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Author
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Topic: Dolby's new sound system
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-16-2014 03:58 PM
IMHO, most commercial movie theaters have mediocre to crappy sound quality. It may be 5.1 or 7.1, but I often find sound systems to be not well tuned or maintained.
Dolby Atmos has tools to improve on that. That format would put more pressure on a theater to keep up with sound system maintenance.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
In the minds of the consumer (customers buying the tickets) Dolby is totally irrelevant.
The consumers aren't writing the checks for movie theater booth hardware. Dolby is still, by far, the most well known brand for movie theater sound gear.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Compared to the 80s and 90s where Dolby 6-track was synonymous with event movies and the double D Dolby logo was all over newspapers ads and theatre marquees, the new generation simply does not see the Dolby logo like I did in the past.
Newspaper advertising has nowhere near the reach it did 2 or 3 decades ago. Today most people look up movie and showtime info online. Nevertheless, the Dolby logo is still very common. It's all over consumer electronics devices, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, on the end credits of many TV shows and nearly every movie release.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Also, you must not forget that Dolby True HD is almost nowhere to be found on blu-ray, it is there but it is not a prevalent as Dolby Digital was on DVD or laserdisc.
Dolby TrueHD isn't on a lot of Blu-ray discs due to a pooch screw of sorts by Dolby's software engineers. Somebody, likely a Mac snob, chose to make Dolby's TrueHD encoding software available only for the Mac platform. The problem is all commercially produced Blu-ray discs are authored on Windows-based software. The DTS-HD Master Audio suite is available on both Mac and Windows platforms. It costs a hell of a lot less than the TrueHD suite. According to ![[joe]](graemlins/joe.gif) it's a lot more user friendly than Dolby's software. Movie studios also noticed a very vocal DTS fan base and made it look like they were responding to consumer wishes by choosing DTS-HD Master Audio for Blu-ray. The truth is DTS-HD just fits into a Blu-ray authoring work flow a lot better than Dolby TrueHD.
Nevertheless, the Dolby logo is all over a lot of Blu-ray discs in the form of English DD 5.1 compatibility tracks and foreign language tracks. I don't have many Blu-ray discs that feature DTS audio formats exclusively.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 03-25-2014 12:42 PM
Atmos is getting 100 installations in Indonesia, according to this press release :
quote:
Cinemaxx to Roll Out 100 Dolby Atmos Screens in Indonesia
March 24, 2014 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
CinemaCon 2014
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CinemaCon 2014—Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB) and Lippo Group announced today that Cinemaxx, a new exhibitor under Indonesia’s Lippo Group, has committed to installing Dolby Atmos in 100 cinema screens over the next three or more years, with 30 of the 100 screens scheduled to be launched by the end of May 2015. With this news, the revolutionary new Dolby Atmos® cinema sound format reaches a significant milestone: more than 600 screens worldwide have now been or are scheduled to be equipped for Dolby Atmos.
“Dolby looks forward to working with Cinemaxx to bring the ultimate cinematic experience to moviegoers in Indonesia”
Dolby Atmos unleashes the potential of sound in storytelling by giving filmmakers the creative freedom to easily place or move sounds anywhere in the movie theatre to create a lifelike, virtual reality of sound and the most engaging cinema experience ever.
“Dolby looks forward to working with Cinemaxx to bring the ultimate cinematic experience to moviegoers in Indonesia,” said Mahesh Sundaram, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Dolby Laboratories. “With Dolby Atmos, you feel as if you are in the movie, not merely watching it. We are confident that moviegoers will go back again and again to Cinemaxx once they enjoy their first Dolby Atmos film.”
“Our goal is to offer state-of-the-art technology with first-class amenities,” said Brian Riady, CEO, Cinemaxx. “With Dolby Atmos, we aim to take the Indonesian cinematic experience to the next level.”
Dolby Atmos has quickly become the preferred choice for next-generation cinema sound among major studios, award-winning filmmakers, and exhibitors around the world. To find a Dolby Atmos equipped theatre and showtimes, please visit www.fandango.com/dolby. Movie patrons who would like to experience Dolby Atmos can visit iwantdolbyatmos.dolby.com or check with their local cinema for select showtimes when tickets become available.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 03-25-2014 02:34 PM
The growth of Dolby Atmos (at close to the 2 year mark) is somewhat comparable to that of Dolby Digital in March of 1994.
In March of 1994 there was only a couple hundred theater screens, at most, in North America equipped with Dolby Digital. In the Dallas-Fort Worth market Cinemark's Hollywood USA theater, the GCC Northpark 1-2 and the West End 10 theater each had a single screen equipped with Dolby Digital. At that time the Cat 699 reader and Dolby DA-10 processor were available, at a $20,000 price tag. The Cat 700 reader and DA-20 was launched in 1995 at half the price (and a $5900 introductory price timed for the releases of Die Hard With A Vengeance and Batman Forever). DTS had a huge lead at the time. The Dolby DA-20 package started to cut into that lead. The CP-500, released in 1997, was a game changer.
Atmos doesn't have a huge screen installation count at this time, but it is squarely in the lead, if there's really any race at all in terms of next generation theatrical sound formats. The Dallas-Fort Worth market is the best market for Auro, but even in DFW Atmos has more screens equipped (currently 6 versus 5).
I still think Dolby will have to release a 2nd generation Atmos processor (at a significantly lower price) and cinema equipment manufacturers will have to start making more speakers and amplifiers better suited to Atmos. Smaller theaters will need more amplifier options than the traditional 1-2 channel models. More 4-channel and even 8-channel models are needed.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 06-24-2014 10:20 AM
The only way I see a home version of Dolby Atmos selling well at all is if movie makers really start going for broke with Atmos-specific mixes, making the differences between Atmos and conventional 5.1/7.1 surround a whole lot more obvious.
Fundamentally, far too much of the public merely thinks of surround sound as generic surround sound without going into any more detail than that. If they have a basic, cheap 5.1 system wired up at home they have surround sound. Why do they need to do anymore than that?
Speakers on the ceiling in addition to the ones on the walls are unusual, but much of the public may not understand why they're there. To add to this confusion, lots of companies doing residential, in-wall surround sound system installations like to install all the speakers up in the ceiling. It's easier & cheaper and many of the customers don't know any better about it. They're just looking at getting their overpriced McMansion decorated & equipped in time to show it off to other douche-bags.
In short, Dolby has a LOT of work to do in both educating the public about Dolby Atmos and proving that a home version of it would be worth buying and installing.
I love surround sound, but I still have a basic 5.1 setup at home. Getting a new 7.1 channel receiver is down the list of priorities, as is the pain in the ass that comes with wiring in those extra speakers. Installing a reasonably decent home version of Dolby Atmos would involve at least a 7.1 setup plus adding another 2 or 4 speakers on the ceiling. That sort of thing isn't going to be easy or cheap to install.
I'm still very concerned about how a home version of Atmos might cheapen the cinema version of Atmos. Movie theater operators have to spend tens of thousands of dollars installing Dolby Atmos on just one screen. I worry a far cheaper consumer version of Atmos might sour theater operators on investing any further in Atmos capable sound systems, even if the cinema version of Atmos is way the hell better than the cheaper, home version.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 06-24-2014 11:33 AM
Atmos in the home was something everyone knew was coming, so there's no surprise there.
As the first comment on that blog post attests, the devil is in the details, which are few at this point. Until then, we have no idea what it's going to be like, or how easily it might fit into the living rooms of John Q. Public as well as the media rooms of the people that can really have fun with the new technology.
Doing DSP work to do phantom imaging has been around for many years. It must be more than 20 years ago when I saw a demo of Yamaha's A-1000 (or some such model number) that did a bang-up job of making you feel as though sounds were coming from where speakers were not. Even though the result is not going to be anywhere near the same as having an actual speaker, it's going to be a DSP mode that comes up on the display and does some unique thing in John Q. Public's living room that will be new and possibly enjoyable for them.
The add-on speaker modules will be interesting, as far as what they do with them and how they can be integrated into the system. Timbre matching is going to be important, so I would think that those modules are going to have to be matched to the speaker they're helping out, but who knows at this point.
The part that I'm anxiously awaiting is how they're going to implement Atmos in the home for those of us with the ability to put plenty of speakers wherever we need to, and buy a multi-channel amp to drive them. Those are the easy issues to tackle, so what I'm most interested in is how they're going to embed the signal onto a Blu-ray and what kind of processor is going to be available to feed those amps?
Some quick searching shows that Onkyo (and it's high-end brand Integra), Denon, and Pioneer have already announced products that will be available and which of their products will be upgradeable. So far, Yamaha doesn't seem to have gotten the memo, so either they're sitting this one out, rolling their own somehow, or their marketing team is still on their corporate retreat.
Somehow, they look like they're going to stuff Atmos into the audio bitstream over HDMI, and with a 9 or 11-channel receiver, it looks like it shouldn't be all that hard to do an upgrade for me, so I'm looking forward to the developments!
As far as the impact on theaters: I think this puts even more pressure on theaters to step up their Atmos/Auro installations. Once again, home theaters are now catching up and will leap-frog those that don't do any upgrades.
Unfortunately, I don't think the home products will do anything to help the pricing of the commercial products, since home theater is a licensing play for Dolby and commercial is a hardware market for them. The amp and speaker manufacturers do not overlap between home and commercial for the most part so there's nothing to be gained there.
If theaters have not begun researching how they are going to upgrade to Atmos or Auro, this is the shot across the bow to get their attention. How many steps behind the home can a theater get and still be viable? That's going to be a tough choice that theaters will have to make in the near future.
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 06-24-2014 12:46 PM
If Dolby is going to make a home version of Atmos, to me it's a big mistake to call it Atmos. They should come up with a new made-up word.
Of course I know that they will use the same word because it's cheaper to do that, marketingwise, and also tech-nerds will demand the "same thing" as the theatrical experience provides, even if the thing is a completely botched version with the same name tag tacked on it.
They have been touting cinema Atmos as something that cannot be duplicated in the home...well, they need to stick to that.
Too bad our old buddy "F" apparently isn't around to weigh in on all this but he's probably too busy figuring out how to muck up all those additional channels.
quote: Scott Jentsch
If theaters have not begun researching how they are going to upgrade to Atmos or Auro, this is the shot across the bow to get their attention.
I still think Dolby would be farther ahead to come up with a smaller, "FAR" less expensive Atmos for smaller houses. Ours, for example is 194 seats and is 35' wide, so there's not really a huge need for speakers all over the place like there would be a huge room. If there was an option that would use, say, 24 channels for about a third of the cost I'd be all over that.
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Brad Miller
Administrator
Posts: 17775
From: Plano, TX (36.2 miles NW of Rockwall)
Registered: May 99
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posted 06-24-2014 01:22 PM
Mike, I pitched a 3 level Atmos solution to Dolby already for exactly the scenario you describe. They seemed interested, but now that this home crap is real, I don't see what it matters.
What's really funny is right now every auditorium's plans, speaker/amp models and the entire design must be submitted to Dolby for approval, then you must pay them several thousand to send one of their techs out to verify the equipment really was installed per the plans and press the "auto-EQ" button. (That fee is built into the CP850 cost.) They do this to supposedly control quality since they can't trust ANYONE but their own people, and for what? People who are going to cinch on things with crappy speakers and omitting everything they can get away with will still do it and their install still won't be a full and proper Atmos install. People who are serious about doing Atmos right will still do Atmos right.
Meanwhile for Home Atmos, any dipshit can setup the system any way he wants with terrible room acoustics, improper speakers, etc. ...and they still want to call it ATMOS???
So digital IMAX has it's catchy LieMAX title.
AMC's old horrendous HITS sound system had it's catchy SHITS sound system title.
I think we should start referring to the home version of Atmos as F'd Atmos, in honor of the way you read it and also in honor of our friend "F" who dutifully destroys home mixes every day. All in favor? ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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