13.1 Surround Sound Coming to a Home near you?

An anonymous reader writes "Need to see the anatomy of a codec? Dolby Digital plus is starting to make inroads in the audio world and this article gives you the technical insight into the Enhanced AC-3 codec. Will consumers soon be getting the full 13.1 audio system that we hear in movie theaters?"

Comments

Why?

[daniil]

Even though the consumers would have 14 speakers in their livingroom, they'd still only have two ears.

---
The monk extolled.

Re:Why?

[timeOday]

People living in this universe are, sadly, limited to 3 spatial dimensions. You can pinpoint any point in 3-space with 3 scalars. (And for that matter we only have 2 ears, perhaps because we live mostly on the surface of the earth)

13.1 is just silly for a single listener. The speaker system in a theater is doing a different job - it can't be set up with just one sweet spot, because there are people spread out over a huge area in the room. In your living room, you only need the sound to be right in one place. It's entirely possible a 5.1 system does a better job for one listener than a 13.1 in a theater.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 5.1 system and can't imagine wanting more. Spend your money on that 63 inch flat screen HDTV or better quality speakers, rather than more of them.

Room size + encoding.

[mapnjd]

13.1 is probably only going to be for the seriously wealthy. Here in the UK, houses are generally pretty small and 7.1 is difficult to incorporate and offers no advantage over 6.1 (as your rear surround speakers are only about 4 metres apart - the rear centres of 7.1 are only going to be a metre or two apart - plus the rear centres in so-called 7.1 actually carry identical sound from the 6.1 mix).

So firstly, where does the encoding of these extra channels come from? Secondly, only a few elite people will ever need/be able to afford/be able to accomodate this.

Re:Wow

[Phosphor3k]

"I guess if you spend money to buy all those speakers, it BETTER sound better, or at least you've going to tell yourself it does."

"with 25 foot length Monster Cables."

Right. Buying cables from the same company that sells a 50$ phone cord.

We don't need more speakers.

[Reverend528]

More speakers in home theatre set ups will just waste money and space. Sound can be easily projected with as few as 4 well-placed speakers (plus one subwoofer), and its a great deal easier to set up. I can safely guarantee that 99% of homes with 13 speakers will have them placed wrong.

Re:We don't need more speakers.

[Anonymous Coward]

More speakers in home theatre set ups will just waste money and space. Sound can be easily projected with as few as 4 well-placed speakers (plus one subwoofer), and its a great deal easier to set up. I can safely guarantee that 99% of homes with 13 speakers will have them placed wrong.

Well, it depends. In a professional setting, 13 speakers would be hard to tune in a lot of settings. You need a sound engineer that knows what s/he's doing. (Hence many theaters that sound terrible, possibly because the engineer DIDN'T know what they were doing.) HOWEVER, to the lay man, 13 speakers will out do 4. Seriously. Even if it's not 13 unique channels.

The sheer fact that most 4 speakers AREN'T tuned properly is the reason though. With 13 speakers but only 4 channels, things would certainly sound more "surroundish" simply because thre's more sound from more directions.

To the layman, this will do, since they most likely won't be using a reference point for any comparison.

An added bonus of 13 speakers, however, is the fact that you can effectively turn the volume down while still hearing perfectly fine sound.

Simply put, most houses already suck with 4 speakers, but even badly placed 13 speakers will sound better than 4 badly placed speakers. I do sound engineering, and I can guarantee this.

Re:We don't need more speakers.

[klmth]

Sound can be easily preojected with as little as three speakers using methods such as VBAP, but the less speakers you have, the narrower the sweet spot is. With four speakers, the sweet spot is very small. With 13 speakers, the sweet spot is considerably larger. As you may have noticed, there isn't significant variation in the sound positioning in a movie theater depending on which seat you sit on.

Acoustics

[Red Flayer]

While 13.1 may be appealing to people who need to have the next greatest thing, this will be useless for any significant market. How many home theaters have the correct shape, paneling, furniture placement, and size to take advantage of the acoustical advantages of so many channels? Even at 5.1 channels, I can tell that the acoustic signature in the seat next to me is different -- and less perfect. How will this change with 13.1?

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess if you spend money to buy all those speakers, it BETTER sound better, or at least you've going to tell yourself it does. Heh Heh.

In the world of Audiophiles, you have no idea how true that statement is. I cant even fathom how expensive a high-quality 13 channel tube amp might be. If course, it does sound better, right? ;)

Wireless speakers first please

[mccalli]

At the moment I have ye olde stereo. Not even a subwoofer to be seen. I'd like to move to 5.1 but can't - reason? Wires.

My front room already has enough wires in it stuffed behind the TV. The thought of spreading more of them out for my kids, one three and one two, to destroy really does not appeal. It wouldn't even appeal if there were no kids there to damage them; my front room is for relaxing in, not for turning into a server room-alike.

I'm aware that wireless speakers already exist, but last I looked (a year ago?) good quality ones are very expensive, and I believe there are sync. problems with surround sound? If you know differently, please bring me up to date because I would -love- to replace my stereo speaker set up with good wireless surround.

Cheers,
Ian

there's up and down too you know

[Anonymous Coward]

if you imagine that you want to get every possible sound, then every speaker first of all should be able to do the .1 part, the bass.

then if you listen all around you it would make 8 speakers. then there are the sounds above and below you which would make another 8 below and 9 above (the extra one for directly above you.

in all that makes 25 speakers. once again noting that each speaker should have bass integrated.

until a setup like that occur, of course we will have to go through every iteration of consumption, as may as possible but I'm impressed none the less at the jump between 7.1 and 13.1, they could have made so much money by going 8,9,10,11 and 12!

Speaker manufacturers should be happy

[PantyChewer]

Just think of the dumb people that will get talked into this by salesmen. "Oh yeah, you NEED 14 speakers to really hear the movie like it was meant to be"

The technology is only half of it

[stelmach]

I think what we need to realize here is that just because the technology will be available to place in our home, doesn't mean we can reproduce the same or even a similar effect in our home. The acoustics of a standard living room are dramatically different than that of a movie theater.

Stereo

[Pivot]

I always find that pure stereo sounds better than most setups. This is probably because a multichannel setup cost 2.5 times the amount to set up with the same quality speakers, amps etc., and most people don't have the money to do that, so they just use cheaper components to get more channels for the same investment.

Re:Wow

[Robber Baron]

Agreed...I only got two ears. I'd just as soon have a decent pair of headphones.

I'm going out

[Nybler]

Why bother with any of this home theatre crap? It costs a lot of money and the standards are always changing, so there's always going to be something new/better on the horizon. Thank goodness I have decent theatres near where I live - I'm simply going to ignore home theatres and continue to enjoy taking my wife out on movie dates.

You people are all nuts

[rpresser]

I still don't see how more "realistic" sound improves ANYTHING. I don't particularly want to be scared by the sound of a cow fifty meters offscreen when I'm trying to listen to dialogue. Plenty of the worlds BEST films were filmed with NO sound.

Re:You people are all nuts

[Tim Browse]

I assume your TV is still black and white then?

Surround sound and good movies

[sterno]

I don't know what everyone else will think about 13.1, but it kind of seems like overkill to me. I already, at times, wonder if there is really that much advantage in a 6.1, or 7.1 system, over a 5.1 system.

Think about all the movies that you really like and then imagine them without surround sound at all. Just simple stereo sound. Does it really diminish the movies? I mean I like surround sound but I've been unable to set it up for a while now and honestly, I don't miss it.

It's a neat gadget, and sure, if I have the equipment and room for it, why the heck not. But frankly good movies don't need surround sound. For example, I have Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon on DVD. It's a fantastic movie, and I've hooked up the surround sound to it. It is cool when a spear breaks and I hear the shards land behind my head. But if I didn't hear that, would it really make a difference to the movie? No.

So if you're talking 5.1 vs. 7.1 vs. 13.1, who really cares after a point. If it was easy to set up and I had the space for it, sure, that'd be neat, but in reality, it doesn't much matter.

Re:As Seen on MTV Cribs

[Starbucker79]

Nothing so mundane for that set. If you sell it, some rapper/actor/athlete will buy it for his car.

.1

[pintomp3]

it's funny how no matter how many speakers, they love to only have one subwoofer. 100.1? yeah, yeah, i know low frequencies are omnidirectional. but the "subwoofers" that most htib systems come with are just woofers. they have to go pretty high up in the freq range to compensate for the tiny, cheap satillites. that kinda kills the "omnidirectionalness". with most cheaper systems i've heard it's pretty easy to "hear" where the subwoofer is placed. maybe the next wave will be walls and ceilings that are just a matrix of tiny speakers. they could be controlled like an lcd panel. you could have almost infinite flexability in created real life sound. or you could just go outside..

Why not OVERHEAD audio, like 7.1.1 or something?

[WidescreenFreak]

I just don't understand this whole need for such detail in Surround Sound. 7.1 is more than enough to fool the human ear into comprehending the perceived location of an audio source, at least on a two-dimensional level.

Objective: Have the sound come from what appears to be speakers 4 and 5.

Common Sense solution: Equalize the specific sound between speakers four and five to simulate its location between those two speakers.

13.1 solution (or so it would seem): Come up with a new set of codecs, equipment, and speakers to actually have the sound come out of another speaker!

By the way, the Common Sense solution is free to existing 7.1 and to a lesser extent 5.1 owners.

Personally, I want an additional sound channel to get a 5.1.1/7.1.1 solution where the added .1 is an overhead speaker to truly add a third dimension to sound. I can only imagine what it would sound like to have a jet in Top Gun or similar movie go from left front to top channel to rear right! That type of 3D audio would be far more impressive than using six more 2D speakers that can just as easily be replicated by positional audio between two existing speakers. The recent technological advances in flat speaker and wireless technologies would make a "ceiling speaker" easier to implement than many people would think.