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Dolby: Atmos Blu-ray Discs Due This Year (1 Viewer)

Robert Crawford

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Atmos also places sounds overhead if consumers install two to four in-ceiling speakers, but if consumers don’t want to install in-ceiling speakers, said Crockett, “our partners will offer new Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers that produce full, detailed overhead sound from speakers located where your conventional speakers are now.”
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So you can either add 2-4 ceiling speakers or replace your 2 main speakers and 2 surround speakers with Dolby-enabled speakers?

I doubt I'll go there as I don't want to add any ceiling speakers nor replace my main and surround speakers with the latter options being very expensive.
 

andySu

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Depending on the room size the cost for speakers same speakers you use for the current surrounds best be the same as keeping timber the same or can its possible its been done in the cinema, use a different combination for the x4 Overheads.

Ether in-ceiling can be cheap I seen cheap ones on ebaY.
Bookshelf models can be fitted up to the ceiling by removing the bass mid driver you might be able to drill a holes into the box and with wall-plugs fitted into the ceiling or screwed into the joist above but the positions must be located above the seating.

The whole thing is cheap.

Thing is do any of the films excite you that much to buying them?

Me. I see maybe myself only buying a few. GRAVITY, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS.

Also would the overhead surrounds be active from start of film to the last end credit? 7.1 mixes rear back stereo surrounds are often not active.

They ether carry music and sound effects or just sound effect on the rear back. STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS only carries sound effects while side wall surrounds carry music sound effects same as the LCR.

Super8 only caries sound effects on the rear surrounds even though that wasn't released in Atmos, I found to be hyped up sound mix that doesn't get played no more. The rear surrounds was hardly ever active. The Lone Ranger 7.1 carries music and sound effects on rear back and not bad going mix only its over-long and it was a huge flop.
 

andySu

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Also a lot are getting too over-excited about overhead surrounds.

I have seen overhead used on Dolby Stereo matrix as far back as December 1977 STAR WARS at the local down town where there was an even amount of 4 or 6 fitted flush into the ceiling and at least 4 or so each side wall and 2 I think on the back wall in the downstairs auditorium screen 2.

Even the cinema I worked at in 1989 UCI all its ten-screens had EV stage LCR and surrounds where mounted to the suspended ceiling some 14 or so feet above. So in sense that was overhead matrix surround and it worked fine with Dolby CP55 SRA5 module.

ALWAYS (1989) chapter 5, is cool when Al Yackey, has engine fire and pulls release for the extinguisher that sounded overhead and made me looking above in at the whole as the idea of the surrounds is to defuse and was very effective. I can recreate that with my overheads at present just like when working at UCI 25 years ago, and nipping into the smaller screen for best Dolby Stereo A-type listening with on-screen dialouge panning and nicely mixed sound effects and John Williams score, nice days at UCI.

Dialogue is occasionally panned across the stage left-right or with some half pans. 1989 had quite a few 35mm and 70mm releases that year with voices being panned.

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When Pete, pitches the plane down to save his, buddy, the engines can be heard on the overhead when one of the fire fighters looks up at the sky.

When Pete's plane erupts into fireball the discrete mono surround carries John Williams score followed by a windy like derbies fluttering around in the air then cuts to next scene.

Down-mixing or switching to analogue Dolby Stereo on my Dolby CP500 I heard engine propeller noise and the faintness of the score expect its not the discrete gentle/softness like on the discrete Dolby mix.
 

Dr Griffin

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Jari K

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Atmos sounds great, but this overhead surround thing sounds a bit too complicated for my house. My A/V room is not even 100% ideal for the regular 5.1/7.1.But Atmos for the movie theatres? Yes please!
 

Robert Crawford

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Jari K said:
Atmos sounds great, but this overhead surround thing sounds a bit too complicated for my house. My A/V room is not even 100% ideal for the regular 5.1/7.1.But Atmos for the movie theatres? Yes please!
Same here! I think this will be nothing more than a niche market for those that have dedicated HT room and/or larger than most HT budget.
 

Robert Harris

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I have a feeling Atmos could be involved in future divorce suits...

"Your Honor, my client was okay with two speakers...

and didn't balk at five...

even with that big clunky box that roared and frightened the cats...

and I relented for seven...

but Your Honor…"

RAH
 

Robert Crawford

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Robert Harris said:
I have a feeling Atmos could be involved in future divorce suits...

"Your Honor, my client was okay with two speakers...

and didn't balk at five...

even with that big clunky box that roared and frightened the cats...

and I relented for seven...

but Your Honor...

RAH
You got that right! Speakers hanging all over the ceiling. :)
 

DanH1972

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Robert Harris said:
I have a feeling Atmos could be involved in future divorce suits...

"Your Honor, my client was okay with two speakers...

and didn't balk at five...

even with that big clunky box that roared and frightened the cats...

and I relented for seven...

but Your Honor...

RAH
Oh ye of little faith. 34 speakers and subs... that's just grounds for a trial separation. :D
 

andySu

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As well as need BELOW SURROUND otherwise Atmos as it stands right now won't be getting me to spend out £20.00 at the cinema for overhead surrounds that I have heard at the cinema some 25 years ago with matrix Dolby A and SR films and it was only £4.00 pounds, now that is value.

I'll re-plug the centre channel and have it playing overhead with Casablanca, should sound great when the Germans bomb Paris. :P
 

bigshot

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If I had the ability, I would go to an Atmos setup in a heartbeat. The ability to pinpoint sounds in space would be amazing... and it would even be useful for music, particularly opera and live classical concerts. With the vertical dimension, you could precisely reproduce the acoustics of any concert hall. The problem would be getting around problems with room acoustics. Creating a solid coherent sound field with no hot spots or dropouts would be a lot of work.

Unfortunately, my own theater has a peaked roof with beams, and although I would be able to fly speakers up in the top corners of the room, I suspect that the peaked roof above that would completely muddle up the sound field with reflections aiming in all the wrong directions. For a room that was a large box like shape with a high ceiling (like a movie theater, natch!) it wouldn't be nearly as difficult.

But I can definitely see the advantages of channels high up off the floor with a projection system. With the mains on the floor, a center channel in the center of the screen, and the speakers in the upper corners, sound could be placed anywhere on the screen and from any direction. The sides and rears, lower and upper would fill in behind with a phase field that theoretically could sound like any space on the planet with the proper DSP. In fact, with oddly designed DSPs, it could also do a pretty convincing ambience for underwater or outer space too.

Personally, I think sound advances like this are MUCH more interesting than 4K or 3D. There's a limit to what you can do with a picture in a frame in front of you, but if you had an immersive sound field that was well balanced, you could create anything you wanted acoustically.
 

bigshot

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I corresponded with a sound engineer in the UK once about audio fidelity. He said that he believed at first that digital audio had solved all of the problems with sound reproduction... distortion, frequency response, etc. But then one day he took his little girl to a local carnival, and he was standing at the top of the "chute" with a row of carnival game barkers extending off on either side and a merry-go-round at the end in the distance. He closed his eyes and listened to the sound. How voices of people came to his ears from all directions. How the sound of the merry-go-round drifted up and down in volume when the wind blew... and he realized that with the best digital equipment in existence, he still would never be able to duplicate that sound.

I remember when I was a kid going to a Planetarium show with a domed ceiling and speakers installed all the way around the room. The sound seemed to be coming from all around me, with the same sort of sophisticated directionality that sound in the real world has. I can imagine that an immersive sound field would be able to create soundscapes that are amazingly realistic. I think that we're going to see more immersive technologies like this in the future. If a standard can be created to turn a typical room in a house into an immersive "holodeck", I bet people in the future will be installing seamless 360 degree cycloramas to convert their spare bedrooms into immersive entertainment spaces. Sound systems like this will be a big part of that.
 

vidiot33

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I think you have correctly identified precisely why Atmos will never be embraced by the general public.
 

Wayne_j

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I could see 5.1.2 or 5.1.4 eventually being embraced by the general public, probably with the Atmos Enabled speakers.
 

bigshot

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I would probably consider 5:1:4, but I'd have to work on room acoustics to get it to work.
 

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