Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners ATmos

OK quick question.

ATMOS for the rear side speakers they now spec out direct radiating.
This eliminates the Q's
What are people using for rears and sides ?
What are you using for ceiling ? are the round inceiling speakers made for ATMOS ?

Would the M22 be good for the rear and sides ?

I swapped out my QS8s for M3 on-walls with anticipation of Atmos and DTS:X and really like them.

My plans for ceiling speakers are to get unfinished M3 onwalls, painting them to match my ceiling, and making a custom "mount" that puts them at a slight angle towards the listening area. The angle is mainly because of my ceiling being less than 8 feet tall, so my plan it to try them a little further away to compensate for the lacking height, and then angle them to compensate for them being further away.

Someone else here has the M3 in-ceiling speakers and wishes that the tweeter was aimable.

Hopefully that helps a little.

Can a full metal bracket be used for wall mounting an M 3 on wall speaker?
I believe it was NewF with the in ceiling, wishing they were aim-able.
/Jeff

There was another thread on here with a link to a home theater YouTube that discussed Atmos and home theater design.

It also went into the description of how speaker setup and sound stage gets processed in the HT environment.

On the understanding of how Atmos is implemented inside an actual theater, the word that I got was that if you are moving to a 9 or 11 channel implementation, that you will get a far better bang for the buck putting in a front wide (9) and only 2 ceiling speakers (11) as the mixing will minimize the dead sound zone between the front and surround in any sound panning. The comment was that you will see that far more than any overhead sounds in most movies.

The other rather interesting bit was the description of how surround sound is handled. In the theater you have an array of side speakers. In 5.1 and 7.1 mixes, these arrays are handled as one so the same sound comes out of the array of lets say 5 speakers. To ones ears that is a large defuse sound. Under Atmos, there is the ability to address each of those same 5 speakers individually. That does give you either more control over a sweeping pan, or to accurately define a location, but you still need to remember the theater has 5 speakers. In your home you have ONE.

This sort of gives you a choice. Do you want that one speaker to be a large defuse sound that covers a large area, or more pinpoint accurate with large sound holes between the front and rear surround speaker coverage? Unless you are putting in multiple side surround speakers in your implementation, you will loose sound coverage to gain accuracy. That is a choice you need to make.

The Dolby spec need to be taken with a grain of salt as you look towards what will give you the sound that was intended and also you enjoy.

I experienced a CEDIA 2014 demo (when Atmos was demo'd for the first time), where they did a 9.1.4 setup and people asked about the front wides, and (I wish I remember the manufacturer/vendor) the guy said that they actually have a lot of preference towards a 9.1.2 setup OVER a 7.1.4. I believe that I posted that here at some point. All I know is that the 9.1.4 setup was really impressive, then again, there was something like $25,000 just is audio processors to do it, plus amplification, etc at the time.

I also agree that the Dolby specs need to be taken with a few grains of salt. I was in a discussion in a home theater group on Facebook just last week with a senior sound engineer about a few audio topics, and he at one point even mentioned that specs are put out there for creating a "target to shoot for" and that things are more flexible. At one point he even stated that a speaker (implied to mean Atmos ceiling speaker) could be even 10-20 degrees out of Dolby spec for location placement and still yield 95% positive result. Things are pretty flexible, up to a point, and then they drop into the toilet (my words, not his) pretty quickly.

I am on the verge of experimenting even more with my side surrounds by moving them to be slighting in front of my front row of seats. I find that the surround field effects are AMAZING in the 2nd row seats in my theater, but I like sitting up front, so I want to put my front row into that same large surround soundfield. I would think that this could be deemed unnecessary if I installed some front wide speakers instead. It was this discussion about putting side surround in front of the listening position and how that went against Dolby (and others) spec that started the conversation with him about the flexibility available, particularly with Atmos.

I don't have an Atmos system and having never played with what options are out there, I am sure that some system implementations are going to be far superior than others.

Where I fall into wonder or worry is that unlike the DD5.1/7.1 that is a defined channel, the Atmos setup is sold more like a blank canvas where it uses the processor inside the AV unit to effectively deliver the sound using what speakers it has.

So I am left to wonder, in the setup of the Atmos system, how do you define what speakers you have, or more importantly, where the speakers you have are located?

Going back to your point of surround speakers infront of your seating position. When you look at the traditional movie theater layout with the array of surround speakers. The were a group of speakers along say the back 1/2 of the theater side walls. I know from going to many movies that the prime seating for best emersive surround effect was to sit 3/4 of the way back. That would put you in about the middle of that surround array with as much sound hitting your ears from infront of you as was coming from behind. If you sat in the front 1/2 of the theater then the sound surround timing would seem a bit to delayed. This held true for even the upgrade move to 7.1 from 5.1.

This lends me to question, if you can define speaker location would I prefer the 11.1 with front wides, surround front, surround back and surroiund rear.. (ie take the standard surround and break it into two with one say 20deg infront of my ears, and a second 20deg behind). I know everyone is looking for the ultimate sound bubble, but I guess it comes from how many movie mixes take advantage of the overhead sounds vs, more sound placement around you?

I am sure that the demo's at CES were hand picked to give the maximum effect possible. Why would you demo something that doesn't take full advantage of every possible sound you can produce. My question is how common practice is this in movie sound mixing design?

Having side surrounds inline with your knees can complete the bubble very nicely. You will want to turn down the sides so they whisper (from your seat) and allow your rears to be ever so slightly louder to complete the effect.

We all need some lab room to experiment and a rich benefactor to pay for us to fly there and spend a week playing with technology. :-)

As for the speaker configuration, I had my Onkyo fail a couple of weeks ago and while it was off for the extended warranty "audio dropout" fix, I "borrowed" a newer Onkyo with Atmos. I could tell a difference right away with Atmos content even with a 7.1 configuration. During the initial setup, it asked me how many speakers and where they were located... Wides? Overheads? Etc. Then it did its calibration.

The question of where they are located is more than just wides and overheads. Should is not also need to know the relative X-Y-Z distance and offset from the listening position? Surely if the sound mix is to be able to drive sound with any form of accuracy, it needs to know where the speakers are relative to the seating position

Yup. I agree. I just don't know how that is done. I simply answered the question as to how the receiver/processor knows what the speaker configuration is (wides, heights, 5.1, 7.1, 5.1.2, 5.1.4, 7.1.2, 7.1.4, 9.1.2, whatever).

I am sure that some of it comes into play with the basic room calibration done with the microphone that most units include where it gets the distances, but while that works fine for speakers in the same plane (like 5.1, 7.1, and 9.1 using wides), it doesn't say if that overhead speaker that it detects as 7 feet away is straight overhead in a room with 10 foot ceilings, or out in front of the listening position in a room with 8 foot ceilings.

If I had overhead speakers when I had that receiver, maybe it would have done some measuring my sending different sounds to multiple speakers to try and triangulate some level of relative space, or maybe it would have asked me how high my ceiling was, I don't know. But yes, I agree 100% that there should be, and maybe is, some way that the receiver/processor knows your speaker layout with more accuracy to account for the overhead speakers. I just didn't want to try to rig some crazy thing up to put speakers up on my ceiling for a few days in the middle of the Christmas/New Years craziness. Ok, I WANTED to, but didn't have enough time and didn't know how I would rig it up. LOL

So I went back and rewatched this video:

Acoustics for Immersive Audio

This is where I heard it the 2nd time (once at CEDIA 2014 and then in this video) about 9.1.2 being preferred over 7.1.4. Now the examples at the ends of the video are obviously a bit more high end as they do 9.1.4 and 9.1.6 and even the first "9" is actually 11 speakers with 2 working both on the left side surround area and 2 for the right side surround (one for each row of seats).

So you would have to be able to drive 2 speakers on each side surround "channel" connection on the receiver to do that or use external amplification.

Anyway, I cobbled together an "updated" Dolby Atmos 9.1.2 diagram showing Dolby's location details in black, and then Anthony Grimani's real-world "tweaks" that he has devised for a really amazing experience.

Below is the stock Atmos 9.1.2 diagram straight from Dolby's website, but then I stripped out the lines and angles, and added Grimani's tweaks in red and a bunch of notes about those tweaks.

Now, this is a configuration for just a single row of seats. The video never touches on a setup for 2 rows of seats that doesn't include 2 more side surround speakers and at least 2 more overhead Atmos speakers, so it puts a limit on people wanting to stay at 11 channels. Anyway, here is the diagram.



One other interesting note is that he likes the side and rear surrounds about 1-2 feet (depending on ceiling height) above ear level, where Dolby likes them right at ear level.

All in all, this just means that you will want to experiment with whatever you decide you want to do. I might just hand on to a pair of QS8s for front wide speakers, and trade in the other pair and VP150 for a pair of on-wall M3s for the ceiling.

One other thing that came up recently is that Grimani has found that being able to point all speakers, even the overhead ones, towards the listing area is critical for getting people into the soundfield (see around the 46 minute mark in the video above). In my CEDIA 2015 video of the super high end Steinway Lyngdorf setup room, you can see that they angled their overhead speakers as well.
Steinway Lyngdorf CEDIA demo video

Hopefully this is at least a clear as mud, and helpful in some shape or form.

So, I walked into my theater where I could compare my own setup, being able to see it visually... And now I wonder if I should take my side surround and move it back just a little bit between the first and second row and put back up the QS8 speakers instead of my M3s. And then take my other two QS8s and turn them into wides up front and then take the remaining m3 speakers and uses overhead speakers for a 9.1.2 setup. I mean if you have an "array" of w side surrounds on each side, which creates a more diffused sound field, why not just use a single QS8, right? Putting it back a little would have the one woofer pointing towards the front row and the other towards the back row.

All I need now is that 11 amplified channel receiver and maybe I wouldn't have to sell any speakers (except for the VP150) and just use what I have...

As someone who has been stuck on Dolby's "requirement" of monopole speakers in all locations, this is a bit of a somewhat welcome surprise to me.

wow cool.
So, M60 and VP160 up front. for the w side would you not use another set of M60 or M22 not be better ?
and M22 on the side surrounds.

I guess Axiom now can create a new speaker line w side and ceiling ATMOS.

On another note I see SVS has an angled ATMOS speaker

Matching speakers all arouND has always been the ideal target, but how many people can actually do that, abd I already have four QS8s sitting in boxes for the past year when I bought four on-wall M3s in preparation for Atmos. So I would use my M60 fronts, VP150 center, QS8 front wides, QS8 side surrounds, M3 rears, and M3 overhead. I wouldn't have to buy anything speaker wise.

I should also note that the M3s are just 1dB less max SPL than the M22 on walls,have the same frequency range, and have a larger 6.5" woofer (I know that the M60s have both a 5.25 and two 6.5" woofers). The M22 can handle 25 more watts, but again, these are for surround and overhead effects, and not the primary L and R upfront speakers. That is why I saved a few bucks and went with the M3s instead of on-wall M22s last year when I bought them.

Very helpful as always. Good graphic.

I found its easiest to search for in-ceiling LCR speakers. Anything called atmos carries a premium it seems. If Axiom went angled it'd save me time looking.....

Of all the guests on HT geeks Grimani is way up there.

Well fizzle-sticks...

I was talking above about a 9.1.2 Atmos layout just to find out that DTS:X, at least in its first iteration, probably won't support a 9.1.2 layout (won't support "wide" speakers). It will still do 7.1.4, but things are starting to trickle out with CES going on and a representative for Trinnov ($$$$) stated that the first firmware release won't support wide speakers, at least for their product, and since they are pretty high end, it isn't looking good for others. I know that over on AVS, several people are pretty much up-in-arms about it because they have charts and manuals stating that their DTS:X upgradable receivers WILL support wide channels with DTS:X...

If DTS:X only supports 7.1.4 out of the gate, who knows how long before it will support 9.1.2...

I guess I should just calm down. It isn't like I am ready to go out and buy a new receiver anyway. Maybe by then it will be different, but I wanted to post the latest "news" since there is no reason not to look at DTS:X at the same time as Atmos.

Is Jan 28 still "X" Day?

So far it is... I've heard rumors of firmware updates sneaking out to a few people early, but those are just rumors.

EDIT:
Updated with source information on dates:



DTS to Launch DTS:X This Month

The only ones getting anything above a 7.1.2 or 5.1.4 setup are the two pre-amps which are able to do 7.1.4, or *possibly* 9.1.2 (still not seeing anything more about wides being or not being supported with the first run of DTS:X. That news came from a Trinnov rep at CES, and since they are pretty high end, it is interesting that they are saying that wides aren't supported since they have pretty capable hardware).

Trinnov is in a tough spot IMO. They brought out high end gear with large price tags. Bring out a much cheaper model with the same capabilities will ruin a good thing, at least on the one hand.