Go into a Fry's Electronics, and they are starting to push Dolby Atmos a lot more than I expected. They have pretty well setup demos for both overhead and "Atmos Enabled" speakers. It is quite true that the bounce does not have the detail and pin point accuracy of true overhead speakers, but on a low ceiling, the speaker over you can end up too close. As for the jokes about sound under you... That is really tough to pull off. For a single seating location, or just a couch, yeah it could be done, but you pretty much need a low speaker for everyone. I have seen listening experiments with full sphere of speakers. It does make for a fun science experiment. About 5 years ago, I saw a demo of Iosono sound. Think of it as Dolby Atmos on steroids. You think 64 speaker feeds seems crazy on the cinema system, the room I saw Iosono in had over 350 speakers in a ring all the way around, all separately amp'd and driven by a render farm of something like 6 Dell server PC's running the software. They had some very cool sounidng demos. The odd thing is it had no height speakers, just this wild ring, with a speaker every foot or less all the way around. It was using "wave front synthesis" to make a sound appear to come from anywhere within the room, or outside of it, in the plane of the speakers. At the time, they were trying to get a movie mixed to use it, but I do not think it ever happened. most of the demo material they played for us was just audio only, and with the room dark, you really did hear sound like it was coming out of thin air right in a spot in the room. One clip was the sounds of getting a hair cut. They ran it for each of us in the group, you had to stand at the right spot ni the room, and you heard the scissors clipping all around your head, and then the clippers cleaning up your neck, it was eerie. The sound was right there. But if you moved out of the spot, the sound was now going on next to you. They also did some clips of sounds whipping around the room and had a short clip from a movie with picture. Once the image was on screen, the sounds seemed to come from the walls again, it was not, in the room with you as much, but that was probably a mix issue. They also used the term "Object Audio" and said the number of speakers was just to cover the room without gaps.
Dolby Atmos looks so tame next to that monster, but what I found very different was that in Atmos, the image on screen seems to help locate the sound. On the Iosono demos, I closed my eyes, and the audio location seemed more solid, it is different. But I can't say what made that difference.
The pro cinema version of Dolby Atmos does allow the position of each speaker to be entered. I got a quick look at the setup software, peaked over a shoulder, but I was not allowed to get a copy. It is too bad the home version does not (YET??) have this ability to know the true speaker positions. The second demo of Cinema Atmos I was at back in 2013, I got there early, and I got to peak in as they were testing it before the demo. And they actually found 3 speakers in the back of the room were assigned wrong. As the pan went around the room, it reversed across the offending 3 speakers. A few key strokes and they had it back in the right order. They also explained how this room had a gap ni the row of 8 down the sides. And with the correct positions entered, it still panned perfectly smooth across the gap. The system is really amazing.
Bringing it into the home is very interesting, and I will be upgrading very soon. My current system has been 7.1 for 11 years now, and it does sound great, but the genie is out of the bottle and I know what I am missing.
When you hear Dolby Atmos setup right, it is amazing how well it works to put you in the middle of the action. Big loud overhead noise is cool, but to me, that was the least of it. The subtle cues of nature all around you, and hearing these tiny sound off screen, so delicate and accurate. When I play the Atmos version on my 7.1, I did go back and listen to those same parts, and all the sounds are there, but they are mixed together, and played out of 3 speakers, and the precision is just blurred. It still sounds great, and had I not heard the original intent, never would have said it was not great. And the overhead part is really a bit of a bonus, not the main event. The reflection speakers work well and better than I ever expected, but I am still looking at true overheads for the precision. But, do take a listen to the Klipsch, they almost sold me.
