Dolby Atmos, what is it all about? part 2

… so the more speakers you have, the better and more realistic the 3D sound will be. The information on the blu-ray disc is not in channels anymore but now it is called a “sound object”, so for example a car driving past, a child yelling, wind blowing are all different “sound objects”, and all the objects put together is called a “bed”, each object has height, width and depth information in a 3D field (x, y, z coordinates) built in. But how does the system know what speakers the sound needs to come out of? Well, this is where things get interesting, when all the speakers are installed along with the new amplifier, when running a blu-ray movie, the amplifier will receive each “object” and from the build in x, y, z coordinates, the amplifier will then send that sound to the correct speaker/s and move the sound around to give the 3D sound effect.

There is some good news in regards to equipment. In your current system, all that you’ll need to do is replace your receiver with a Dolby Atmos enabled receiver and purchase the extra speakers, this is also assuming your existing system was installed properly as well. As every installation is different, each existing system will need to be examined so as to only purchase the extra speakers that are needed. Now a lot of people may already have speakers in the ceiling, the only speakers that will need to be purchased are the floor standing speakers (speakers at ear level) or visa versa… Your current Blu-ray player will stay the same, it will pass all the information for Dolby Atmos to work with your new receiver.

Dolby Atmos is scalable, so what this means is you can add as many speakers as you like, and the amplifier will process all the blu-ray information and send it to the correct speakers, regardless of how many speakers you have the amplifier will try to make the same sound at a specific area of the room, and form now on, gone are the days of a movie being in 5.1 or 7.1TrueHD ect ect, 99% of new release blu-ray movies will be in Dolby Atmos so you don’t need to worry about your speaker configuration and older blu-rays that are not in Dolby Atmos as it can be simulated in that format so you will still get some 3D effect from the movie.

A last note that needs to be made, if you like the idea of purchasing the Dolby Atmos enabled speakers, the system will of course work best on a flat ceiling, if you have a cathedral type ceiling, this won’t work as good, you should purchase the extra speakers and have then installed, it is ok though if the ceiling is pitched in a single direction for example the front low and the back is high but only as long as the pitch is not too steep. Also if the ceiling is too low, again the reflection will not work as good. And with the Atmos enabled speakers there are two sets of speaker terminals so a wire will need to run to each speaker terminals, this basically means doubling up on speaker cable as compared to a regular home theatre system.

More information can be found at

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos.html

http://www.dolby.com/us/en/home/index.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXLQ4mIwyAk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c295SyGQag