Straight from the Dolby site and in the Onkyo spring new product lineup.

The effects of QS4's and QS8's for the masses?

Sort of... If QS4's and QS8's were the design of front speakers. Still a bit different. I saw that earlier today as well and was looking at it. Yamaha had put out something about one of their models being able to do 11.2...

Here is the thread on that one:
Axiom Post On Yamaha 11.2

For those of you "link click challanged" here is a picture....



I remember years ago someone coming up with something like a 32.1 setup (back before multiple subs were popular) where there were speakers on the ceiling pointing down and all sorts of things. It basically made an elongated hemisphere in front, behind, to the sides, and above the listener... I wish I knew where that image was...

That setup is called "open the cheque book" or extend the limit on your credit card. It would be interesting to hear.

Full sized speakers for surround left and right? Center on the floor?

A single non-reclining, armrest-free chair?

Transparent walls and ceiling?

He had to sell the cieling and walls to pay for the extra speakers.

That's kind of nuts!

My AVR supports 7.1 and I've tried it a couple of times when my room layout allowed it. I honestly didn't feel that it added a lot to the movie experience. That was using a pair of m22's as main surrounds and a pair of Energy Take 5's as rear surrounds.

Back in the 5.1 setup, the upgrade to QS8's over the M22's for surrounds made a *much* greater difference in the realism and envelopment of surround effects.

I have read posts on other forums by folks who swear by side-axis channels. I think Emotiva's MMC-1 could do that.

.....maybe a different speaker for every note played? Like a handbell choir?

That'd be GREAT! It would need to look something like a pipe organ, with dozens of different cone sizes per cabinet. And of course, you'd need one of these cabinets for each channel. We're talking hundreds of cones.

So this new format will add the front presence speakers to a 2.0 or 5.1 source? If this fad takes off, (Yamaha has been on board for a while now) then maybe we could get some encoding in this format. I think that it would be a more beneficial 7.1 encoding than the 7.1 encoding with rear surrounds. I bet an A/B of a 7.1 encoding with rear surrounds is hard to distinguish from that of processing 5.1 to 7.1. However, most people would have a hard time getting on board with having presence speakers since they have to be mounted up high. At least with a 5.1 setup there is no wall mounting necessary since you can get either towers and/or speakers only requiring speaker stands and be all set.

- Nick

The studio MGD has been recording what they call 2+2+2 (a 6.0 setup with two top speakers up front) for a few years already. Here is a link to a white paper. http://www.2plus2plus2.info/2%2B2%2B2%20Flyer/222flyer_Engl_104_low.pdf

I am not exactly sure what the difference would be in sound between this and just adding another pair of smaller L/R speakers mounted high on the wall behind the existing L/R speakers. This will give you the "height" they refer to. Many receiver brands i.e Yamaha, Denon and Marantz have had this capability for years of hooking up an additional pair of L/R speakers, if you wanted it. Of course, Yamaha, has had this "presence" speaker feature which basically gave a little more depth to the front soundstage.

I have always contended that when it came to speakers, the "more the merrier". I mentioned in an an earlier thread, I have totally gone against the grain of what is "perceived" to be HT "by the book". In addition to the above 4 speaker L/R configuration, I am running "two" center channels and "four" RS speakers one M22 AND QS8 in each channel. I also have two RB surrounds. Of course, I have two multi-channel power amps to drive all this stuff.

I have always contended A/V should be about fun and trying different things. For me, it is easy to say since I have a large room and a reasonable WAF. It is quite funny though, once you balance everything properly and you get used to all this sound coming at you, when you atempt to pair down the numbers, it is just not the same anymore.

Because it is part of ProLogic, there'll be some processing involved to try to extract the height information from the other channels. So it isn't just replicating other existing channels. Did you look at the Dolby page: http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technology/prologic-IIz.html ? It explains the technology a little.

I took your advice and checked the Dolby website, however, I must admit, as an owner of a number of "flagship" Yamaha receivers in the past, after reading the description of this process, to me anyway, it has a startling resemblance to the "presence" channel effect that Yamaha has had for years which also could be "overlayed" over any surround effect. One advantage of the Yamaha set-up is that you could blend the "presence" effect in to the existing L/R speakers without adding the extra pair. I know probably the Dolby technology is more advanced, however, it still means adding an extra pair of speakers that many, for whatever reason, may not want to do.

Anyway, it looks like another piece of technology that Dolby will license out to the manufacturers to add to their stable of surround effects in their products.

From my reading of it, they don't seem to be planning to use discrete channels in the bitstream for these height channels (yet anyway), instead they'll be matrixed much as the original Dolby Surround/ProLogic, or extracted algorithmically from non-encoded sources (like ProLogic II(x) Music). So if you don't have the extra speakers the information won't be extracted from the existing channels and nothing will change in your playback. Plus I imagine if they ever start making them discrete, there'll be a downmix option (probably with an encoding scheme for compatibility with older receivers which don't support the new bitsteam format).

I would imagine to stay away from any possible lawsuits from Yamaha, this whole scheme will end up being descrete channels with down mixing for the those with out the extra channels, as the way it sits right now, it looks to be waaayyy too similar to the whole presence idea, unless they are just building on Yamaha's idea and are already looking to pay them for the technology or possibly developed it for Yamaha already and are now happy with the results to start licensing it to others.

Given that it is an evolution of the ProLogic technology, I doubt it is discrete. Everything on their page makes it sound like it's going to be an encoding scheme, but with enough supplementary audio information that the decoder will be able to derive a specific height. Look what they say about games using the Z-axis.

If it is really that close to what Yamaha is doing, I'd say that Yamaha is probably licensing some technology from Dolby. Dolby has been doing research into matrix encoding and ambiance processing since the '60s. (Which is why DTS's Neo:6 isn't all that great, they were trying to re-invent the wheel without being able to use anything which is round.)

I want it.

I want to visit Hawaii.

I want a $1,000,000.00 which would allow me enough time off, cash to get there and stay for awhile, etc.

I think QS4s will be best suited for the new height channels. (I don't expect to be getting a IIz receiver for at least two years, but it's never too soon to start planning.)