Hey Matt, what do you have against immersive audio and overhead speakers? SOOOO many people, consumers/professionals/enthusiast/etc really love Atmos and now DTS:X is getting rave reviews after finally hitting homes yesterday. Now, if you are just saying "make sure that your main 5.1/7.1/9.1 setup is good first" then that makes complete sense, but it just seems like you think that Atmos and DTS:X are snake-oil or a fad like curved screens based off of your posts which is why I ask.
You have heard me all wrong. I personally don't see Atmos or DTS-X as being exclusively being about overhead speakers. That is the common thought with many that unless you have overhead then you don't have atmos.
If you take the time to really read the Dolby white page about Atmos, you would see that it's more about how the sound can be addressed inside the cinema with each speaker rather than having just a large array mass of speakers that act has a single channel that you have really no control over.
Once you can swallow that part, then Atmos makes perfect sense for everything. Now, I in my own way don't personally see a need for overhead speakers as much as I see a greater need for more speakers around you. I feel that in more movies and shows that I watch I would get a far better rendition of the movie from 11.2.0 atmos sound that I would from having 7.2.4 sound.
That is just my take and I mentally feel that more accurate sound on the horizontal plane will trump having less accurate but gaining a vertical plane as well.
Ah, I see what you are saying. I experienced a nice sound improvement when I borrowed an Atmos capable receiver for a few days while my current receiver was off for repairs. I even posted on here a couple of times in a couple of different threads that even without overhead speakers, there was a noticeable improvement with sound imaging around the listening space with Atmos compared to the non-Atmos track... All without overhead speakers.
With that said, I am also probably one of the most versed people in Atmos specifications on these forums. I've read/heard almost every Dolby tech bulletin, white paper, layout spec, as well as industry guru insights to "real world" installation, best bang-for-your-buck installation tips, etc... Also, after experiencing Atmos both in a single linear plane (7.1),several full spec installations (7.1.4), and even a few that took it beyond that ($$$$ 9.1.4, 9.1.6, and 11.1.6), I can still tell you that while there is a great audio improvement going to Atmos even without overhead speakers, there is still a lot of the experience that is missing without the overheads. They do more than just provide sound from above, but allow multiple sounds to come from multiple "layers" in the room at the same time (2 distinct sounding airplanes flying at different heights and distances, but both sweeping from the front to the side to the back, and you can actually hear them as coming from different space inside the room.
With that said, I do think that an "ideal" for a room already with a 7.1 setup would be a 9.1.4 or possibly 9.1.6 configuration with the extra x.x.2 being similar to front heights, so possibly also considered to be 11.1.4 vs. calling it 9.1.6...
There is still more data coming out of the primary sound plane that is what we all use for 5.x, 7.x, 9.x than the amount of sound coming from overhead speakers. I believe that you are saying the same (and I think that I agree about that previously in this thread as well).
Thanks for your clarification on what you meant. I am still waiting for the time when Sony get the technology to "beam" audio signals straight into your brain... Sure, that may seem a little like Jim Carrey's rendition of 'the Joker' in Batman Forever, but Sony has held a patent on the idea for a number of years now. Beam the audio right into our brains, and we will no longer need a dozen or so speakers.
