Is there a downside to the object based audio systems? I'm satisfied with and locked into 7.1, but I thought the object based is really a big step forward.
If you follow the Atmos Home Speaker Positioning guidelines, the objects tend to gravitate to the walls, so it sounds not much bettter than a tall 7.1.
My Journey into Atmos is very different from anyone else's. After comissioning my first 30 channel trinnov system in Moscow in Oct 2013, a system using Quested AMT/Ribbon systems that allowed playback at insane levels with an extreme comfort and lack of fatigue factor due to the quickness of the HF driver, i flew into The Gravity Premiere at Dolby, the system itself was superfatiguing but the enevelopment was something else that forced me to reorient my business to object based audio.
What Arnaud at Trinnov calls the listeners exclusion box, how many seats are covered under the overhead left and right row is only 5 seats in that room.
Most cinemas have a 19 seat per row listeners exclusion box, that is the equivalent of throwing monkey poop on the monalisa, when the listeners exclusion box is limited to 5 seats in a theater, and three seats at home, ABSOLUTE MAGIC HAPPENS.
I have been vociferously blowing the whistle on the horrible ATMOS SPEAKER POSITIONING GUIDELINES FOR THE HOME. What is the difference? That in the Gravity premiere the Houston Houston circled in close proximity to my head, having heard that The First time and then not being able to hear it or recreate it in 100 venues was really frustrating. It was not until last year that in a system I did in
Istanbul for avser Murat, that we were first able to accomplish the around your head imaging that is the true epicureann's ATMOS EXPERIENCE.
I established the selfish bastard school of immersive space acoustical design to try convince people, but so much ranting that everyone was wrong yet i was right got me expelled for avsforum. Fortuitously i did catch a progressive silicon valley customer which instructed me to create the most Selfish Bastard Cinema Design for his PH atop the omni San Diego, which we will show to the press at CEDIA 18.
You can see the latest design process in
my twitter feed.
The answer in this long winded response to your query is ATMOS DONE in a selfish bastard way is positevely worth a second mortgage. 7.1 is unacceptable if you want to hear obejects (in the kaleidescape libray titles that have atmos circle your head and have you ducking and reacting to a barrage of object trajectories, and mind you in the home format there are only 14 objects whereas in the Gravity premiere they were playing off the mastering RMU so possibly up to 128. Likely 64 objects. It does not matter, last year after the success of the project in Istanbul, we were able to recreate at the Alcons booth but only in 3 chairs out of 21.
Moral of the story is ditch some chairs, home theater with multiple rows of many seats is as idiotic an idea as one could concct, if you seek maximum imersion. With what we now know. Keep your eyes open after CEDIA when we show this system that has been designed from the bottom up using every trick we have found (like positioning the tops at the 40,60,80,135 degree positions of the captains chair, something that was discovered in1969 by Damske and Wagener, this allows you to differentiate discretely 8 atmos tops, with a potential 5th pair low in the back.
The way humans hear sounds from above make it nearly impossible to differentiate 6 discrete sounds overhead much less 10, by following the 1969 blueprint we are able to recreate all 8 in our lab, again something not even considered by the Home Atmos Guidelines were several channels can be mushed to gether by their erroneous positioning.
Kaleidescape scripts of curated ATMOS CLIPS and even neural X playback of dts-x tracks of films originally mastered in Atmos, many of these have an uncanny potential for virtual object tops and width channel reconstitution, an uncanny effet that one swears is an atmos track playing back, so all is not lost when we lament that an HDR release has No Atmos or DTS-X, Neural X is your friend in those frustrating circumstances.
Another trick to enhance the imersion is not to use small speakers for surround, something I heard in the Gravity premiere with the debris field LF progressively advancing through the front rows, reaching my gut and feeeling it leaving out back through my torso. DIECTIONAL BASS. That is something that can be recereated at home using many floor standing speakers in the bed channel, thhe cumulaitve effect in the MLP is such thatit negateds the need for a subwoofer in 85% of the time, it actually sounds better without a sub those times as when you bass manage everything the bass becoimes one unified much of monophonic directionality. YUCK.
I live with this around the head envelopment and throgh the torso directionality on a daily bassis, and my humble apartment system is not the very best, I really believe that the OMNI SAN Diego Ernst Stavro Blofed cinema of the future will open the ears to what is truly possible having just the starto as a playback source. For music, i have been amazing recently dvd-audio and sacd multichannel ( too many labelled as such and being just stereo unfortunately -at 35-175 a pop its rdiculously expensive).
KALEIDESCAPE NEEDS TO GET ON THE GROUND FLOOR OF MULTICHANNEL AUDIO PLAYBACK AS SOON AS WE START GETTING THESE QUAD REMASTERES MIXED FOR ATMOS. Many YES, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Jeff Beck, King Crimsom, Chicago, Grover washignton Jr., tons of quad Music are replete with around your head envelopment but copious amounts of directional bass.
You may think I am crazy, but if find that the rest of the world is just hacking ti by not getting the absolute most epicurean experience possibly known to man, Kelidscape is an indisplensible component as its audio clocking AND Image is the very best there is.
Speaking about image WTF with blu lasers, they truncate the color spaces we were getting with xenon, a huge step backwards.
THIS IS A BRAVE NEW WORLD of Immersion, to the progressive and independent thinker comes the spoils. I pity the rest.
