General view on Atmos

[rfc805]

It's entirely possible, but it's strange that some of them sound fine, or even good. Could also maybe be a bug in the Lucid Tidal app?

 

[DreamTour]

I am totally sold on Atmos at 2.5.0. You have to find the right masters: A well mastered track can do things that just can't be done in stereo, and that's even without gimmicky effects / moving sound objects. If you take something as simple as a small ensemble (4 singers OR 4 instruments) the harmonies you experience are on a different level because of where they are in space.

Having a significantly upgraded aftermarket system also helps too, but Atmos wasn't nearly as interesting until after 2.5.0 with the same aftermarket speakers, so that points to the upmixing / tuning being improved significantly.

 

[borski]

I doubt its a Dolby requirement as they are not even that strict with their studio setups. Also since Polestar puts speakers in the headrest and other cars implementation seem to be completely different, that tells me that Dolby probably doesn't have strict rules on implementation and set up. I don't think reflections are the issue here as bi-polar designs are supported at home and that means a lot of reflections.

If you changed the balance, it would no longer be Atmos, and Dolby would not allow it. Receivers require certification, not speakers or speaker placement; sorry if I was unclear.

Atmos is object based data as opposed to channel based data. What happens is the receiver interprets the data and is able to send it to the required speaker based on the sound’s location within the virtual world of the file.

“An object is an audio channel that also contains metadata in the form of X, Y and Z coordinates, which makes exact positioning in the room possible. This means that loudspeakers that previously only functioned within a bed can be controlled individually, allowing signals to be localized more sharply and precisely.

The decision as to which loudspeakers a signal will sound from is only made at the respective playback location. Until then, all audio channels and the corresponding metadata are packed in a container. Since there is no predefined assignment to speakers, this concept is arbitrarily scalable and enables playback on different systems equally.

To play a Dolby Atmos file, a device capable of doing so is needed that knows the speaker configuration at the respective location. The device that decodes the Dolby Atmos file is also called a renderer by Dolby. It unpacks the signals and places them in space based on their metadata. Accordingly, the vectorial direction from which a sound is mapped is the same in every room. The physical speakers from which the signal is reproduced depend on the speaker configuration and differ from room to room.“

More here: https://sonofloat.com/en/channel-based-vs-object-based-audio-format/

 

[ccarroz]

If you changed the balance, it would no longer be Atmos, and Dolby would not allow it. Receivers require certification, not speakers or speaker placement; sorry if I was unclear.

Atmos is object based data as opposed to channel based data. What happens is the receiver interprets the data and is able to send it to the required speaker based on the sound’s location within the virtual world of the file.

“An object is an audio channel that also contains metadata in the form of X, Y and Z coordinates, which makes exact positioning in the room possible. This means that loudspeakers that previously only functioned within a bed can be controlled individually, allowing signals to be localized more sharply and precisely.

The decision as to which loudspeakers a signal will sound from is only made at the respective playback location. Until then, all audio channels and the corresponding metadata are packed in a container. Since there is no predefined assignment to speakers, this concept is arbitrarily scalable and enables playback on different systems equally.

To play a Dolby Atmos file, a device capable of doing so is needed that knows the speaker configuration at the respective location. The device that decodes the Dolby Atmos file is also called a renderer by Dolby. It unpacks the signals and places them in space based on their metadata. Accordingly, the vectorial direction from which a sound is mapped is the same in every room. The physical speakers from which the signal is reproduced depend on the speaker configuration and differ from room to room.“

More here: https://sonofloat.com/en/channel-based-vs-object-based-audio-format/

The balance setting will not work, but call that out again leads us to one of our problems(probably). We are used to having the balance change option in cars and how that functions. Clearly atmos and the way car balance works can not function together, but that is how we are used to things working in a car, since its all channel stereo. What I am trying to get at, and or feel we need is the control for each individual speaker distance and level. Distance for the height speakers. Here is the thing, while Atmos can use objects in the mix and is a object based codec, it is still channel based(DTS-X is full object) at the end of the day and the mix could be mixed static. My theory is the songs that sound good in our car probably uses more static mixing vs objects and due to the tuning in the car the mixing that is done via objects come out low or are inaudible due to where the speakers are measured to be in the car. If the mix leverages a lot of objects and the object is intended to be directly overhead and the head unit is saying we don't have a speaker around that area, the net result is we don't hear much of that objects sound.

 

[borski]

The balance setting will not work, but call that out again leads us to one of our problems(probably). We are used to having the balance change option in cars and how that functions. Clearly atmos and the way car balance works can not function together, but that is how we are used to things working in a car, since its all channel stereo. What I am trying to get at, and or feel we need is the control for each individual speaker distance and level. Distance for the height speakers. Here is the thing, while Atmos can use objects in the mix and is a object based codec, it is still channel based(DTS-X is full object) at the end of the day and the mix could be mixed static. My theory is the songs that sound good in our car probably uses more static mixing vs objects and due to the tuning in the car the mixing that is done via objects come out low or are inaudible due to where the speakers are measured to be in the car. If the mix leverages a lot of objects and the object is intended to be directly overhead and the head unit is saying we don't have a speaker around that area, the net result is we don't hear much of that objects sound.

There is Atmos height virtualization, but frankly it's trash and it doesn't effectively simulate Atmos audio in a room and make it appear as if you've got real Atmos speakers setup in the space.

Atmos is a digital processing technology that, as part of recording, can specify the physical location of individual sounds in the audible space.

So with Atmos (and DTS:X) is you have a base audio track, like 5.1 or 7.1, then you have the object audio with it, in this case Atmos, and what goes with that object audio is metadata that comes along with it, which the AVR/Processor uses to decode and assign those objects to speakers within the setup.

So think of the Atmos audio objects as additional audio tracks, but instead of being assigned to dedicated speaker locations, they're dynamic and can be on the fly assigned to speaker locations based on the movement of the audio.

So say you have a 7.x.4 Atmos setup, with top front and top rear in-ceiling speakers. When you're playing back an Atmos audio track from a movie, the AVR gets the meta data of the Atmos track and will then take the object audio and assign it to the configured speakers as the track plays.

So say it's in the front left upper quadrant, the audio gets played back in your top front left speaker which is assigned on top fronts in the AVR.

Basically an over simplification but you get the idea.

That means that in the case that an object is directly overhead, the receiver will use the height speakers to place the sound where it would be, precisely *because* it knows exactly where every speaker is, their power, etc.

I’m not sure what you mean by “mixed static” but if a track is mixed in stereo, or even in 5.1/7.1, it is not Atmos.