Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Datasat now has Auro 13.1 for the HOME

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Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 05-03-2014, 10:02 PM:

Auro 11.1 in theatres is hardly intrenched and it has already been ported to the home market...with possibly 2 extra channels!

http://hometheaterreview.com/datasat-unveils-the-ls10-home-cinema-processor/

http://www.datasatdigital.com/consumer/products/datasat-ls10-processor.php

I wonder how theatre owners that invested considerable money in this sound system feel about it being bested in the home market. For sure, an Auro 11.1 theatre doesn't have anything to offer over the home experience here.

I'm sure Atmos will have a home version at some point too but that will be more complex for the layperson to accomplish and cost considerably more (more amplifier channels, more speakers to really pull it off).

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 05-03-2014, 11:21 PM:

I don't think theater owners really have to worry. The MSRP to add it in the home is almost $30k, then the construction and speakers, it will have no impact to theater owners.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 05-03-2014, 11:45 PM:

Interesting. I note that it appears to be aimed at the home market, but under compliance, it says FCC class A, which is for commercial use (see FCC 15.3 (h) .

Harold

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-04-2014, 12:35 AM:

If I've read things correctly, commercial movie theaters wired originally for 7.1 should be able to do Auro 13.1. The "13.1" format is essentially an enhanced version of 7.1. Of course this gets into another matter of whether the Auro folks and movie studios are going to create dual inventories of Auro 11.1 and 13.1 mixes.

Nevertheless, for the home theater market: where are the Auro encoded movies? AFAIK it isn't a supported standard for Blu-ray. Is there some special movie streaming option to play movies with Auro encoded mixes? What good is Auro capable home theater hardware without the software?

That's actually a good question for commercial movie theaters for that matter. Title support for Auro is still not so hot.

At least the advertising for Auro is getting slightly better. The Auro 3D web site has been updated to show a pretty good number of newly equipped Auro 11.1 capable movie theaters. The vast majority are Cinemark/Century branded locations. Regal has a few on the map.

Cinemark was actually listing "Auro 11.1 by Barco" on XD show times of The Amazing Spiderman 2 at their Auro equipped theaters. At least that's what they were doing Friday. Now the Auro thingies in the directory are, strangely, gone. Their XD theater in Fremont, CA does have Dolby Atmos listed though.

The end credits of The Amazing Spiderman 2 marks the first time I've seen an Auro listing among the collection of sound formats. Dolby Atmos was listed, then SDDS, Datasat and then Auro.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-04-2014, 03:13 PM:

This might just be a strategical trick to gain some momentum in the ATMOS/AURO fight. Auro is easy to code into existing audio formats for BluRay, while ATMOS needs an extension of the BluRay spec or other complicated trickeries to tie an ATMOS file to a distribution medium. As such, ATMOS is galaxies away from the home AV mass market. Even Dolby's marketing guys are completely silent about it.

Completely leaving aside the most important and non-trivial aspect of extending home AV systems to higher numbers of speakers, early availability of Auro on home media could serve as a point in making Auro 3D more attractive to studios.

While DATASAT offers an Auro 3D capable home/ProAV Version of their Auro 3D enabled AP24-3D cinema audio processor, it is extremely expensive. At a list price of 20.000US$ (this is multiples of the professional cinema version!) we are not actually talking about mass market or going after market share...

There will be cheaper receivers pretty soon, but even then, it has zero impact on the cinema market in itself if one out of a million patrons boasts an Auro 3D enabled home theatre.

- Carsten

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-04-2014, 05:25 PM:

Why, anno 2014, would anybody get excited about 12 or 14 distinct PCM channels? And why would anybody, besides the biggest douche in town, even want to pay $20K for it?

For professional home theater setups, this might have limited use, but for living room deployments, it's just utter b.s. Even a decent 5.1 setup is often hard to realize given the hard reality of the layout of the room. Many people I know are actually "downgrading" from 5.1 systems to "virtual surround" systems. Sure, those systems will never please the real fans, but for many people it's good enough for their living room.

I'm certain that object based sound formats will eventually also arrive in the living room and they can be put to good use there too. Sure, for the best results, one should program the speaker and room layout into the playback system/decoder, but most people probably could live with some standard presets that define some standard speaker and room layouts.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-04-2014, 06:31 PM:

Unless someone has a really large living room or a true movie theater like screening room there is ZERO point in putting object based sound, like Dolby Atmos, into consumer products.

Even Auro 11.1 -a channel based systems, NOT an object based system, is overkill for living rooms. Not many people bother installing 7.1 surround systems in their homes due to the installation complexity. At best, I could see a 9.1 or 9.2 format, amounting to a 7.1 system with a couple ceiling surround speakers added, being practical.

Ultimately it all comes down to title support. Right now the Auro folks have a lot more campaigning to do. They have to bring aboard more movie studios, particularly Disney and Warner Bros., to really get anywhere. I have a feeling the studios using Atmos but not Auro will prefer to wait and see what comes of the DTS MDA format and how that will ultimately overlap or replace Auro.

Posted by Scott Jentsch (Member # 1681) on 05-05-2014, 12:18 PM:

I would amend that statement to be "there is ZERO point in putting object based sound, like Dolby Atmos, into low-end consumer products."

The $299 receivers that would go into a typical living room are probably not even hooked up to more than 5 speakers and a sub (if that, probably more likely a soundbar, a woofer box, and some tiny satellites). In that case, I would agree that Atmos could be overkill, but even in those situations, if the Atmos processing allowed for very flexible speaker placement, it could be useful even then. Just the ability to have the surrounds where they can go and have the processor adjust would help the consumer have better results.

However, once you get into the more expensive receivers (anything above $500 or so), those units are going into more sophisticated setups, and there is no reason that one would not expect to get Atmos (or Atmos-like) processing once it becomes available.

I've got wires in the ceiling of my home theater, just waiting for the technology to catch up. I would happily install additional speakers into that space in order to increase the performance of movies. That's one of the benefits of a room that doesn't have to be a primary living space as well!

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 05-05-2014, 01:22 PM:

How does this fit into the DTS vs. Datasat split? DTS gave theatrical the heave ho because it was holding back their stock price since it was better to just pick up checks from licensing the technically unrelated home video DTS system. The name change seemed counter productive with theatrical giving up their famous name and the home video side giving up the theatrical connection that presumably had cachet in that market. But now with DataSat poised to enter the home market I suppose it was for the best.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 05-05-2014, 01:56 PM:

Is this new home format a new codec? Are there Blu-rays available with it?

Seems like a stretch to me...

AJG

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 05-05-2014, 02:42 PM:

Auro is interesting in that they encode the additional channels in the least significant bits of the existing channels. As long as the PCM path is transparent (no sample rate conversion or forensic marking), they can decode 5.1 to 11.1. Since BLU Ray can handle 8 PCM channels, I suspect an Auro decoder could just pick these up over HDMI and decode them out to 11.1 (or more). Since the encoding is in the least significant bits of the audio, the encoding is generally not audible in the existing 5.1 or 7.1 audio.

So, Auro has an interesting advantage in BD since it's backward compatible.

Harold

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-05-2014, 03:20 PM:

quote: Steve Kraus
But now with DataSat poised to enter the home market I suppose it was for the best.

It is NOT Datasat entering the home market with Auro 3D - Auro 3D is not a Datasat product or brand - it is a Barco Brand.

Datasat only manufactures a ProAV/high end receiver variant of the AP20 cinema processor. You wouldn't call it home market at these list prices. Datasat produced and marketed the home/Pro AV AP20 variant RS20i already for a couple of years. The new version has just become Auro 3D capable.

What DOES collide with your mentioned split is that actually DTS, now only in the home video licensing sector, is aiming to standardize an object based immersive audio system ('MDA' - https://www.editorsguild.com/FromtheGuild.cfm?FromTheGuildid=454 ) - just not for home use alone, but for cinema use as well as an open system competing with Atmos. So dts is back again in the cinema segment. Someone recently told me that datasat and dts still operate door-to-door anyway.

So to speak, Dolby is getting it from both sides. Both clearly are aiming for a common advanced audio format for both cinema and home releases.

@Aaron: The concept of Auro 3D, both for cinema and home video, is that of a downward compatible codec, hiding the extra channels in existing 5.1 mixes. That means, you can put Auro 3D mixes on any BluRay (or DCP), and standard BluRay players can play it (digital) to an Auro 3D enabled receiver/processor. If there is no Auro 3D enabled receiver, you will only hear the standard 5.1 soundtrack.

You would think that the studios find this appoach attractive. They can advertize Auro 3D/11.1 or 13.1 as an advanced audio format to BluRay buyers on a single media type, even if these Buyers have no clue what Auro 3D is or what is needed to use it. ;-)

- Carsten

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 05-05-2014, 03:44 PM:

quote: Carsten Kurz was the last to post
It is NOT Datasat entering the home market with Auro 3D - Auro 3D is not a Datasat product or brand - it is a Barco Brand.

Datasat only manufactures a ProAV/high end receiver variant of the AP20 cinema processor. You wouldn't call it home market at these list prices. Datasat produced and marketed the home/Pro AV AP20 variant RS20i already for a couple of years. The new version has just become Auro 3D capable.

What DOES collide with your mentioned split is that actually DTS, now only in the home video licensing sector, is aiming to standardize an object based immersive audio system ('MDA' - https://www.editorsguild.com/FromtheGuild.cfm?FromTheGuildid=454 ) - just not for home use alone, but for cinema use as well as an open system competing with Atmos. So dts is back again in the cinema segment. Someone recently told me that datasat and dts still operate door-to-door anyway.

Auro-3D is not a Barco brand: Auro-3D was developed by Auro Technologies. Barco is the exclusive licensee of Auro-3D for the cinema market, but Auro Technologies is pursuing other markets, including automotive, gaming, and home theater. Datasat is the first licensee to market for home theater, but I am certain that Auro is in discussions with other equipment manufacturers to license the technology as well.

As to the relationship between DTS and Datasat: Datasat licenses the DTS codecs for use in our products, just like any other A/V manufacturer: nothing more.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-05-2014, 04:37 PM:

quote: Scott Jentsch
However, once you get into the more expensive receivers (anything above $500 or so), those units are going into more sophisticated setups, and there is no reason that one would not expect to get Atmos (or Atmos-like) processing once it becomes available.

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.

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?

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.

Auro would be much easier to incorporate into home theater. Still I don't see all that much point to it other than attaching a brand name to a couple ceiling surround speakers. I don't see anyone but the wealthiest of home theater consumers installing separate height layer speakers for all the primary audio channels and ceiling layer speakers for a complete Auro setup. What percentage of home theater users even wire up 7.1 surround systems? Movies on Blu-ray with 7.1 surround aren't all that common. If I had an affordable Auro-capable surround sound receiver I'm not sure I'd go to all the trouble of spending the money on extra surround speakers and installing them. There has to be more Auro encoded movies to make the effort and expense worth it.

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.

The only benefit I can see either side gaining with pushing "immersive audio" into home theater is simply shutting out a competitor, if that's even possible. Every previous "platform" for surround sound has been occupied by multiple formats.

Posted by Jonathan Goeldner (Member # 4854) on 05-05-2014, 10:38 PM:

so will this mean DTS will step up the releases of DTS NEO: X product?

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 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.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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.

Posted by Daniel Schulz (Member # 1881) on 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.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 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.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-07-2014, 02:52 AM:

How do y'all pronounce Auro? To me it looks like "Oreo" without the e. It certainly can't be pronounced as "aero". Oro or even R-Ro sounds like a dumb name. I only listen to shit that has cool-sounding names.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-07-2014, 03:49 AM:

I would pronounce the Au part as the ou in loud. Since it originates from Belgium (Galaxy Studios and later Auro Technologies), I'm rather certain that's also the way it is supposed to be pronounced.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 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

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 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.

Posted by Carsten Kurz (Member # 5396) on 05-07-2014, 04:42 PM:

It's not only about the hardware implementation in the cinema itself. Studios want a single implementation for sound mixing/editing, internationalization/exchange, mass media distribution, etc. They do not want to prepare 4 or 5 different mixes using different tools and standards, as that eats too much time and money in the final postproduction and localization phase.

If a lower cost cinema or home audio system implementation creates a less than optimal experience, what's so bad about it? That was always the case at cinemas around the world during the last 100 years. Dolby can still call THEIR MDA implementation ATMOS and claim to have the best system.

- Carsten

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 05-09-2014, 03:30 PM:

To clarify USL’s position on our 16 channel MDA solution on the CMS-2200. There is no technical reason USL cannot render as many channels as desired on the CMS-2200. We have limited our current solution for MDA to 16 channels because it is completely DCI compliant on our existing Media Block (CMS-2200). USL is looking forward to additional channels for MDA, but we are holding off new product introductions while the standards process sorts itself out. USL remains committed to supporting the DCI and SMPTE standards with our cinema products.