This was a surprise to me - given we've had 7.1 in our HT's for so long I just assumed it was in the theaters. Who knew? Well at least I think it's good news for those with 7.1 HT setups as it means there may be more discrete 7.1 mixes arriving on our DVD and BRD's in the near future. Not sure how this plays in with Dolby True HD, but thought it was interesting.

Actually this isn't surprising at all.
Most people i know just recently (within the past two years) got around to buying their first 'large' (27" or more) flat screen tv with digital tuners and 16:9 widescreen format let alone contemplating a 5.1 audio setup.

Not everyone can be cutting edge years prior to major changes in electronics and 7.1 is still just that (even though those more educated in home theatre have heard about it for years).

Consider yourself as having that Intel Core i7 processor...but having had it three or four years ago and wondering why everyone is just getting around to having this now.

Awww crap, The Jones' have 7.1? Now I'll HAVE to go at least 9.1

Hey Chesseroo,
I found this surprising as it was just introduced to the movie theaters - not the home environment. I always figured the movie theaters led the way, I did not realise that 7.1 discrete mixes on discs were not present for the theatrical mixes in the theaters. So this tells me that the home theater is actually more advanced in some ways than the big screen theaters. That was a revelation to me as I figured the box office would be ahead of the home.

I fully agree with you, most people are just getting into HD and 16x9 screens let alone 5.1 surround systems. Having this addiction/hobby puts us well ahead of the curve.

Cheers,

To me it makes much more sense that this would be introduced in the theaters. It is much more useful in that setting that in most home theaters, the theaters should have it first. The only need for such in setup in home theater, in most cases, is when you have two or more rows of seating. Most home theaters don't have two rows.

Actually, 7.1 as it is on BDs makes more sense for homes. Movie theaters, because they are so large, don't really have a place for "rear" speakers that would be well suited for all audience members. They use an array of surround speakers, which are located on the left and right walls. The longer the seating area the more speakers they'll use. For rear speakers they'll pretty much have to mount them on the front wall of the projection booth. That's pretty far away from people sitting in the front row. The array of surround speakers, can provide a rear-phantom effect pretty well, because there is usually another set of surrounds somewhere behind your seating position.

Some theaters are already running 7 discrete channels, but they are left, left-center, center, right-center, right, surround-left, and surround-right. That makes more sense because the screen is so large.

Seems, that home theater owners are not the only ones being milked for money.

It seems that they could just divide the array of surround speakers in half if there isn't room on the rear wall. The front half of them the surround fronts and the back half as the surround rears. As long as the sound engineers understand this when encoding the master, then it would add a depth to the rear sound-stage that wasn't there before, especially with pans from front to rear, or doing circles around you like in Spiderman 3. These types of pans are not really conveyed all that well in the movie theater since the surround speakers could be 50, 100 or even 200 feet in length. I remember seeing Spiderman 3, in the scene where the Sandman is created, at the movie theater and didn't notice anything at all that stood out in that scene sound-wise in the theater. But, when I watched it on Blu-ray at home on just a 5.1 Axiom set up I was blown away. It can almost make you queasy by how great the sound effects were made in that scene.

Hi Dan,

Actually, I've been stating for years in Axiom newsletters and here on the forums that the vast majority of movies are mixed in Dolby 5.1.

The latter has been the Dolby soundtrack HD standard for broadcast, cable, and cinemas for years. It's a matter of studio mixing costs for marginal returns. The extra channels of 7.1 in home installations have been interpolated from the main surround channels of 5.1. The additional rear speakers in a 7.1 installation can certainly improve coverage in larger rooms.

Given the costs for studio mixing, I doubt we're going to see many discrete 7.1 mixes except for video games.

Regards,

Alan

So iMAX theaters are only 5.1 as well? I remember when they came out they claimed far superior audio set-ups from regular theaters, but I don't remember the specifics. I guess I always assumed they were running 7.1 if not 9.1 in the iMAX theaters.

If memory serves me correct I believe when they started adding the back channels to theaters, it was a "sixth" channel much like DDEX 6.1 and DTS 6.1 surround and discreet which became available in HTS afterwards. Although the speakers were there, the people that made the movies and theaters never really advertised it. Other than DTS discrete which claimed a separate mixed channel, the back channel was just one extracted from the L/R surround channels.

In fact being a lover of gadgets that I am, between the time that 5.1 DD and DTS started to be available in AVRs and before they started adding the back channels, I purchased an item that was available for a relatively short time from the people that developed the "Circle Surround" format that you would add to your system with a separate amp and back speakers which, as mentioned above, extracted the sound from the L/R surround speakers. A more sophisticated version was available from this same company that was apparently used in many movie theaters to do much of the same thing. For all I know, it still could be the case. I guess you could say, when I purchased this little box, I was a "real early" adopter.

Hi ClubNeon,

I think that what you are refering here to is Sony's format for commercial movie theatre called SDDS - http://sdds.com/.

Dolby's 7.1: According to an article in Widescreen Review . . . An interesting point is that even the rear speakers should be located on the side walls not the rear wall . . .

" The optimum 7.1-channel surround format for home theatres is to position the "two added" channel loudspeakers to the sides, not to the back of the listening area."

http://www.widescreenreview.com/news_detail.php?id=18915

Yeah, it was the SDDS encoding which had the additional front speakers. Haven't see too many films with SDDS bumpers these days. Also Sony never pushed for it to be an encoding format on any home media.

Interesting about Dolby's recommendation. I have a feeling they did this to appease theater owners. There is already an array of speakers along the walls. Each with their own amps. That means all they need is a new processor to send a different signal to the last pair of surround speakers. So they only have to buy gear from Dolby, and no one else, for this upgrade.