Anyone here been to one of these theaters??

I haven't yet, but the one they're supposedly building here this year will have it.

I've been to 2 theaters and have seen 3 movies...

First one was the El Capitan in Hollywood to see Brave, which was the first (I believe) movie to be encoded in Dolby Atmos.

The second theater I went to was the Cinemark at 3800 Dallas Pkwy,
Plano, TX. The first time was for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The second movie was Pacific Rim.

One thing that I noticed while at the El Capitan is that the theater was playing back at reference volume, which was loud and awesome in general. Things that I noticed was a more enhanced surround experience, and not just from the speakers above the seating area. There are, generally, more discrete surround channels. One thing that I remember when I saw Brave was that at one point there is rain coming down and it is falling on some wood planks that are over top of a cave or something, and it sounded just like the rain was coming from overhead. Outside of that, it was more subtle for the rest of the movie as well as for the other movies, but it did create (like I said) a really enveloping surround field.

Any questions in particular that you were wondering about?

For others wondering, here is a link with a map of theaters with Dolby Atmos sound:

Dolby Atmos Theaters

If you see a circle with a number in it, that means that there are that many number of Dolby Atmos theaters in that area.

Thanks Nick,



I hadn't thought about Atmos for quite some time but it popped up in another forum where they were saying it was coming to home theater receivers this fall. Personally I don't see the appeal though it does look good on paper so to speak. Perhaps it has appeal to those who have a dedicated theater at home. It would have to be a night and day difference , which from your description it is not. Maybe I will get a chance to experience it at some point in the future. I wonder if the theaters that have it advertise how many speakers they employ, as I think that will be the biggest factor.

Two things that come to mind.

1) Dolby Atmos IS really cool. But not so much from the overhead speakers, but just from having more surround channels. Overhead just helps.

2) I can't imagine this being of a LOT of value in the home market for a long time. To get ceiling effects, you would have to have some REALLY tall ceilings. The other change is that you would need to run a lot of wiring for the surround channels, and there would be a paradigm shift from di-pole/bipole/quad-pole speakers to all direct. Cost would be a big deal too.

Oh well, run out of gimmicks for TV and go for impractical to install sound. (Dolby Atmos in theaters can handle up to 62.2 discrete sound.) Here is a graphic of a full on Dolby Atmos setup, but note that even this one isn't using all of the channels:


EDIT: Here is a link about Dolby Atmos in home theaters:
Dolby Atmos in Home Theaters?

No matter what, it seems to be a better way of encoding sound. I would want it included in the next standard, but I'd definitely want to see some actual content before it starts showing up in receivers. Kind of like how I don't want a 4K TV until the standard and the content are out there to give them real value.

Like that article says, every time we add another feature the quality of the amp suffers. Before I ever made a move to atmos I would be looking at a krell foundation ,too bad they don't have a 30 day trial.

Richard, when i was in the market for a new processor, i thought about the Krell Foundation. However, i ended up going with the Marantz AV 8801. Krell isn't the company that it use to be. I don't know if you have been following them much or not in recent history, i don't think it's an American owned company any more.


My last processor was a Krell.. However, i don't know if i will buy another krell processor again.

After reading the latest issue of S&V I got curious. The reviewer was really taken aback by the quality of the sound that he heard. Being a doubter I decided to head over to AVS forums to read some of the Krell thread. I found many posts that echoed what was said in the magazine. I don't go in for all the extra's on modern recievers, I would prefer quality over quantity every time. Unfortunately the only companies that provide that are way out of my price range. But a guy can dream.