only can READ NFS shares; it cannot host them (pathetic, IMO as I thought everything was supposed to work better with Windows compared to a Mac when it comes to networking yet SMB and NFS work with my Mac and neither work with Windows using Kodi Krypton. I'd have to either buy NFS software (the one free one hasn't been updated int a LONG time so I don't know if it would work) or move to Leia on all my clients.

The idea was I could access my media library regardless if I was booted into Windows or Mac (say playing a game in Windows; someone else in the house could still watch TV Shows, etc. from the server). What a PITA. I'm using the trial version of that MacDrive software. I guess I'm not spending $50 for the license if I can't even use KODI with Windows 10 as a server (until I move to Leia).

I have not revisited the matrix series since my atmos install and am quite curious. One thing I wonder about is older films with Atmos upgraded tracks, is that the stems that older films were mixed from can’t always provide a mixer with a way to add/code objects. I think most of the older remixed titles will be ho hum, and the fact that Blade Runner is so fantastic is interesting. I wonder how they did that...

Well, they converted The Bridge Over the River Kwai into Atmos from MONO so I guess they had some individual sound files or were able to isolate them somehow. I imagine something similar goes on with older movies. I don't know how much they store separate from the film. The mixing guy must have some master files for many of those films. It would make sense for them to hold onto them for updates down the road or remastering, etc.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I don't quite get it. You call that a "lot" (a few thunder effects and the hovercraft)

Those were just examples.

I didn’t feel like listing EVERY SINGLE overhead sounds I heard from about 20 min - 40 min.

But I heard a lot throughout. And I didn’t watch the entire movie last night.

Even in the beginning when they showed the green matrix numbers coming toward the screen, I heard overhead sound effects for that.

Now, the overall sound wasn’t as immersive as some of the best sounds, but, again, I heard a lot of overhead sounds, enough to put on my list.

I don’t think it was just bias because I love “Matrix” and I hated “Venom”, but I won’t entirely deny it.

As we all know, there is no standard and certification like THX for the OH sound levels. So maybe you have to increase a few decibels on the OH levels next time you watch.

For example, I had to significantly reduce the OH levels on “Serenity DTSX”.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I am sure @Auditor55 gets a kick hearing about the non-standard OH levels.