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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Datasat now has Auro 13.1 for the HOME
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 05-06-2014 04:53 AM
quote: Bobby Henderson
It's all about numbers of speakers and channels of amplification. Dolby Atmos works in movie theaters that have dozens of speakers and dozens of channels worth of amplification. Every speaker/amp combo is a "node" in the 3D sound field that can be rendered.
Amplification requirements for a big movie theater are a bit different than that of your living room. Active speakers with digital interconnects, even wireless digital interconnects aren't anything out of the ordinary those days.
quote: Bobby Henderson
If you only have 6, 8 or even 12 speakers there really is no point in doing object based sound. Exactly how would it perform any better than a standard channel based solution?
Because an object based sound system could at least theoretically better be mapped to odd speaker layouts than a discrete channel based system. Also, I can at least potentially have the SAME mix at home as in the theater. My very own 5.1 deployment is essentially defective, the speakers aren't correctly placed. My decoder offers some "voodoo" that tries to compensate, but it does a mediocre job. I don't see the point in adding a huge array of extra speakers, as I already have difficulties to get the current speakers positioned right. An object based sound system, could theoretically better compensate for my somewhat bad speaker layout.
quote: Bobby Henderson
If anything, with object based audio in home theater there would be a much greater potential for worse quality sound due to the more complicated installation and setup procedure. Atmos (or any other object based sound format) will NOT be "plug and play." It won't be very user friendly at all. The commercial version of Dolby Atmos is complex enough that Dolby technicians have been doing all the Atmos installations themselves and may still be doing so.
In my opinion, a cinema sound system, even in a 5.1 or 7.1 setup is sufficiently complex to correctly calibrate that only a qualified technician should do the job. A home receiver/decoder for an object based sound format could be configured with standard presets for standard layouts like 5.1, 7.1 or maybe even 11.1 or 13.1 setups. It might not really add anything extra, but I don't see why this should sound any worse than a discrete 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1 channel mix. For the enthusiast, it could offer an endless amount of customization. Give it an interface accessible via your computer or an App where you can place your exact speaker locations, your speaker types, etc. It's definitely not plug-and-play if you want all the goodies, but many high-end decoders already offer features that are targeted at this segment.
quote: Bobby Henderson
IMHO, Dolby and Auro/Barco are jumping the gun by trying to push into the home theater market. I think they need to concentrate more of their resources on improving commercial cinema sound and making complex, object-based surround sound systems less complicated and expensive to deploy. IMHO, Dolby Atmos really should be exclusive to commercial movie theaters and out of reach to the home living room.
While I basically agree with you that the primary focus of Dolby and Barco (or rather Auro Technologies) should be on movie theaters, the mass market is far to tempting for them to deny. Dolby formerly had the lead with their Dolby Digital system in the LaserDisc and DVD era, but largely lost that to DTS in the BluRay era. It will be interesting to see if they are the first to push into the mass consumer market with an object based sound format.
Also, it's not like processing power is really the issue here. In essence, many games have been using "3D sound systems" mapped to discrete output channels for almost two decades now. It's a bit more challenging to do this for like 50 output channels simultaneously, like in a theater, than in a living room with maybe 10 or 12 output channels, but it's not like this is rocket science anymore.
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-06-2014 10:58 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Because an object based sound system could at least theoretically better be mapped to odd speaker layouts than a discrete channel based system. Also, I can at least potentially have the SAME mix at home as in the theater. My very own 5.1 deployment is essentially defective, the speakers aren't correctly placed. My decoder offers some "voodoo" that tries to compensate, but it does a mediocre job. I don't see the point in adding a huge array of extra speakers, as I already have difficulties to get the current speakers positioned right. An object based sound system, could theoretically better compensate for my somewhat bad speaker layout.
Dolby Atmos, or any other object based audio system, will not improve a basic home theater speaker layout where surround speakers or other speakers are mounted in bad locations. What you're describing with an improper 5.1 surround speaker placement would amount to big "holes" in the listening zone. In this situation Dolby Atmos would do no better at all than simply boosting or decreasing the decibel level on the improperly placed speaker(s).
Object based sound systems are only going to be better than conventional channel based sound systems when they have lots of speakers to control, not a lower cost, consumer-friendly six speaker setup. Object based audio is like tits on a bull in a conventional home theater sound system.
To describe it in another matter, think of individual pixels in image, or number of triangles in a 3D modeled object. Both are going to look a lot better with more native pixels and triangles put into each. The same goes for 3D immersive sound. Dolby Atmos is going to be a whole lot better when it is rendering to a few dozen speakers rather than only six. Each additional speaker/amp "node" is like adding more pixels to improve the detail in that sound image. With only a minimal number of speakers it's really not going to perform any better than straight 5.1 or 7.1. Sticking a new brand name on it will simply not change that fact.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
A home receiver/decoder for an object based sound format could be configured with standard presets for standard layouts like 5.1, 7.1 or maybe even 11.1 or 13.1 setups.
That would defeat the purpose of Dolby Atmos in the home. Not only do you need lots of individually amplified speakers, you need all the room geometry correctly entered into the system for the Atmos processor to accurately render the 3D sound field and do all its auto-EQ stuff. Very few consumers would be able to handle such a task, or be willing to pay for a technician to do the job.
Any consumer based version of Dolby Atmos will be very watered down compared to the commercial cinema counterpart. And much of it will be Atmos-done-bad. I've said this previously: look at what happened to THX once its brand name got cheapened with so much consumer electronics trash. The same thing can happen to Atmos. Theater operators wouldn't see any point of spending tens of thousands of dollars on Atmos-capable sound systems when some doofus could spend a few hundred bucks on a home system and think he has something equal to a pro-level Atmos movie theater installation.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 05-06-2014 03:19 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
To describe it in another matter, think of individual pixels in image, or number of triangles in a 3D modeled object. Both are going to look a lot better with more native pixels and triangles put into each. The same goes for 3D immersive sound. Dolby Atmos is going to be a whole lot better when it is rendering to a few dozen speakers rather than only six. Each additional speaker/amp "node" is like adding more pixels to improve the detail in that sound image. With only a minimal number of speakers it's really not going to perform any better than straight 5.1 or 7.1. Sticking a new brand name on it will simply not change that fact.
No sound system will magically fix big holes in your setup, but I'm quite certain that a 3D sound model mapped to a speaker array that has been programmed into the decoder will yield a better end result.
I'm not trying to convince you that an object based sound mix, played back on a correctly configured 5.1 configuration will sound any better than a proper discrete channel mix. My main point is: Single Inventory and always the best possible reproduction of the original mix given the circumstances, no matter if you're using a mono, stereo, 5.1 or whatever future sound playback technology becomes available and feasible.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Any consumer based version of Dolby Atmos will be very watered down compared to the commercial cinema counterpart. And much of it will be Atmos-done-bad. I've said this previously: look at what happened to THX once its brand name got cheapened with so much consumer electronics trash. The same thing can happen to Atmos.
Personally, I'm advocating an open object based format as a future of all playback formats, not something proprietary. Such a format will most likely not carry the Atmos brand name. I don't exactly know what Dolby's take on the Atmos brand is, but if they want to use it as a seal of guaranteed quality, like THX supposed to be, then they better don't name any "home theater format" Atmos and reserve this as a premium sound system for theaters.
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Daniel Schulz
Master Film Handler
Posts: 387
From: Los Angeles, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2003
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posted 05-06-2014 03:19 PM
I can't speak to Dolby's plans for home theater, but since the original post is about the Datasat processors, I thought I'd chime in with a few additional details:
Auro Technologies is well underway with deploying Auro-3D for cinema (via their arrangement with Barco), automobiles, video games, music and home theater. The channel layouts were originally developed through research into how people respond to sound, in particular noting that we are quite responsive to sounds coming from above, and that adding a height layer of sound to the traditional 5.1/7.1 format created an impressive level of realism.
The technology Auro then developed to deliver that height layer was designed to be backwards compatible with existing PCM-based carriers, ie DCPs and Blu Ray discs. Auro sees this as a key selling point, as it enables single inventory delivery of both DCPs and Blu Ray discs, with Auro-3D soundtracks available to those with decoders.
Datasat, as the OEM manufacturer of the AP24 for Barco's Auro installations in cinemas, has developed an interest in the possibilities of this format (having heard it in action), and so has licensed the Auro codec for our home theater processors, the RS20i and newly announced LS10. There are a number of native Auro recordings of music coming soon (music recorded using the Auro height layers, and played back in the Auro format, is pretty cool), and discussions are underway with home video groups for movies on Blu Ray.
The minimum requirement for a small room for effective Auro-3D is only 9.1 - 5.1 plus height speakers for the L,R,Ls and Rs channels. The demos I've heard with only 9.1 playback are very impressive. The home theater decoder will downmix native 13.1 or 11.1 content to the installed format, whether that's 9.1, 10.1 (9.1 with the overhead speaker added) 11.1 or full 13.1. Additionally there is an upmixer which will upmix any content (including mono) to Auro-3D.
Since there are already movies being mixed natively in Auro-3D it was a no-brainer for Datasat to add the Auro codecs to our home theater processors along with the existing technologies from DTS and Dolby.
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Terry Lynn-Stevens
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1081
From: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Dec 2012
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posted 05-06-2014 08:19 PM
I fully expect object-based sound to become more prominent in the home video, game, and headset market. Using some sort of bounce technology makes the most sense. Most users are not going to wire speakers into the roof of their living room or home theatre. There are already dipole speakers with four-six speakers outputs currently available so a modification to this is likely going to happen IMO.
The rear channel + left-right surround of Dolby EX has been around since around 1999 in the home market, it did not take off all that well and 7.1 is really only popular with hard-core home theatre fans. So more speakers is not going to work.
If Dolby Surround, Dolby/DTS Digital, Dolby EX, DTS ES, and lossless audio are already in the home environment, then I fully expect object based to enter it as well. Somehow, someway they will make it happen.
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Carsten Kurz
Film God
Posts: 4340
From: Cologne, NRW, Germany
Registered: Aug 2009
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posted 05-07-2014 06:28 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
No sound system will magically fix big holes in your setup, but I'm quite certain that a 3D sound model mapped to a speaker array that has been programmed into the decoder will yield a better end result.
I'm not trying to convince you that an object based sound mix, played back on a correctly configured 5.1 configuration will sound any better than a proper discrete channel mix. My main point is: Single Inventory and always the best possible reproduction of the original mix given the circumstances, no matter if you're using a mono, stereo, 5.1 or whatever future sound playback technology becomes available and feasible.
USL already does MDA decoding on their new CMS-2200 IMS, limited to 14 playout channels currently (DCI 16ch - HI/VI). They actually already sell it, though it will certainly receive a couple of software updates until the final SMPTE MDA spec is finished. It's an offline process, they do the rendering to discrete channels during ingest. The package itself later is played out as a standard 16ch DCP/CPL. They will probably try to find ways to support more than 14ch in the future. Currently, I guess it is more a statement of commitment to an open MDA standard.
Pretty soon, ATMOS will only be one of a couple of MDA solutions. Probably the best techwise, but not the only one anymore.
- Carsten
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 05-07-2014 11:15 AM
quote: Marcel Birgelen
No sound system will magically fix big holes in your setup, but I'm quite certain that a 3D sound model mapped to a speaker array that has been programmed into the decoder will yield a better end result.
Home theater systems don't have arrays of speakers to cover surround channels like commercial movie theaters and professional level screening rooms. It's just one speaker per channel. Most home theaters have only six speakers. They're already getting six discrete audio feeds.
An audio rendering processor might be able to fine tune a movie mix specifically for an end user's home theater speaker layout, but that's only if the end user did everything right in the equipment setup. Most consumers simply aren't going to do that. Back in the VCR age the flashing "12:00" thing and users never learning how to program a VCR was common. But now they're going to be expected to correctly enter room geometry, speaker specifications and other crap into a home theater receiver? I don't see that happening.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
Single Inventory and always the best possible reproduction of the original mix given the circumstances, no matter if you're using a mono, stereo, 5.1 or whatever future sound playback technology becomes available and feasible.
Single inventory is another problem for object based sound in consumer playback media, be it on optical disc or via Internet streaming. I totally get Auro branching out into the consumer space, but Auro is really a conventional, channel based audio format rather than something object based. An Auro 11.1 enhanced DTS Master Audio track wouldn't take up any more space on a Blu-ray disc than a standard 24-bit DTS MA 5.1/7.1 track. And it could be played on any Blu-ray disc player regardless if the player was connected to a home theater system or just to TV set speakers.
Object based audio can consume a hell of a lot more disc space, especially if you have dozens of objects and channel based beds playing simultaneously. Music/sound projects in applications like Ableton Live, ProTools, etc. can get huge very quickly. I don't know how big the average Dolby Atmos sound file for a 2 hour movie may be, but I have a strong feeling the more aggressive Atmos mixes might be a problem for the limited bandwidth of Blu-ray discs and Internet streaming. If the track has to be single inventory, then you also have to embed/hide a parallel Dolby Digital track like how Dolby TrueHD does on Blu-ray.
quote: Marcel Birgelen
I don't exactly know what Dolby's take on the Atmos brand is, but if they want to use it as a seal of guaranteed quality, like THX supposed to be, then they better don't name any "home theater format" Atmos and reserve this as a premium sound system for theaters.
I think Dolby is making some noises about pushing Atmos branding into areas of consumer electronics. IMHO, doing so would be destructive to Atmos' business in commercial movie theaters. Dolby should be treating Atmos like a very exclusive Ferrari-style brand. Atmos is something strictly only for movie theaters that can afford to install it. If Dolby is going to develop a lower cost, fewer speakers solution to object based sound in home theater they really need to apply a different brand to it. They can say it is a cousin to Atmos, but just don't call it the same thing. That's crazy.
quote: Carsten Kurz
USL already does MDA decoding on their new CMS-2200 IMS, limited to 14 playout channels currently (DCI 16ch - HI/VI).
If their implementation of MDA is pre-rendered upon ingest and limited to no more than 16 channels then it's hardly comparable at all to Atmos. It may not even be any better than Auro, depending on how the speakers are placed.
This is what worries me about the "open" solutions: lots of half-assed, cost cutting solutions that are advertised as being every bit as good as something like Dolby Atmos but in reality quite inferior.
Dolby Atmos itself can be done wrong/cheap -if the theater skimps on amplifiers and installs what amounts to a array/beds-only (no objects) 9.1 or 9.3 system. But that would be kind of stupid for a theater to do considering how much they need to spend for the Dolby CP850 and other stuff to get started with Atmos.
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Marcel Birgelen
Film God
Posts: 3357
From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands
Registered: Feb 2012
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posted 05-07-2014 06:02 PM
quote: Bobby Henderson
Home theater systems don't have arrays of speakers to cover surround channels like commercial movie theaters and professional level screening rooms. It's just one speaker per channel. Most home theaters have only six speakers. They're already getting six discrete audio feeds.
With speaker array, I pointed to all the speakers in a given system as a whole, not how they're wired to the output channels. Maybe the term "array" is confusing, as it is also being used for stuff like line arrays, etc.
quote: Bobby Henderson
An audio rendering processor might be able to fine tune a movie mix specifically for an end user's home theater speaker layout, but that's only if the end user did everything right in the equipment setup. Most consumers simply aren't going to do that. Back in the VCR age the flashing "12:00" thing and users never learning how to program a VCR was common. But now they're going to be expected to correctly enter room geometry, speaker specifications and other crap into a home theater receiver? I don't see that happening.
Just like Carsten already pointed out: in what way is this different to how it always has been? Aren't cinema sound systems supposed to outperform the average home cinema system? The consumer market is saturated with sub-par 5.1 and 7.1 systems, some of them even feature THX logos.
quote: Bobby Henderson
Dolby Atmos itself can be done wrong/cheap -if the theater skimps on amplifiers and installs what amounts to a array/beds-only (no objects) 9.1 or 9.3 system. But that would be kind of stupid for a theater to do considering how much they need to spend for the Dolby CP850 and other stuff to get started with Atmos.
That's also why something like THX could still be relevant. Although most Dolby Atmos installs are currently being supervised by Dolby, in its core it's still just a format and a decoder. Personally, if I was Dolby, I would brand my home theater products differently than Atmos or at least extend the Atmos branding to differentiate between the professional cinema setup and the potential consumer products.
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