Is Dolby Atmos a Flop For Home Theater Like 3DTV Was? 197
An anonymous reader writes: Object-based audio is supposed to be the future of surround sound. The ability to pan sound around the room in 3D space as opposed to fixed channel assignments of yesterday's decoders. While this makes a lot of sense at the cinema, it's less likely consumers rush to mount speakers on their ceilings or put little speaker modules on top of their existing ones to bounce sound around the room. Leading experts think this will be just a fad like 3DTV was. What do you think?
What do I think? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think: "File Not Found".
Bad linky...
Re: (Score:2)
This smacks of the sort of home movie experience purchased by people who already have the newest hyper-resolution televisions.
For the If it's this or the light bill crowd, market share will be on the order of shoe size.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's okay, no-one was going to read it anyway.
Ambisonics (Score:5, Interesting)
A more rational pannable surround could be implemented with just four speakers using Ambisonics [wikipedia.org]. It isn't patentable and doesn't sell lots of speakers so it will continue to be ignored.
Re:Ambisonics (Score:4, Informative)
The primary developer of Ambisonics was Micheal Gerzon, one of the best minds to ever work in digital audio. His academic background was in the field of axiomatic quantum theory.
Aside from Ambisonics he devloped
Noise Shaping Dither
Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP format used in DVD-A)
Soundfield Microphone
Re:Ambisonics (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with Ambisonics is it tends to favor a strong Sweet Spot [wikipedia.org], which is OK in a home theater but will fail in a large room, where people are seated to the four corners of the space. Speakers near the walls will always tend to be perceived as louder, and the further you are from the tuned center of the room, the more the sound field will appear to be warped toward the closest wall. This happens with 5.1 but the effect is mitigated by the fact that there's a center speaker behind the screen, and the mixers have individual control over speaker levels and panner divergence.
Ambisonic mixes are almost by definition not mono-compatible and don't allow the mixers to address sounds to individual speakers with unlimited panner divergence. There's always some situation where you want a sound to come from every speaker in the room, or to come from speakers on the opposite sides of the room, with equal intensity: the latter is impossible with B-format (and only possible in the limit with n channels), and the former is impossible with any theoretical pure ambisonic sound system.
Here is TFA (Score:5, Informative)
The missing link is http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/5-reasons-dolby-atmos-is-doa
Re: (Score:2)
You do like this, OK?
<URL:http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/5-reasons-dolby-atmos-is-doa>
http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/5-reasons-dolby-atmos-is-doa [audioholics.com]
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell type of tag is that? I mean, it works, but what the hell? Is that Slashdot-specific, or did I miss some change to HTML?
He thinks Slashdot uses BBcode.
Re: (Score:2)
It works because slashdot recognised the URL, and automatically made it clickable, rather than because of any design. You need to use html to get it a link to work correctly.
Goin' Mobile (Score:2)
It's all a lot of fun (Score:5, Funny)
until the Sontarans invade.
Oh god I'm stuck in a loop!!! (Score:2)
I click the link and get sent back to the /. article so I click the link again and back again to /. ... help!!! How do I make it stop?????
Re: (Score:2)
3DTV a fad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: 3DTV a fad? (Score:2)
It also implies that places like WalMart dont still have racks dedicated to 3D movies or that they not still being released. I buy them all the time. Old movies that were converted always look better than new ones cause they weren't thinking od 3D ahead of time. The scenes look more natural.
Re: (Score:2)
the only value in 3d movies is that in some of them it's the only way to get a digital copy on itunes or vudu
Re: (Score:2)
It also implies that places like WalMart dont still have racks dedicated to 3D movies or that they not still being released. I buy them all the time.
There is exactly one movie where 3D makes it better. So unless you're buying another copy of Gravity every time you go into a WalMart, you're a fool.
media cos killed it w/compression+Bitstarvation (Score:4, Insightful)
I love good sound, i would be willing to drop 5x or more on sound what a TV costs, but i don't, ya know why? cause I now have the cash but don't see any high end content. I am locked to Comcast which means shit audio streams even on HBO and other high end channels, netflix is better but not much. For music, a 40 year old tech, CD, is still king because all of the streaming and download services, like my choice, Google Music, all are over compressed and bitstarved.
Blue Ray, DVD-A, SA-CD and any other truly good sounding form of content delivery seem to be flopping because they are tied to physical media.We need high end streaming and downloadable content but this will never happen as long as people can be tricked into thinking Beats and other poorly configured experiances are somehow "good".
Re: (Score:3)
Re:media cos killed it w/compression+Bitstarvation (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing you are one of the people who failed this test: http://mp3ornot.com/ [mp3ornot.com]
If you can't reliably tell the difference then good for you, you can save a lot of money. For the rest of us it's pretty jarring though.
Re: (Score:3)
Stuff like this and 3D only works in big rooms (Score:2)
Stuff like this and 3D only works in big rooms
and by big is cinema sized rooms
not fad, flop (Score:2)
In order to be a fad, there has to be some significant adoption ("pet rocks", for example). Not gonna happen, IMO, with Dolby Atmos (tm). I've got a fairly extensive last gen' home setup (1080p, not 4K; 7.1, not 9.3), and there's nothing I've seen or heard that encourages me to "upgrade" to even those levels, much less the whole room redesign needed for Atmos. I'm sure there will some adoption by those who simply "must" own the latest tech, then watch cable/satellite 720p, but it won't be enough to const
Pssssh (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even a fad - it's dead on arrival. Most people don't even use 5.1 speakers. Hell, most don't even use 2.1. Anything that requires that much dedication of the room to audio is not going to sell to the mass market. Period.
3D TV at least had a vague hope of succeeding in the mass market. If they can ditch the glasses, they might actually succeed. But people are lazy and don't want to put any effort into their mindless entertainment. Putting glasses on to watch a movie was too much for them. Do you really think setting up a shitload of speakers all around the room is going to pass?
Re: (Score:2)
And most of those who do have even 2.1 don't have it set up right due to room layout. For it to work you need your TV to be centered on one wall, and a sofa on the opposite wall. In many shapes of living room, including my own, that isn't possible. We just use the speakers in the TV.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a "2.0" system - no need for a subwoofer if the main speakers can shake the floor.
Pretty much all music I listen to is either in mono or stereo and the system is primarily for music. Stereo for movies is good enough too (for me).
I don't care for 3D TV unless they start producing real 3D (a picture that looks different when looked at from different angles).
Re: (Score:2)
Well, some music I listen to is in mono because it was recorded before the invention of stereo records. A stereo system can play both mono and stereo music well.
And I once had a 4.0 system and later found out that just using stereo did not reduce my enjoyment of movies at all. To me there is not that much point (to me) of surround sound if the image is not surround and is not interactive (hearing an enemy behind me in games is better though, but that can be achieved with stereo headphones).
Re: (Score:2)
It's not even a fad - it's dead on arrival. Most people don't even use 5.1 speakers. Hell, most don't even use 2.1. Anything that requires that much dedication of the room to audio is not going to sell to the mass market. Period.
3D TV at least had a vague hope of succeeding in the mass market. If they can ditch the glasses, they might actually succeed. But people are lazy and don't want to put any effort into their mindless entertainment. Putting glasses on to watch a movie was too much for them. Do you really think setting up a shitload of speakers all around the room is going to pass?
Perhaps you're right. It could be that most people do not have more than 2.1. That being said, most of my friends and family have 5.1 surround. That's largely because we either enjoy watching movies or, in the case of my brother-in-law, enjoys playing video games on his PS3. That being said, I agree that more than 5.1 would be overkill for the average family and would appeal only to those who either have a large amount of discretionary spending or to movie buffs who feel that they have to get the full i
Re: (Score:2)
But people are lazy and don't want to put any effort into their mindless entertainment.
It's hard to judge tone on the internet, but it sounds like you're saying that like it's a bad thing. The whole point of mindless entertainment is it's mindlessness and lazyness. I do mindful things all day and when I'm totally fried at the end of the day it's great to be able to order a takeaway and watching something utterly mindless.
Putting glasses on to watch a movie was too much for them. Do you really think setting
Ceiling speakers (Score:2)
Consumer electronics industry victim of own sucess (Score:2, Insightful)
2.1 (Score:2)
Anything over 2.1 makes music sound Terrible. So I don't bother. Go 2.1, and spend the money making sure those 2 speakers and the sub are of quality, screw the surround.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless it's been mixed for 5.1. War of the Worlds sounds awesome on SACD.
Re: (Score:2)
War of the Worlds sounds awesome on SACD.
My good man I've only ever listened to it on vinyl (and tape, but kindly forget I said that).
Before you think I'm snobbish, that was the copy I listened to when I was a kid that my parents bought way before CDs were a thing. I was going to buy it on CD, but never quite got around to it because I was always disappointed at the sad, shrunk size of the artwork.
That I think it the main advantage of vinyl: War of the Worlds looks way WAY better.
Cinavia (Score:4, Interesting)
Cinavia killed any future sound innovation.
Whats the point of dolby n-teen when you can HEAR the fucking DRM squeaking and reverbing in the background?
Audio is different (Score:2)
Won't work in most rooms (Score:2)
I've heard Dolby's positional audio, being driven from a game, in the Dolby Labs screening room in San Francisco. It sounds great. You can hear people sneaking up behind you in the game. You can hear someone walking around you. There's a real sense of presence.
That's in a room built, at a cost of millions, as a demo for Dolby's audio technology. The room is on a separate foundation from the rest of the building, with an inner set of vibration isolated walls. The room acoustics are very good; you don't ne
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard Dolby's positional audio, being driven from a game, in the Dolby Labs screening room in San Francisco. It sounds great. You can hear people sneaking up behind you in the game. You can hear someone walking around you. There's a real sense of presence.
Before Creative destroyed them and threw away the technology behind it, Aureal had this capability 15 years ago, even when downmixed to stereo headphones. Playing System Shock 2 and suddenly having a voice behind you suddenly scream "THE MANY ARE STRONG!!" will make you jump out of your chair.
Re: (Score:2)
You're 100% right - all this has happened before, and all this will happen again.
Re: (Score:2)
Meh! (Score:2)
If you have visual cues then this positioning information will be more effective than playing with sound phase relationships etc. If you don't have such cues then does it matter at all?
Enough with the FAD crap (Score:2)
I appreciate it, you fall into one of the three groups who don't like 3D. People with glasses, People who are super sensitive and get headaches even with the new great refresh rates, or People who formed an opinion without having seen modern 3D. For the rest of us, we are oddballs who fall into the "life is in 3D therefore a quality 3D picture is more realistic."
They did seriously overrate 3D in the pi
I don't get the hype at all (Score:2)
I find it unsurprising that Atmos will fall on its ass in home cinema. Who is going to plaster their walls and ceilings with speakers?
ASMR? (Score:2)
As someone who watches ASMR videos, the ability to control the direction where the viewer experiences sounds coming from is a really great thing, and if it's used properly it could be really beneficial to the entertainment experience.
Re: (Score:2)
Then why do all the TVs over 50 inches include it?
Not true.
Re: (Score:3)
Because it's another notch I the feature list that no one uses, or cares about.
That said, I have a sixty inch I just bought that doesn't have 3D.
Re: (Score:2)
1) how quickly does it turn on when I press the power button?
2) what is the remote like?
want to see a pissed off best buy drone? ask to see the remote for a particular TV.
Re: (Score:2)
what is the remote like?
If you have more than one component in your configuration, you almost certainly need a universal remote, so the TV remote doesn't matter that much.
I've used the same remote through 2 TVs, 3 receivers, 2 DVD players, several media players, cable and satellite STBs, and even my HTPC.
Re: (Score:2)
Not all of them do. I have a 65" and it's "3D Ready" (like a lot of the TV's), which means for another $400 you can upgrade your set to have 3D. The upgrade usually consists of a box you plug into the TV and a set of glasses.
No thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
more like twenty to fifty bucks for the glasses nowadays. ..since the 3d ready tv is already 400-500 bucks..
Re: (Score:2)
A desperate industry attempt to push 3D and make larger lists of bullet points.
If you want to see how well it is catching on, you have to look at sales of extra glasses and how sales of 3D vs. non 3D content compare.
Those figures suggest that people won't actively refuse 3D capability but rarely if ever actually use it. They further suggest that 3D capability is a weak selling point at best.
Re: (Score:2)
Then why do all the TVs over 50 inches include it?
Included =/= being used. My TV is 3D capable, yet I never use that feature, because I consider it to be a gimmick. If there had been a cheaper version of my TV without 3D capability, I would have bought that one (same for all the "smart TV" Internet features, btw - all I want is a huge display with a couple HDMI inputs...). Sadly, that option did not exist. My totally unscientific research among friends/relatives shows that if they have a 3D TV, at most it has been used for one or two 3D movies like Ice Age
Re: (Score:2)
I own a 3D TV, So I'm part of that statistic that proves how well 3D TVs sell. .. I also do not own any 3D glasses, or any 3D content, or have any intention of ever doing so.
I have a 3D TV, not because I wanted one, but because the manufacturer wanted me to. I couldn't find my other requirements without it at a price I was willing to pay. I'm certainly not alone in this category, many people have no interest in 3D, but own 3D TVs, not because they want a 3D TV, but because the TV they want happens to have
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you think 3D tv was a failure? most people don't have depth perception that is adequate enough to watch it without headaches.
That and you had to wear ugly glasses. So many people who can barely read won't wear glasses unless some one forces them too.
Re: (Score:2)
3D TV requires you to disassociate your depth perception and your eye focus. 3D needs to stay properly sharp despite your eyes changing focus (and ideally blur the things which are out-of-focus, but that is less important). The technology to do so is almost here now.
Alternatively, most children today probably watch enough 3D that their vision adapts.
Re: (Score:2)
I always knew the majority of people didn't care about 3D, but I'd still like to think it's not going away anytime soon. Surely there's enough of a die-hard market that high-end TVs will still include a 3D option? I can only hope. Admittedly, I don't watch a lot of movies in 3
Re: (Score:2)
I have two eyes, I guess I'd need two screens?
Re: (Score:2)
You do. But they need to be seperated by eye. That's done either by having two small screens (The 3D visor, much used in VR rigs), or by using polarisation to allow one screen to appear to show two images depending upon eye (The cinema approach) or by using active shutter glasses an very rapidly alternating images (Most home 3DTV systems.)
Re: (Score:2)
Ever wondered how you can hear if the sound comes from infront or behind you with your two ears?
You can't. You just think you can because you over-estimate your abilities. I encourage you to do an internet search for the relevant research. There was a slashdot story about it ~ 5 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, you can, because your head isn't perfectly still and your mind can use that information to pick up the location of the sound using only two ears and a handful of other sensory information.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I think some major research institution (I don't recall witch) was trying to understand how you can tell where a sound is coming from, and they were doing this as part of some kind of aerospace research to send directional audio cues to pilots. You can actually do it better than you probably think you can. They actually came up with a technique where they could map your ear canal by placing a speaker inside of it, and they could then make sounds seem like they're coming from different directions by
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting, but I thought a lot of the way we determine the direction of sound is through triangulation, in combination with the delay it takes from sound to hit one ear and then the other. That's why when you try hard to listen for where something is coming from, you often instinctively tilt your head slightly. (and the time for sound to travel from one ear to the other is also why when you hear things underwater, you have trouble telling where they come from because sound travels faster in water than in
Re: (Score:2)
You can't. You just think you can because you over-estimate your abilities. I encourage you to do an internet search for the relevant research. There was a slashdot story about it ~ 5 years ago.
I did do an Internet search, and in fact found plenty [springer.com] of research [aip.org] that indicates [sciencedirect.com] humans and other mammals [physiology.org] can in fact localize sound in the vertical plane (i.e. whether it comes from in front of behind of you). Of course, it doesn't work for all sounds, but the capability is there.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you can. Your ear has asymmetrical geometry front-to-back, your pinna, outer ear, nose and head diffract sounds as they approach your ears and apply a transfer function to the sound that varies with regard to azimuth [wikipedia.org].
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:4, Insightful)
I have 2 speakers. It's the right setup. Center channel is clear, since they have good stereo imaging and each "object" in the front stage sounds like it comes from right where the mixer put it - you don't need more than 2 speakers when your listening positions are close together. (Well, unless it's a badly mixed movie and you can't hear voices over the noise, in which case being able to boost the center channel would actually help a lot).
As far as the rear? I bothered with rear speakers for years - what a waste. Nothing but noise there. The novelty of hearing a chopper fly over gets old fast. My living room is cluttered enough without that crap.
Re: (Score:2)
Gamers use headphones.
Re: (Score:2)
Come on man, most people I know who game have either 5.1 or 6.1 setups these days. Most gamers who use headphones do so because either other people whine and complain about it, or they play competitively, or play MMO's. Headphones are nice and all, but they don't approach a surround setup when you can enjoy it to it's fullest.
Re: (Score:2)
Headphones are good for stereo sound. They are trash for surround sound, and the "surround sound headphones" are even worse for it.
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a sound designer in Hollywood, my credits include Men in Black 3 and Zero Dark Thirty.
The main promise of ATMOS was that it wouldn't matter how many speakers you had -- a mixer could prepare a final mix in Atmos in his 60-horn room, but then when the bitstream on the DCP or Blu-Ray was decoded in the theater or home, it wouldn't matter if the end-user had a 60-speaker Atmos rig, a 9.1, a Barco Auro speaker system, a 5.1, a stereo or even a mono. The Dolby renderering algos would simply take the panned objects and automatically render the correct audio stream for each speaker, as a function of the speaker's position relative to the listener. The Dolby RMU is just a glorified OpenAL audio engine, it gets fed audio streams that have an alt/azimuth data envelope, and this envelope is transformed down to whatever speaker array the end user has.
What's even more interesting is you could have a significantly more complex speaker array than the person who mixed it -- maybe he mixed it with 32 speakers, and you have some future-ready system with 100 -- and the renderer will still do the Right Thing and expand the spatial resolution accordingly. Atmos mixes are future-proof for any simple, non-phase-related speaker array.
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:5, Interesting)
What could be done by reversing this process from the stream? There's a nifty trick on surround sound - some sounds you'll find the center channel is used for lyrics and the sides for instrumentals in songs, making it trivial to isolate them and get clean audio for redubbing with. If it works as you describe, would that make it easy to pull out individual instruments or effects? That could be useful for hobbyist remixers.
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:5, Informative)
The way Atmos works is it can carry up to 128 individual audio channels. 20 of these are set aside for two discrete 9.1 mixes (mixers choice what goes in those), the remaining 108 are set aside for individual pannable objects. In the file themselves, these audio objects are full-rez and lossless; however, these objects don't "live" all the time, the mixer can use them for a few seconds here and there. Nothing as general as "all the dialogue" or "all the car sound effects" lives in the pannable objects throughout the entire project.
There are discrete sounds in the Atmos bitstream itself though, and in principle it would make remixing easier, so I suspect you'll never see an Atmos bitstream in a consumer format without DRM.
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:4, Insightful)
Paul,
When has DRM seriously hindered anyone (but legitimate consumers) from accessing desired content?
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I suspect Dolby Atmos will never be put on a consumer format.
"Paul" is my boss.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I dunno, keep an eye out and see if titles are actually released in it. I haven't seen any studios or distributors making any pledges, it could all just turn into the next BD-Live.
Re: (Score:2)
It's because of posts like these, I continue to read slashdot. Thank you.
Re: (Score:2)
I would equate it to how a lot of sound is done in 1st/3rd person video games.
Re:im a music mixer in hollywood... (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'd like to hear is an orchestra recording which mics each instrument and gives each of them a channel. It'd be interesting to see how well Atmos can recreate the sound stage of a full orchestra.
If it can't do that properly, then it's a useless fad, because that's just presenting a "static" sound image, not a moving one. I have a strong suspicion it relies on moving sounds to mask the fact that it's not very accurate about positioning them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Before he died, Frank Zappa was exploring this very idea. His performances with the Ensemble Modern where usually mic'ed with one mic per instrument, then he'd have a surround sound desk where all the instruments could be panned around the room and so he'd incorporate motion into his compositions. Apparently
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In any event, preexisting surround systems were not really designed with classical music in mind. The rear channels are low-resolution, which is a problem for classical works (e.g. Stockhausen's Carré, Langgaard's Music of the Spheres, even some Bach organ recordings), as some performers are placed behind the audience and they really need to be heard in the same high resolution as the ensemble coming from the front channels.
Modern loss-less multi-channel codecs (Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA) have full-resolution in all channels, so software isn't a problem.
As for hardware, it is true that many installations use smaller speakers for the surround channels, but this does not mean they have generally lower resolution for the vast majority of the audio spectrum. Smaller might limit bass response, but much of the truly low bass is essentially non-directional and is handled by subwoofers instead of the surround speakers. Even so, it's n
Re: (Score:3)
This really isn't how we do music recording. I had the opportunity to work with John Eargle [wikipedia.org] before he passed on, he had a bunch of Grammys and had done hundreds of classical and jazz albums, and his standard rig for live-house music recording was an 8-track recorder, with maybe 2 of those tracks set aside for spot mics -- the rest were a Decca tree or other stereo array, plus room mics. We use more spot mics for film music recording, but we do that specifically so we can reposition and alter the relations
Re: (Score:3)
There is a film wavefront synthesis system: IOSONO [iosono-sound.com]. There were a few screens at the Mann Chinese here in LA wired for it, it sounds amazing and you get real 3D depth through the screen, but it never really caught on for business reasons. These mixes didn't use live recording either, they were multitrack, but IOSONO had a panner algorithm that could position a sound source in depth
Re: (Score:2)
P.S. Thanks for your comments. They're very enlightening.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Three minute videos with terrible sound and multiple opportunities for ad insertion are definitely what Google wants you to watch...
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Muad'dib, even GOD hasn't seen the number of speakers I have!
Re: (Score:2)
I prefer headphones. I can watch a movie at night and not bother the neighbours.
Re: (Score:2)
No need, I keep the doors and windows closed.
Re: (Score:2)
Hearing bullets fly past my head doesn't really affect my enjoyment of any movie.
Why the fuck not? When it's done well, it's great.
Re: (Score:3)
We have two ears, but you might notice that the ears have fairly complicated geometry. Why would that be? Well, it turns out that the various parts of the ear bounce sound, and sound coming from different directions, both azimuth and elevation, bounces differently. Your brain is very good at figuring this out. This wikipedia page on Sound Localization [wikipedia.org] is quite informative.
It turns out that humans have among the best direction-sensing hearing of any animal.
[disclaimer -- I work for Dolby, but in their im
But you only have so many dollars... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)