Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater My Atmos thread

Well i am looking forward to your impressions though you have made a wholesale change hopefully some qualitative info can be gleaned. I am also interested to know how ATMOS sounds without using the overhead speakers but still be object based surround vs speaker .

Don't let some of the fanatical freaks over in AVS's Atmos thread see you asking that question.

I mentioned that I did an A/B test of an Atmos title about a year ago before I had overhead speakers. I tried a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 mix of a movie (I don't remember what movie) and then played the same clip back in Atmos. Even without overheads, the sounds panned around the room a lot smoother in Atmos and were more precisely located. Still not a full Atmos level, but it was "better." Maybe not "better" enough to justify buying a new receiver without having the overhead speakers, but better. I even had my wife and daughter listen to the A/B test and they said that the Atmos one (without knowing which was which) sounded slightly better each time.

I got reamed by a few people over there (just 2), as did about half a dozen or so other people that experienced the same thing that I did.

So take it for what it is worth.

I was "borrowing" an Onkyo TX NR646 from Best Buy while my Onkyo TX NR709 was off at Onkyo being repaired. It was more of a trial run to see what the Onkyo could do since that was a product I was familiar with, but I would have to get a different model to get me to 7.1.4 (which at the time would have meant at least one extra 2-channel amp). In the end, I liked the Atmos test, but Onkyo dropped Audyssey, and with my acoustical treatments in my room, Audyssey would really tighten things up vs the new proprietary system that Onkyo was using since it only had to make tweaks and not drastic changes. In the end, I skipped all of the mainstream brands and went Anthem and LOVE it, but that is a whole different story.

What does Atmos do for Non-Atmos engineered DVDs? I assume it "upmixes" them in some way?

I just found this, so not sure it is the same as Atmos DVD, but appears it processes it as long as you send it bitstream. We currently use Ps3 which is in bitstream mode to let my Denon process the encoding.

"For the most part, any Blu-ray player that supports Dolby TrueHD and bitstreamed output should support Dolby Atmos. Dolby is wrapping up the Atmos "objects" (the height information) into a Dolby TrueHD wrapper that works with existing players and receivers. When you send that Dolby TrueHD soundtrack out over HDMI to a Dolby Atmos-capable receiver or processor in bitstream mode, the receiver or processor detects that it is actually a Dolby Atmos track and processes the sound accordingly. "

Yes it does. Ceilings will be used and can be quite good.

Yes. The core of Atmos is just Dolby TrueHD (in an ideal case, it can be a core of Dolby Digital too), and then it carries "metadata" as well giving the sound 3D spatial locations (not "channels") to reproduce the sound at a specific point in the room, or as best as the system can render it with the speakers and their locations that are installed. So a regular blu-ray player will work. There are some really old players that people say don't work, but I heard that those were like generation 1 blu-ray players.

You will find that you will just default everything to DSU (Dolby Surround Upmixer). It will still do native Atmos for discs/files encoded that way, and upmix everything else and you will love it.

Don't expect the overheads to be active all of the time. I think that it is something like 5% of a native Atmos movie will include them. Concerts use them more throughout, but for ambiance more than anything.

For a while, people were really loving the DTS Neural X upmixer, but now people are saying that while it is more aggressive, it isn't as accurate as the Dolby Surround Upmixer.

My Outlaw baby is back home and I was just notified my Anthem AVM 60 arrived (2hr drive away). What to do...

Its a nice night for a drive. could snow tomorrow.

Anthem installed and sounds great with no calibration. Updated firmware as well. Now hunting for an amp for the ceiling speakers. Most likely the Outlaw 5000, or possibly Emotiva A500.