Will Dolby's New Atmos 62.2 Format Redefine Surround Sound?

CIStud writes "Anyone who goes to see Pixar's new animated Brave film might come home with their ears ringing. Why? because Brave is the debut of Dolby Lab's new 62.2 surround sound format called Atmos, which adds new developments such as pan-through array and overhead speakers. With 62 speakers and 2 subwoofers, only a handful of theaters nationwide will be able to show the film at its full throttle. Dolby has produced a new highly informative video that talks about how movie sound has progressed from mono to stereo to LCR (left/center/right) to 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound and now Atmos. The big question is will the 62.2 format system be adapted for home theaters intent on emulating the immersive movie experience?" I've seen some busy input/output panels on home stereo equipment, but 62 channels is too many for my interconnect budget. Still, overhead sound seems like a good idea for some kinds of movie.

Comments

...overkill...?

[raydobbs]

Why does this remind me of the spoof commercial I saw somewhere for the 12 blade facial razor, for the ultimate in close shaves? The thing looked like a damn textbook attached to a Bic razor handle. 62 speakers sound like extreme overkill in any environment outside a professional theater.

Re:...overkill...?

[jonnythan]

It certainly is, but two points:

1) It will be astonishingly awesome in a professional theater.

2) No matter how many independent channels you've recorded or mixed for a pro theater, you can always downmix them to fit your personal theater layout. It's not as possible to as effectively upmix from fewer to more channels.

So by all means mix movies in 62.2 sound! Then give us Blu-ray discs with 7 surround channels, four ceiling channels, and two sub channels.

Re:...overkill...?

[jonnythan]

That's true, but either way I don't want the capabilities available to me for my properly set-up home theater to be limited by what morons do in their own homes ;)

Re:...overkill...?

[cpu6502]

Yes it's overkill.
It's just a damn movie (or TV show). Especially since most of the sound isn't even real. It's just guys in a studio banging on drums and other crap to insert footsteps, closing doors, and other fake effects.

Re:...overkill...?

[gstoddart]

Especially since most of the sound isn't even real. It's just guys in a studio banging on drums and other crap to insert footsteps, closing doors, and other fake effects.

It's still 'real' sound. In your average scene in the movie, pretty much none of the audio was recorded at the same time as the image. Especially for pretty much anything in a Pixar film for example.

I must say, I have a hard time disagreeing that 62 channels of audio isn't just a tad much. This sounds like something they're building because they can, not because it's going to make a real improvement in the movie experience. I can't see this being something which can be applied meaningfully to home setups.

Though, I bet some of the demos could be pretty cool as they revolve a sound source around you and other whiz-bang stuff which takes advantage of directionality of sound.

No

[clarkn0va]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines

Gimmick

[ichthus]

Yet another gimmick to try to get people to return to the theaters. And again, we all say, "Just make better movies."

Better for video games

[Animats]

I've heard this at Dolby's screening room in SF. It looks like a modest auditorium. It's really a money-is-no-object demo facility. Before a talk on another subject, the Dolby guys couldn't resist showing off. They had a video game with many directional sound outputs hooked into the room's systems, and you could hear the players moving around in the space, behind and above the audience when appropriate. You really can hear somebody sneaking up on you in-game from a platform above you.

It's an experience to hear many-channel sound in a facility like that, but few (if any) commercial theaters are that good acoustically. Unless the room acoustics are very, very good, all those channels won't help much.

Re:let's see sound fee on top the 3d fee ontop of

[mcgrew]

$4 Coke?! Fill me in with your discount method!

Move out of your expensive city. I'm twice as rich as someone 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same salary as me, because everything costs twice as much up there (or more). Someone making my salary in New York City would probably be living in a cardboard box, but I live a comfortable middle class life here in Springfield.

I don't know what a Coke costs at a movie, but in a thread a while back a bunch of people pegged me as being a cheapass for leaving a quarter tip for a draft beer -- which I pay $1.25 for. That's a 20% tip, but everyone assumed I was paying five bucks for one like they do in Chicago.

Getting a little more on topic here, TFA was incredibly useless; youtube is firewalled off here. What is it with the lack of literacy these days? I don't absorb spoken information nearly as well as written information, TFA doesn't even say how many channels this is, where the speakers are placed, or anything. It does mention two "subwoofers" (we used to call 'em woofers in the stone age when every speaker enclosure had one, many of them fifteen inces or bigger, I've seen "subwoofers" only five inches across) and that's about it.

I've been putting down surround sound since the '70s when they first trotted out quadrophonics for home stereos. You needed two of everything but the turntable, including speakers (the most expensive part) plus a demodulator. And who sits in the middle of an orchestra to hear the symphony? In theaters it's just annoying when a phone rings from the exit sign two meters to the right of the screen (Gran Torino), and even worse when something explodes behind you (Star Wars V), destroying the immersion. I maintain that a movie only needs four channels, one at each corner of the screen.

Is 62.2 sixty two channels plus two woofers? I don't see how this would sound any more realistic than a channel for each corner.