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Author
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Topic: Auro 11.1 - Its Rollout & Marketing
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-27-2014 04:37 PM
quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
And I figured everyone was installing Christie Vive by now because their sales people told me it was the best thing going out there today.
Christie Vive is a speaker hardware package. It competes with the speaker systems from QSC, JBL, Meyer Sound, etc. In the growing debate about new immersive sound formats, Christie has sided with Dolby's Atmos approach. But they're promoting Vive for use with 5.1, 7.1, Atmos and Auro.
quote: Terry Lynn-Stevens
Dolby Atmos will play in any cinema, 5.1, 7.1 or up to 64 channels. Atmos is a single inventory format.
Not really. In the Dolby Atmos authoring process sound mixers will generate the Atmos track and also render down-mixed 5.1/7.1 LPCM tracks that are bundled with the Atmos audio.
This is similar to the approach with Dolby TrueHD on Blu-ray. A "hidden" Dolby Digital track is present for backward compatibility. But that DD 5.1 track isn't actually inside of the TrueHD audio data. DTS Master Audio has an inner core of backward compatible DTS data.
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Connor Wilson
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 190
From: Sterling, VA, USA
Registered: Jan 2011
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posted 01-27-2014 04:50 PM
Here's to the best of my knowledge. There are only 2 Dolby Atmos screens and 1 Auro 11.1 screen in NoVA, the two Atmos screens being the only Atmos screens around DC. Cinemark just recently installed Auro 11.1 in their XD screen at the Egyptian 24 in Hanover, MD. So if you take the entire DC metropolitan area and the radius surrounding it, you got Atmos and Auro split half-and-half.
As a moviegoer of Cobb's Village 12, I can assure you that Cobb does indeed use the Barco Auro logo in posters and other general marketing. But before an Auro movie, it plays the Auro 3D logo. I would prefer the trailer Barco made for Auro as the generic corporate Auro 3D logo is unimpressive and I can barley pinpoint where the voices are coming from.
I saw four films in Dolby Atmos. A Good Day to Die Hard, Oz the Great and Powerful, Pacific Rim, and Gravity, with each film sounding progressively better than the last.
I only saw two films in Auro 11.1. Turbo and Ender's Game. Turbo sounded non-gimmicky but had robust bass. Ender's Game, however, sounded more aggressive and yet remained clear. The latter had a female voice countdown to liftoff from the overhead channel as Ender and his peers launch into space for camp.
As Bobby implied, the more channels and speakers a room gets for a new sound format like Auro and Atmos, it will cost more to get it sound up and running. Screen 11 at Cobb, which has Auro installed, had a blown subwoofer for Ender's Game and it wasn't present for Turbo. I have been a patron of Cobb since it opened in Leesburg and it has little issues from time to time. I remember in screen 8, during The Avengers, the sub was blown, and this was a 7.1 setup I presume. Next show I went to in the same screen, the woofer was replaced/repaired. Ender's Game was the last movie I saw in screen 11.
Cobb is not showing I, Frankenstein on their Auro screen, all shows are on their D-box screen (screen 8 again). The Cinemark Egyptian is showing it on their XD screen, but Auro doesn't seem to be advertised. The RPX Atmos screen in Alexandria (my favorite Atmos theater) is booked for Lone Survivor.
But I think this is a special treat. The ETX Atmos screen in Tyson's Corner is showing Gravity this week at a discounted price than usual for ETX, it seems.
And yes, I did see the Barco Auro logo on the end credits of The Croods and Turbo. It seems like Dreamworks Animation really likes Auro even if their movies are simultaneously released in Atmos as well.
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Scott Jentsch
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1061
From: New Berlin, WI, USA
Registered: Apr 2003
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posted 01-28-2014 11:12 AM
None of those Auro logos do anything for me. You can see how they tried to be minimalistic with the latter two, but then someone got in there and added the 3D sphere thing on the left, and then someone thought the logo needed a tagline, so the impossible-to-reduce "experience sound in 3D" text was added.
Messy.
At least the first Auro 11.1 logo gets the brand placements right.
So, with "11.1" being in a different color, does that mean that they will have different numbers? Maybe "Auro 5.1" for those theaters that don't want to upgrade their speaker system, and then "Auro 11.4" for those that add extra subwoofers?
More and more, I like the object-oriented approach of Atmos and the rumored DTS (ahem, Datasat) MDA approach. That's based entirely on one Atmos presentation and no Auro presentations, yet. I've not heard an Auro presentation (they're really hard to find).
What I have yet to hear about either format is some way to measure the effectiveness of the sound system. I would think that some sort of multi-channel microphone could be used with some kind of test track to essentially map the output of a particular system. Such a test bed could also be used to calibrate the system and detect defective equipment. Does anything like that exist?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-28-2014 01:07 PM
quote: Connor Wilson
The Cinemark Egyptian is showing it on their XD screen, but Auro doesn't seem to be advertised. The RPX Atmos screen in Alexandria (my favorite Atmos theater) is booked for Lone Survivor.
Cinemark isn't doing anything to advertise Auro 11.1, even though they plan on installing Auro on nearly all of their XD screens. Cinemark has 3 Dolby Atmos installations, which I assume are on XD screens.
quote:
I hardly think it's going to "compete" with any of those three, especially QSC and Meyer!
From what I can tell Meyer Sound makes some of the most coveted cinema speakers around. QSC ain't bad though. Those huge 4-way towers they make are kind of scary looking.
![[evil]](graemlins/evil.gif)
quote: Scott Jentsch
So, with "11.1" being in a different color, does that mean that they will have different numbers? Maybe "Auro 5.1" for those theaters that don't want to upgrade their speaker system, and then "Auro 11.4" for those that add extra subwoofers?
Barco's Auro logos can be reproduced in a single color. The company is actually kind of big on using a lot of gradients in the full color versions.
As to channel layouts, I think the cinema version of Auro is only available in 11.1 and 13.1 configurations. There's a 9.1 setup Auro is trying to promote for home theater.
Auro 5.1? That, I think, would just be a plain 5.1 surround sound system. What would be "Auro" about 5.1?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-28-2014 03:08 PM
Here's a list of movies released in North America with Auro 11.1.
US Releases with Auro 11.1
2014
The Adventurer: Curse of the Midas Box, E-Motion, 1-10-2014
I, Frankenstein, Lionsgate, 1-24-2014**
2013
Ender's Game, Summit Entertainment, 11-1-2013**
Diana, Ecosse Films, 9-20-2013
Elysium, Columbia, 8-9-2013**
Turbo, Dreamworks, 7-17-2013**
The Croods, Dreamworks, 3-22-2013**
Oz the Great and Powerful, Disney, 3-8-2013**
2012
Rise of the Guardians, Fox, 11-21-2012**
Red Tails, Fox, 1-20-2012
Future Releases:
Trolls, Dreamworks, 11-4-2016
How To Train Your Dragon 3, 6-17-2016
Kung Fu Panda 3, Dreamworks, 12-23-2015
The Penguins of Madagascar, Dreamworks, 3-27-2015
Home, Dreamworks, 11-26-2014
How to Train Your Dragon 2, Dreamworks, 6-20-2014
Oculus, Relativity Media, 4-18-2014
Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Dreamworks, 3-7-2014**
**Dolby Atmos available on the same movie release.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 01-29-2014 12:58 PM
quote: Scott Jentsch
If theaters aren't going to advertise the sound system, it really minimizes the return they will get on their investment. I guess there's some truth to just declaring your xD screen the "best available" and not let people in on what you are doing behind the scenes, but I think you have to let people know some of this stuff so they can be informed and you can use things like Auro to back up your claims of being the best.
I have a theory on why certain theater chains, like Cinemark for instance, are restoring to this, what I feel is a very stupid tactic: they're trying to be as much like IMAX as possible. Chains like Cinemark are trying to position brands like "XD" onto the same level as IMAX. "Auro 11.1? Nah, the 11.1 sound is really a unique part of the XD experience!" Of course their web site won't say which XD screens have Auro 11.1 sound capability and which movies have actual Auro 11.1 soundtracks.
IMAX doesn't say squat to the public in terms of specifics about its sound system other than boasting its "laser aligned" set up and talking wattage levels at some theaters. Nevermind it's just 5.1 (or even 5.0) audio. IMAX is all about pimping its brand and raking in lots of money over it.
No matter what Cinemark does with XD, or any theater chain using a ridiculous acronym involving the letter X, it will never have the brand equity of IMAX. With its digital system IMAX is taking advantage of over 40 years of history, primarily in the giant format films space and letting a lot of customers assume its multiplex digital concept is the same thing as true IMAX.
These like-LieMAX private label big screen theater concepts have acronyms that really don't mean anything by themselves. In fact, I think it's just another way for some customers to confuse this stuff with the original three letter acronym brand: THX.
I couldn't care less if something was XD, ETX, GDX, GTX, GXL, AVX, FDX, DLX, DFX, RPX, SDX, BigD, ICON•X, Titan-XC, Xtreme, EPIC, E3, XPlus, etc. These are all real labels for premium priced big screen houses. And that's not all of them either. When you see such a collection of them together they really start looking pretentious and downright silly. There's so many of these big screen acronym labels you can't keep up with them if you deliberately try. With so many different labels they all end up meaning nothing. It's all static.
In some cases two different theater chains step on each other using the same acronym. Both Cineplex in Canada and Santikos in Texas use the AVX and AVX MAX label. It's only coincidental (I think). Each chain has different logo artwork for those labels.
Harkins Theaters' Cine Capris concept has more legitimacy. For one thing their Cine Capris theaters pre-dated the conversion to digital projection. They're loosely modeled after the original Cine Capris theater in Phoenix. Another thing to keep in mind about the Cine Capris theaters: they're not showing 3D movies (single projector setup on 70' wide screens). For a long time they charged nothing extra to see movies in that auditorium. Now it costs $1 more than the standard ticket price. Being able to watch a movie in Dolby Atmos for $10 isn't too bad.
I guess I care more about these fundamentals:
1. The native resolution of the movie, typically 2K or 4K.
2. The make of projector(s) and native resolution, 2K or 4K.
3. The sound format (5.1, 7.1, Auro 11.1, Atmos).
Those are the things I want to see in theater show time directories, if they bother listing any technical information about the movie at all. I couldn't be forced to care about some over-hyped acronym taking the place of that technical information. XD doesn't mean anything to me. 4K projection with Auro 11.1 sound is more informative.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 01-29-2014 01:33 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Both Cineplex in Canada and Santikos in Texas use the AVX and AVX MAX label. It's only coincidental (I think).
Bobby, for Cineplex in Canada it is actually called "UltraAVX" not just AVX.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Nevermind it's just 5.1 (or even 5.0) audio.
You forgot to add that it is proprietary to IMAX only and IMAX does change/modify and/or enhance the soundtrack. The sound is also uncompressed. IMAX also uses completely different speaker design than "just" 5.1 theatres.
quote: Bobby Henderson
I guess I care more about these fundamentals:
1. The native resolution of the movie, typically 2K or 4K.
2. The make of projector(s) and native resolution, 2K or 4K.
3. The sound format (5.1, 7.1, Auro 11.1, Atmos).
Still stuck on the 4K thing huh? You should be watching digitally projected scope movies with anamorphic lenses and proper masking before you start worrying about 2K or 4K.
quote: Bobby Henderson
3. The sound format (5.1, 7.1, Auro 11.1, Atmos
The smartest thing Dolby ever did was abandon the whole XX.1 nonsense, calling it just Dolby Atmos was a good marketing move.
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