Will Dolby's New Atmos 62.2 Format Redefine Surround Sound? 298
CIStud writes "Anyone who goes to see Pixar's new animated Brave film might come home with their ears ringing. Why? because Brave is the debut of Dolby Lab's new 62.2 surround sound format called Atmos, which adds new developments such as pan-through array and overhead speakers. With 62 speakers and 2 subwoofers, only a handful of theaters nationwide will be able to show the film at its full throttle. Dolby has produced a new highly informative video that talks about how movie sound has progressed from mono to stereo to LCR (left/center/right) to 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound and now Atmos. The big question is will the 62.2 format system be adapted for home theaters intent on emulating the immersive movie experience?" I've seen some busy input/output panels on home stereo equipment, but 62 channels is too many for my interconnect budget. Still, overhead sound seems like a good idea for some kinds of movie.
...overkill...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does this remind me of the spoof commercial I saw somewhere for the 12 blade facial razor, for the ultimate in close shaves? The thing looked like a damn textbook attached to a Bic razor handle. 62 speakers sound like extreme overkill in any environment outside a professional theater.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, but just price the system at around $10-15 thousand and it'll be viewed as a bargain to the audiophile crowd. They'll make a good killing off those morons.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh and it has to also use 64-bit/384kHz sound otherwise the superharmonic resonance won't be perfect.
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64/384? Please only a deaf luddite would use something so crude. Everyone knows the new standard of sound is a Z-bit / 300-Terahertz is the new standard.
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PCM audio?! Oh, my ears are bleeding! No, it'll be 64 synchronized turntables (MONO, of course) for the analog warmth you can only get from vinyl.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's before you include the Monster cables.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Funny)
Please, no self-respecting audiophile uses Monster Cables.
Seriously! No audiophile would be caught dead paying $50 for a $5 cable, it's $500 for that cable, minimum! $5000 if you want the good stuff - and don't forget the vibration isolaters for your $5000 power cable!
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Don't forget your Brilliant Pebbles [machinadynamica.com] to tune your room.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes it's overkill.
It's just a damn movie (or TV show). Especially since most of the sound isn't even real. It's just guys in a studio banging on drums and other crap to insert footsteps, closing doors, and other fake effects.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's still 'real' sound. In your average scene in the movie, pretty much none of the audio was recorded at the same time as the image. Especially for pretty much anything in a Pixar film for example.
I must say, I have a hard time disagreeing that 62 channels of audio isn't just a tad much. This sounds like something they're building because they can, not because it's going to make a real improvement in the movie experience. I can't see this being something which can be applied meaningfully to home setups.
Though, I bet some of the demos could be pretty cool as they revolve a sound source around you and other whiz-bang stuff which takes advantage of directionality of sound.
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Maybe thats the point, trying to give cinema's an advantage?
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No, the point is to give Dolby an advantage, and make sure more cinemas are buying their stuff.
It just remains to be seen if the cinemas will pony up for something like this.
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Put on a good pair of headphones, and process the audio correctly and you can hear in 3 dimensions. You only have 2 ears, and whether or not something is coming from behind you is all must a matter of how it actually sounds. I don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a sound system. So I got some decent headphones and watch movies with those. Even $50 headphones will outperform most $500 stereo systems, especially considering that there's no setup required, and you don't have to worry about oth
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But headphones will never make my pant legs flap, or cause chunks of plaster to fall from the ceiling.
Where's the fun in that?
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Yes, it's overkill. However, it would allow film makers to precisely place sounds in a 3D landscape. If 3D ends up being the fad we think it is, it would be an expensive upgrade for the movie theater with no real benefit.
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Especially for pretty much anything in a Pixar film for example.
Surely you understand how they "film" a Pixar movie, don't you? (My silliness detector is set to high today.)
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We usually don't use the live sound for an animated film. Nowadays all you get are mouse clicks.
Simpsons did it: "Animated programs are rarely aired live, it's very hard on the animator's wrists."
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Not just audiophiles. I keep around an old 2.0 system for music. A home theater is good for movies and TV, but for music I really dislike subwoofers (as many people do). So it's the 5.1 in the living room, along with an old standard '70s setup with two 3-way towers with 10" woofers.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean 2.1
No, really, 2.0. Subwoofers are a compromise.
I'm no audiophile, but I prefer a simpe 2-speaker setup myself - if you have full range speakers (so no need for a subwoofer) and decent enough speakers to get proper stereo imaging (so no need for a center channel), you're done. There's nothing interesting on the rear speakers anyhow.
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The nice thing about having a centre channel is you can easily boost the volume of speech. Some movies and a lot of TV shows make it very difficult to hear the dialogue otherwise. I had my hearing tested a few years ago and it was fine, the problem is the loudness war.
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Yeah, but just price the system at around $10-15 thousand and it'll be viewed as a bargain to the audiophile crowd. They'll make a good killing off those morons.
only if the optical cable is gold plated
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I remember a Saturday Night Live joke commercial, but here is a different one from Mad TV [youtube.com].
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly is, but two points:
1) It will be astonishingly awesome in a professional theater.
2) No matter how many independent channels you've recorded or mixed for a pro theater, you can always downmix them to fit your personal theater layout. It's not as possible to as effectively upmix from fewer to more channels.
So by all means mix movies in 62.2 sound! Then give us Blu-ray discs with 7 surround channels, four ceiling channels, and two sub channels.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:...overkill...? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true, but either way I don't want the capabilities available to me for my properly set-up home theater to be limited by what morons do in their own homes ;)
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You can go to Best Buy right now and pick up a hundred Blu-ray discs that already have 8 channels of lossless audio (7.1) on them.
With the move to 4K looking like it's going to happen this decade, don't be surprised when the successor to BD will have 9.1 or even 11.2 audio, with support for 1-4 overhead channels.
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> The 'move' to 4k will be GLACIAL.
Doubt it. Sales of LCD TVs dropped for the first time. And average selling price is too low for anyone to be making serious coin. They can put 1920x1080 displays on phones now. Ok, if you stretch the definition of 'phone' to a 5" screen. You know what that all adds up to?
It is time for another upgrade cycle to begin. As always it is a chicken and the egg but most recent movies are already available in 4k since that is what they ship to the local megaplex with a di
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Im sure that 62.2 is not saying there are 64 different channels but that they 64 different "driver cabinets" to ensure that a decent sound image is available to everybody in the room.
btw does anybody know of a Free(ish) program to map and correct the sound field in a room??
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Dolby's marketing says '64 discrete speaker feeds'.
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That's OK, we here at Slashdot won't get upset until it's 640 speakers.
Then the fur will fly.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Funny)
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Why yes, this is a "2.1" system. Everything below 250 Hz gets routed to the four inch subwoofer. LFE? What's that?
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Im sure that 62.2 is not saying there are 64 different channels but that they 64 different "driver cabinets" to ensure that a decent sound image is available to everybody in the room.
Then go watch the video in TFA. There are indeed 64 different channels. But the guy was talking about two different concepts. The first was they're treating sounds as objects, which makes me think the individual theater's system will be responsible for the custom mapping of object locations to that theater's particular speaker array. The other was that the movie would ship with a sound "container", which would contain not only the sound objects, but professional downmixes to 22.1, 11.1, 7.1, 5.1, 4.0 an
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62 speakers sound like extreme overkill in any environment outside a professional theater.
Professional Theater? Like the multiplex down the road?
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Why does this remind me of the spoof commercial I saw somewhere for the 12 blade facial razor, for the ultimate in close shaves? The thing looked like a damn textbook attached to a Bic razor handle. 62 speakers sound like extreme overkill in any environment outside a professional theater.
And never mind this is a completely digitally produced picture, with all sound coming from in the studio/electronics somewhere.
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And never mind this is a completely digitally produced picture, with all sound coming from in the studio/electronics somewhere.
I think the voices started out as humans...
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Uh, it is intended for theaters. I don't see even the slightest hint towards home use in the video nor article.
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Funny. Switched to a safety razor with one blade, after using the 3 blade cartridges for years. Saves just as well and am not getting shaving bumps/skin irritation like I used to.
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What I don't understand is why we need multiple speakers when we only have two ears.
Re:...overkill...? (Score:5, Informative)
Because ears are a miracle of engineering, and the signal processing the brain does is similarly brilliant. The shape of the pinner - the fleshy bit - means that sounds sound different if they get into your ear canal from different directions - otherwise (and I used to wonder this as a kid) how could you tell whether a sound source was directly ahead or directly behind?
As I recall, your brain can also use the tiny timing difference (on the order of 1/3000s) to determine distance and direction
You can fake all of this with just two speakers (the virtual haircut is highly recommended: http://onemansblog.com/2007/05/13/get-your-virtual-haircut-and-other-auditory-illusions/ [onemansblog.com]), but only if the two speakers are completely isolated to each ear - i.e., through the use of headphones. And then you have to resort to a "one size fits all" mix. They record these things using dummy heads with realistic inner and outer ears - brilliantly simple.
If you tried to do the same thing with two external speakers, both ears would hear both speakers and the effect is ruined.
no..space...left... in wall... (Score:5, Funny)
send....more.....speaker.........wire.
Volume (Score:5, Funny)
But does the volume go to eleven ?
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But does the volume go to eleven ?
I'm sure it goes to 11.1
Anyway, I can't wait to hear the new version of the Dolby introduction. I just hope they'll be able to replace my shattered eyeglasses before the feature film starts.
Bit rate (Score:3)
It'll work (Score:4, Funny)
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Even audiophiles laugh at that crap.
I seriously wonder how many they actually produced. I guess when somebody buys one, they cut some regular Cat.5E, add the fancy stuff and sell it for 5.000 times the cost, if not more.
No (Score:4, Insightful)
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Will anyone get to find out? (Score:2)
After a bit of digging, I found a list of the Atmos locations, and it's barely a handful:
http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/technology/cinema/dolby-atmos.html#Locations [dolby.com]
If you're on the US east coast, there doesn't look to be a theatre between New Jersey and Florida ... so most of us won't get a chance to find out if it's worth it. (and as one of those people w/ poor vision ... this I'd be interested in ... 3D video, not so much)
Who remembers Quad Stereo? (Score:2)
Didn't think so. Best forgotten anyway.
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sq
qs
cd4
remember it well.
shibata stylii, also.
GLAD ITS GONE, NOW!
no need for multichannel in my setup, btw. I design and build my own stereo gear and with a well done 2.1 implementation, multichannel just seems like old quad, to me. I rejected it back then and still do, for home use. a VERY well done 2.1 system is still a nicer less distracting audio system and is less costly and easier on the room, too. extra spkrs and wires, at home, really is absurd and pretty much unneeded.
my movies get downmixed to
Gimmick (Score:5, Insightful)
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But I am le tired...
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6 minutes into the short video:
"For theater owners their primary concern is always "How can i get more people to come to my theater?"
With this better technology of surround sound and sound over the audiences that now gives them something to leverage bringing people back into the theater"
Like you said, a gimmick.
IMAX branded screens didn't bring movie goers rushing back into theaters
3D hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters.
Digital projection hasn't brought movie goers rushing back into theaters.
And a more immersive sound system isn't going to bring movie goers rushing back into theaters.
The movie industry has a problem: growing profits vs killing the market.
They control ticket prices, so they control the way this story ends.
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No, they do have pretty good movies, but they fill the theaters with worse neighbors. In a theater, I have to sit next to people I would change seats on a bus to get away from. Seriously, you don't need a squalling 3-year-old in a stroller at an R movie, or to post the plot on Facebook as it unfolds, or to repeat the dialog to your buddy in the seat next to you.
Re:Gimmick (Score:4, Informative)
www.drafthouse.com
No babies allowed, except on baby nights.
Also you can order a pitcher of beer and a pizza from your seat.
And their no talking psa's are awesome and enforced.
http://collider.com/michael-madsen-alamo-drafthouse-psa/165640/ [collider.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Itchy_%26_Scratchy_cartoons#To_Kill_a_Talking_Bird [wikipedia.org]
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The unfortunate truth is that sound in most theaters, while clear enough to understand, is usually not making the most of the existing 7.1 format.
This new format won't help a thing without strict rules for room setup. The current THX and Dolby certifications mean nothing. We need something new. Anyone who frequents ArcLight or other premium theaters can tell you it's night & day when it's set up right.
16 channels... (Score:2)
Ambisonics [wikipedia.org]
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Is Magic Alex behind this? (Score:2)
This reminds me of the story of Magic Alex from the Beatles Anthology. He was an electronics geek friend of the band back when they were burning through money via their company, Apple that designed a revolutionary 16 track recording studio for the band in late 1968. The control room contained 16 little speakers, one for each track. It was a travesty in every other send of electrical and audio engineering, based on claims from the EMI audio engineers who patiently waited for their chance to step back in rest
Monster Cables!!!! (Score:2)
Imagine how many gold plated Monster Cables are they gonna sell?? We're all in the wrong business!
It's all part of the Sontarans' plans! (Score:5, Funny)
The Sontarans are going to get Atmos installed everywhere and use it to kill off people who get in their way and then, finally, use the large number of installed systems to poison our atmosphere so they can use the Earth as a cloning facility! ...See, it's a Doctor Who reference. I like that show.
two things wrong with 'surround' anyway (Score:2)
First of all, the video is only on the screen in front of you. It's like a window (the real thing, not a Redmond POS) into the "world" the movie is presenting. So how in heck would sounds from that world emanate from above or behind you? I find it quite distracting.
Second: "natural" sounds like speech, the car driving down a road in the video, or the orchestra performing on stage (in the video) are not all that localized, and don't need to be. We see the image and locate the sound source to match. Putti
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When there's a sound occurring off-screen, like an explosion or helicopter, how do you intend to handle that? Just have the sound come from the exact same place as the on-screen dialog, even though that doesn't make any logical sense?
How about environmental sounds like rain, airplane cabin drone, echoes, etc?
Surround sound exists for a reason.
Too many channels (Score:2)
Two channels for subs? Why? Bass is non directional. It's one thing to have multiple subs on one channel, but it doesn't make sense to have a 2nd channel.
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Having two subwoofer channels is a good thing - if the .2 channels are discrete (a .1 and a .1, or L/R if you will) then you can get cleaner bass. If the source material provides a .1 channel, having two subs allows you to achieve a 6dB to 10dB (depending on placement - take advantage of acoutic coupling with the walls and put the woofers a half wavelength apart and you can achieve a 10dB increase in output) increase in volume very easily. Also, bass is not totally nondirectional, so there is some audible d
What kind of movie? (Score:2)
>Still, overhead sound seems like a good idea for some kinds of movie.
What kind of movie would that be? I already think the surround audio is overdoing it, since your attention is supposed to be right at the screen, not wondering what's behind you.
Recently watched Naussica Of The Valley Of Wind in a local theater, and I'm not sure the sound was even stero; all sound seemed to come from speakers behind the screen. But I didn't care, because it was an awesome movie, with good visuals and audio effects. Som
That's not how it works (Score:5, Informative)
That's not how this system works, it supports "up to" 62 channels in the encoded signal; these are panned with metadata in the channel bitstream, and then the decoder in the theater (or home) does the math of placing the sound in the space, using prior knowledge of how many speakers you have, and their position in the room. "62.2" doesn't mean 64 speakers, it means that the format supports "up to" that many, and the theater might not have that many actual channels wired, or it might have significantly more if it's a large room, or significantly less -- they can add more speakers to get more directional resolution.
62.2 also doesn't imply that the guy who mixed the thing was using more than 5 or 6. I'm a sound designer in Los Angeles -- just finished Men in Black 3, starting Zero Dark Thirty in a few weeks, and this is the first time I've heard of any of this. This sort of system will require software support from workstation and console vendors, and I'm dubious people will be using it for some time, even though it promises great backwards-compatiblity.
This system appears to be an attempt to get ambisonic-like flexibility without the costs of ambisonics, principally, ambisonic encoding's inability to cope with pan divergence, the problem of "how do I send the same sound to the left and right side of the rooms simultaneously, without it going anywhere else?" It's impossible to do this in ambisonics without adding tons of second-order channels and playing with signal phase. This system might also suffer from one of ambisonic's other problems, namely, it may rely on extremely accurate speaker placement and speaker placement information.
This system also appears to be a shot across the bow of IOSONO [iosono-sound.com], which is a very different process that achieves high horizontal fidelity through a completely different technique of dubious creative utility.
Note- IMAX has overhead sound as well, or at least a "screen-top" channel, but lacks a subwoofer channel and only has point-source surround speakers.
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Actually after reading Dolby's page [dolby.com] the system supports up to 128 discrete pannable audio streams, but no more than 64 speakers.
9.2 receiver obsolete (Score:2)
Does this mean I have to upgrade from my year-old-still-unscratched 9.2 receiver already?!
Seriously??? (Score:2)
Haven't been to the theater in years (I guess when Return of the King came out). I was under the impression that movie theaters had more than 7.1 discrete speakers.
Why haven't theaters progressed beyond the sound setups available to home aficionados decades ago? Or am I missing something?
Better for video games (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard this at Dolby's screening room in SF. It looks like a modest auditorium. It's really a money-is-no-object demo facility. Before a talk on another subject, the Dolby guys couldn't resist showing off. They had a video game with many directional sound outputs hooked into the room's systems, and you could hear the players moving around in the space, behind and above the audience when appropriate. You really can hear somebody sneaking up on you in-game from a platform above you.
It's an experience to hear many-channel sound in a facility like that, but few (if any) commercial theaters are that good acoustically. Unless the room acoustics are very, very good, all those channels won't help much.
Screw movies.... (Score:2)
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Finally (Score:2)
a use for 216-pin Harting connectors in my living room.
Not needed for home theaters (Score:3)
Home theaters are generally setup in small enough rooms that even a 5.1 system is very immersive. Having upgraded from 5.1 to 7.1 to 9.2 in the last year, the immersiveness has improved but, it's incremental enough that I can't imagine and wouldn't even encourage most people bothering with it. Having extra speakers on the z and y axises (height and wide channels) will make some movie scenes more impressive but, in general, it's ambient noises that come out of those channels and, if you already have a properly setup and calibrated 5.1 system with even moderately priced speakers, most of the time you won't notice much of a difference.
As for having speakers on the ceiling, that's completely pointless for a home theater. Having height channels (PLIIz/DSX/DTS:Neo) a few feet above your front speakers is sufficient to give your ear the impression that things are happening directly above you. Just like side surrounds can play phase tricks on your ears to make you think something is happening directly behind you, height channels can make things sound like they are directly above you. And this technology is already available on mid-priced 7.1 receivers.
Sixty-four (Score:2)
Ahem... Sixty-four speakers. Don't forget about the subs.
Link to Dolby Atmos (Score:3, Informative)
Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of (Score:5, Funny)
$4 Coke?! Fill me in with your discount method!
Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of (Score:5, Funny)
If you buy one and have it refilled about 12 times, then it equates to $4 a Coke.
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$4 Coke?! Fill me in with your discount method!
Move out of your expensive city. I'm twice as rich as someone 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same salary as me, because everything costs twice as much up there (or more). Someone making my salary in New York City would probably be living in a cardboard box, but I live a comfortable middle class life here in Springfield.
I don't know what a Coke costs at a movie, but in a thread a while back a bunch of people pegged me as being a cheapass for leaving a q
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$4 Coke?! Fill me in with your discount method!
Move out of your expensive city. I'm twice as rich as someone 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same salary as me, because everything costs twice as much up there (or more). Someone making my salary in New York City would probably be living in a cardboard box, but I live a comfortable middle class life here in Springfield.
You're probably exaggerating a bit. I moved out of an expensive area into a rural area. Housing is about half and I actually have some acreage to go with it, but realistically everything else is similar. Food, clothes, etc are all about the same. It's the other non tangibles that caused me to move, like living somewhere the kids can roam the neighborhood safely, zero traffic, etc.
Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of (Score:4, Funny)
Shut up, Flanders.
Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing wrong with the term "subwoofer". It generally refers to speakers which have a response intentionally limited to somewhere between 100 and 200Hz, which is well below the 500Hz-4kHz woofer crossover frequency you'd find in typical two and three way enclosures. Probably the best definition is "a speaker that can only reproduce frequencies of wavelengths too long for us to detect the source direction" (this is why you can put a true subwoofer almost anywhere in a room, and you only need one even for stereo).
Old woofers were huge because the enclosures were usually either simple folded baffle or sealed; the lowest wavelength that can be reproduced by such designs is proportional to the diameter of the speaker cone and either the length of the acoustic feedback path from back to front of speaker or volume of the enclosure. Thanks to the work of Neville Thiele and Richard Small in the 70s, CAD and modern manufacturing techniques it's now possible to design speakers matched to enclosures that use resonant acoustic delay lines (ports) to extend the frequency response dramatically. For these designs the speaker's excursion range, suspension stiffness and the volume of air it moves (among other factors) are more important than diameter alone*, so it's easily possible to have a 5" speaker that can reproduce down to 40Hz in a very small enclosure.
Your mention of quadraphonic reminds me of the old joke "quadraphonic is the sound system for people with four ears". I have to agree with you about surround sound in general: the sound of anything on the screen should come from where it is on the screen because our eyes follow audio cues (something to do with millions of years of wanting to avoid being eaten I suspect). But surround ambient background noises can be quite effective when used subtly (that too is natural), extreme low frequencies that are more felt than heard do add to special effects movies, and the centre speaker doesn't hurt, so 5.1 is plenty IMO. I doubt there'd be significant benefit from extra speakers in the Y dimension, since we're less sensitive to vertical displacement and the spacing of the speakers may be too narrow for more than the first few rows to really hear a difference, but it makes more sense than 62 speakers.
And I'm with you 100% on spoken vs written, though what I don't get is that since speaking is much slower than reading you'd think people with short attention spans would prefer...ooh, a shiny!
*Note to nitpickers: yes, this is vastly oversimplified.
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That's an interesting concept that I've never considered before. I like it, a lot, for all of the same reasons you've surely already thought of...
That said, I think 5 would be good: One slightly below the geometric center of the screen (where the mouth is) would be a blessing for listeners who are well off-axis.
Too much inertia for it to ever work, though. Which is a bummer.
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let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of others fees and do you want a $4 coke with that?
You throw a bug into it and they knock half off when you show them the cockroach doing the backstroke.
But it's still full price for the popcorn with genuine simulated butter kinda-sorta-flavored grease which puts you in mind of melted crayons
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[I]t's still full price for the popcorn with genuine simulated butter kinda-sorta-flavored grease which puts you in mind of melted crayons
The "butter" flavor is already there in that salty yellow powder. The "butter" that's applied when you request butter is simply heated canola oil.
Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of (Score:4, Informative)
As a teen I worked concessions at large theater. "Butter" was indeed grease from 5 gallon jugs. Nacho "cheese" was something thick and yellow that was not cheese. Hot dogs often had green stuff on them when they came out of the box, but the green was covered by accumulated gunk (we called it seasoning) from the rollers of the heater, and could make the trip between freezer and rollers several times before purchase.
If it's not prepackaged, be afraid. Be very afraid.
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The larger you want your "sweet spot" to be, the more speakers you need. This will give MUCH better surround imaging in a large space, like the local multiplex.
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Will it though?
If I sit in the middle of the theater, and I hear a sound directly overhead which is occurring the program, it will be directly overhead. If I'm on the right aisle, though, it will appear as though it is off to my left. Opposite for the left.
Maybe that's still more accurate than just surround, though.
Ob. movie line: Death Proof (Score:2)
Of course this is a death proof car, I didn't lie to you about that. But, to actually gain benefit of it being death proof, you have to be sitting... where I'm sitting!
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What I really want is a system that prevents me from hearing other folks cough, laugh at the wrong moment, or left their cell phone on ring.
Headphones
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Nope, they state 64 discrete feeds.
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I can fill a room with a fart. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make things better than farts.