

At different theaters the number of speakers can vary dramatically, but Atmos will scale with them regardless. The mixing is different, as we've discussed, but so is the decoding. With Atmos (on the right), sound designers can pinpoint exactly where in any Atmos theater they want a sound to "appear." This could be just about any place in the room, including overhead.Ītmos is an end-to-end change in theater and home audio. Not "left surround speaker" but "left rear corner." Not "pan from left surround speaker to right sound speaker" but "pan smoothly across the rear wall." Not only does this give greater flexibility, but it improves the experience in the theater and, potentially, at home. Instead, most sounds are treated as "objects." Instead of assigning a sound to a channel (and by extension, a speaker), Atmos lets filmmakers assign a sound to a place.
Dolby 5.1 4 movie#
Where your speakers are, how powerful they are, and increasingly, how much range each has, varies greatly compared with a decent movie theater.Ītmos, for the most part, doesn't use channels. After all, if you have a 5.1 speaker system, you have all those same speakers.Įxcept… you don't. To an extent, this same mix of channels also translates to the home. Zooming and swooping special effects might appear in the surround speakers. When the music swells during a dramatic moment, that's usually in the front left and right channels.

So if two actors are speaking onscreen, that gets mixed to the center channel. So a sound would come from the left "wall" not a specific speaker on that wall. Lots of speakers, but only a few "channels" to direct the sound to. This diagram should help:Ī traditional 7.1 surround system in a theater. All the low frequency booms and thumps go to the ".1" subwoofer channel. Some more complex systems add "surround back" channels.
Dolby 5.1 4 tv#
To understand what makes Atmos different from, say, its direct predecessor Dolby Digital, let's first take a look at how sound is mixed for movies and TV shows.Įverything you hear in a movie, from the music to the voices to the sound effects, all gets mixed into specific "channels." For simplicity's sake, we'll say these channels are, as you look at them in a room, left front (L), center (C), right front (R), right surround (RS) and left surround (LS). The $450 Vizio M512a-H6 is an upcoming Dolby Atmos soundbar. Ceiling speakers are great, but many companies sell upward-firing speakers that will come close in performance without the need for speaker mounting or installation.The best sound will be with a multispeaker setup, but even soundbars with Atmos (like the Vizio SB36512) offer a much "bigger" and more enveloping soundstage than stereo bars.Height channels can create a more immersive sound.What Apple calls spatial audio incorporates Dolby Atmos as well as its own head-tracking technologies in products like the AirPods earbuds. Dolby Atmos can be replayed on a traditional surround system or even with a pair of headphones thanks to technologies like Dolby Virtual:X and Dolby Headphones. While the biggest change in the cinema was the addition of height channels, Atmos soundtracks can work with many different systems, no height speakers required. While this format, also known as "immersive,"was originally designed for movie theaters, it is now used as a new way to remix and listen to music from the likes of The Beatles and Ariana Grande. What not many people realize is that this particular branch of the technology has been with us for quite a few years, where it has been, and still is, known as Dolby Atmos.ĭolby Atmos is a popular surround-sound format, a competitor to DTS:X, and it's found in everything from the biggest commercial cinemas to home theater systems - and now on mobile phones. The $200 Amazon Echo Studio is a Dolby Atmos-compatible speaker.Īt its WWDC 2021 conference last week Apple announced "spatial audio" for its Apple Music service, and company exec Eddy Cue said it was like the transition to HD for television.
