No. He doesn’t have a point. He never does, and just likes to whine about stuff that HE doesn’t want to spend money on, and is too lazy to do the work on. Nobody cares because it’s the same ol drivel…
Anyways. To your question. Yes. I have heard things IN my room and have found that many mixes are very immersive overall. I actually recently watched Avengers End Game, again. I wasn’t listening for in room objects specifically, but there were sounds from all directions and I never felt distracted. In fact some things came flying past and around me were startling, but in a good way, connecting me to the action. Not the best mix ever, but very very good.
One of my favorite objects comes from Hunger Games catching fire(iirc). After katness is finished singing a song, a bird flys off screen to the right rear corner of the room. I absolutely swear i can feel it fly past. In fact the first time I saw that, I tried to dodge it lol.
This isn’t just due to the four height speakers as you said though. It’s a function of phantom imaging between the bed layer and the height layer. I believe you’re right though about imaging being difficult. I think it works better in bigger rooms for multiple seats especially, since in a smaller room with a listener to the side, or closer to a particular speaker the image would collapse to that from pressident effect.
To your last point, it’s a good question, and I don’t think has a simple answer. Expectations vs reality is complicated. Made more so by odd rooms not built for installing home theaters, mixes that are not very good, bad speaker placement and not knowing what to expect. I’ll admit that when I first tried out Atmos in MY room, I was a little disappointed, as I had very high expectations. But I made few tweaks, and found some better titles, and I found out that I do love Atmos. When it’s done right. So please don’t mistake me for a fanboi lol. But I’m am an advocate.
