Slashdot Mirror
Is Dolby Atmos a Flop For Home Theater Like 3DTV Was?
An anonymous reader writes: Object-based audio is supposed to be the future of surround sound. The ability to pan sound around the room in 3D space as opposed to fixed channel assignments of yesterday's decoders. While this makes a lot of sense at the cinema, it's less likely consumers rush to mount speakers on their ceilings or put little speaker modules on top of their existing ones to bounce sound around the room. Leading experts think this will be just a fad like 3DTV was. What do you think?
I think: "File Not Found".
Bad linky...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
and yes, you dont have enough speakers and amps for atmos at home. sound bars wont make it. hell, most people i know have their 5.1 systems setup wrong.
The return of silent films is coming, mark my words.
A more rational pannable surround could be implemented with just four speakers using Ambisonics. It isn't patentable and doesn't sell lots of speakers so it will continue to be ignored.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
The missing link is http://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/5-reasons-dolby-atmos-is-doa
what i think? static placement is so AARP.
until the Sontarans invade.
I click the link and get sent back to the /. article so I click the link again and back again to /. ... help!!! How do I make it stop?????
That would imply that it was popular at some point.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
I love good sound, i would be willing to drop 5x or more on sound what a TV costs, but i don't, ya know why? cause I now have the cash but don't see any high end content. I am locked to Comcast which means shit audio streams even on HBO and other high end channels, netflix is better but not much. For music, a 40 year old tech, CD, is still king because all of the streaming and download services, like my choice, Google Music, all are over compressed and bitstarved.
Blue Ray, DVD-A, SA-CD and any other truly good sounding form of content delivery seem to be flopping because they are tied to physical media.We need high end streaming and downloadable content but this will never happen as long as people can be tricked into thinking Beats and other poorly configured experiances are somehow "good".
One in each corner of a room, floor and ceiling. Two quadrophonic amps with a computer software program to 'fade' between below and above audio and you're set.
I had conceived of this over 12 years ago.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Then why do all the TVs over 50 inches include it?
Not true.
Ever wondered how you can hear if the sound comes from infront or behind you with your two ears?
You can't. You just think you can because you over-estimate your abilities. I encourage you to do an internet search for the relevant research. There was a slashdot story about it ~ 5 years ago.
Stuff like this and 3D only works in big rooms
and by big is cinema sized rooms
Yes, you can, because your head isn't perfectly still and your mind can use that information to pick up the location of the sound using only two ears and a handful of other sensory information.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
In order to be a fad, there has to be some significant adoption ("pet rocks", for example). Not gonna happen, IMO, with Dolby Atmos (tm). I've got a fairly extensive last gen' home setup (1080p, not 4K; 7.1, not 9.3), and there's nothing I've seen or heard that encourages me to "upgrade" to even those levels, much less the whole room redesign needed for Atmos. I'm sure there will some adoption by those who simply "must" own the latest tech, then watch cable/satellite 720p, but it won't be enough to constitute a fad.
It's not even a fad - it's dead on arrival. Most people don't even use 5.1 speakers. Hell, most don't even use 2.1. Anything that requires that much dedication of the room to audio is not going to sell to the mass market. Period.
3D TV at least had a vague hope of succeeding in the mass market. If they can ditch the glasses, they might actually succeed. But people are lazy and don't want to put any effort into their mindless entertainment. Putting glasses on to watch a movie was too much for them. Do you really think setting up a shitload of speakers all around the room is going to pass?
When I built my house, we had a large living room - 20x30 feet. Not grand because it's function was mostly solar. I installed four speakers in the ceiling. They were arranged L/R/L/R going around the room. This was quite sufficient to fool you into thinking it was surround and things moved from right to left. In short, quite unnecessary technical clutter proposed here.
If you gotta wear glasses, it's not 3D.
I have two eyes, I guess I'd need two screens?
Mostly random stuff.
Actually I think some major research institution (I don't recall witch) was trying to understand how you can tell where a sound is coming from, and they were doing this as part of some kind of aerospace research to send directional audio cues to pilots. You can actually do it better than you probably think you can. They actually came up with a technique where they could map your ear canal by placing a speaker inside of it, and they could then make sounds seem like they're coming from different directions by altering them based on how they would end up by the time they hit your ear drum. Supposedly it worked pretty well. SRS from what I understand was developed based on this principle (but since it isn't unique to you, it doesn't work particularly well.)
I haven't seen anyone comment on what I think could be the best thing about Atmos: getting the best of whatever surround sound setup you have. Because all the sounds are objects in 3D space, if your receiver knows where in the room your speakers are located, it could make the best use of wherever your speakers are located to recreate the spatial sense of each sound. Most people who get a home theater in a box and don't have it set up in the optimal configuration. I mean, I've got a system that's a bit better than the box systems, but because I'm not willing to get rid of the bookshelves in my den, I can't get the rear channels mounted quite equidistant from my seating. I think a lot of people are in similar situations. I mean, how many people do you know who have a dedicated theater room with all the speakers in the perfect positions?
I know that most receivers now do have positional information, but the standard 5.1 and 7.1 mixes are hard encoded per channel. And while some receivers do processing on the streams to approximate what I'm talking about, the Atmos system of giving each sound it's own position in space and letting the system figure out how to best play that back in a room would be a better experience. I think Atmos should really be diving straight to the bottom. Get it into those home theater in a box systems that people buy at big box stores and promise them that however they set up their speakers, it'll make the best use of them.
I prefer headphones. I can watch a movie at night and not bother the neighbours.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Because it's another notch I the feature list that no one uses, or cares about.
That said, I have a sixty inch I just bought that doesn't have 3D.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
As speaker setup this might be to complicated and a waste of effort, however motion tracked virtual reality headsets are right around the corner and with them you can do some really fancy binaural 3D sound rendering on the cheap. So I would assume that the success of this depends in large part on if they will let people write support for it for the virtual-cinema players that already exist or if they shoot it dead with patents.
Interesting, but I thought a lot of the way we determine the direction of sound is through triangulation, in combination with the delay it takes from sound to hit one ear and then the other. That's why when you try hard to listen for where something is coming from, you often instinctively tilt your head slightly. (and the time for sound to travel from one ear to the other is also why when you hear things underwater, you have trouble telling where they come from because sound travels faster in water than in air)
We have two ears, but you might notice that the ears have fairly complicated geometry. Why would that be? Well, it turns out that the various parts of the ear bounce sound, and sound coming from different directions, both azimuth and elevation, bounces differently. Your brain is very good at figuring this out. This wikipedia page on Sound Localization is quite informative.
It turns out that humans have among the best direction-sensing hearing of any animal.
[disclaimer -- I work for Dolby, but in their imaging group]
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
1080 HD and 5.1 audio are more than adequate for immersive viewing experiences. Most don't need or want more and even if they did they're certainly now willing to pay for it.
You do. But they need to be seperated by eye. That's done either by having two small screens (The 3D visor, much used in VR rigs), or by using polarisation to allow one screen to appear to show two images depending upon eye (The cinema approach) or by using active shutter glasses an very rapidly alternating images (Most home 3DTV systems.)
You can't. You just think you can because you over-estimate your abilities. I encourage you to do an internet search for the relevant research. There was a slashdot story about it ~ 5 years ago.
I did do an Internet search, and in fact found plenty of research that indicates humans and other mammals can in fact localize sound in the vertical plane (i.e. whether it comes from in front of behind of you). Of course, it doesn't work for all sounds, but the capability is there.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anything over 2.1 makes music sound Terrible. So I don't bother. Go 2.1, and spend the money making sure those 2 speakers and the sub are of quality, screw the surround.
Cinavia killed any future sound innovation.
Whats the point of dolby n-teen when you can HEAR the fucking DRM squeaking and reverbing in the background?
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
I'd say that we won't know the answer for a while more, provided Dolby don't ditch the tech before that. Firstly, humans are generally much more visual than auditive: a brand new TV set with vivid colors, large contrast and a sharp image will be a much easier and more obvious sell/upgrade than a new sound set. Not only are we better wired to notice the difference, it's also much more easily demonstrated in a shop, whereas a sound system normally needs a closed room with not too horrible sound properties to work well. On top of that, you can buy speakers individually, or in a pack with the receiver. Finally, lest we forget, most people will have one "home theater"-style room, be it the living room or a dedicated room just for movie watching. While they might buy a new TV for another room in the house, just about nobody will buy a second sound system.
The end result is that people upgrade their sound system at a much slower pace than the rest of their home theater setups. For instance, we've had the same speaker setup for something like 15 years. The speakers themselves don't really age (they'll eventually degrade, but that's about it - there isn't as pronounced a difference in tech as with TVs where you could get 2x better sound for the same price within a few years), so there's no point in changing them, and therefore we don't really think about changing the receiver itself. It's old enough that it doesn't have HDMI. It doesn't support Dolby True HD or DTS HD. Atmos is pretty much the equivalent of OLED TVs to us - it sounds neat, but not enough to be worth the investment.
I've heard Dolby's positional audio, being driven from a game, in the Dolby Labs screening room in San Francisco. It sounds great. You can hear people sneaking up behind you in the game. You can hear someone walking around you. There's a real sense of presence.
That's in a room built, at a cost of millions, as a demo for Dolby's audio technology. The room is on a separate foundation from the rest of the building, with an inner set of vibration isolated walls. The room acoustics are very good; you don't need a microphone when giving a talk there. The walls and ceiling conceal speakers everywhere, and the room with the amps and processors looks like a small server farm.
You're not going to get that in Joe Sixpack's living room. You might get close to it in some high end home theater installations, the ones that look like small movie theaters and are used for no other purpose. It's a niche market.
because it is nearly free to add from a hardware perspective, and some companies believe it helps them when people spec check at the wall of tvs at best buy. here are my major concerns for an hdtv:
1) how quickly does it turn on when I press the power button?
2) what is the remote like?
want to see a pissed off best buy drone? ask to see the remote for a particular TV.
Not all of them do. I have a 65" and it's "3D Ready" (like a lot of the TV's), which means for another $400 you can upgrade your set to have 3D. The upgrade usually consists of a box you plug into the TV and a set of glasses.
No thanks.
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
Sure you can. Your ear has asymmetrical geometry front-to-back, your pinna, outer ear, nose and head diffract sounds as they approach your ears and apply a transfer function to the sound that varies with regard to azimuth.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Hearing bullets fly past my head doesn't really affect my enjoyment of any movie.
Why the fuck not? When it's done well, it's great.
A desperate industry attempt to push 3D and make larger lists of bullet points.
If you want to see how well it is catching on, you have to look at sales of extra glasses and how sales of 3D vs. non 3D content compare.
Those figures suggest that people won't actively refuse 3D capability but rarely if ever actually use it. They further suggest that 3D capability is a weak selling point at best.
Then why do all the TVs over 50 inches include it?
This is Slashdot. They don't recognize those pesky "facts".
The facts are:
1. That's not a fact. Plenty of models 50 inches and larger don't have it.
2. They are focusing on the high-end of the market. Where buyers are less worried about price, and more likely to buy things which have "all the bells and whistles" just to have them.
3. Manufacturers are already reducing the percentage of models which have "3-D" capability, but the existing ones aren't moving all that fast and it takes time for them to work out of the supply chain.
Seems people are more interested in the tech than the actual content. If I'm listeing to speech my attention is on what the speaker is saying, not where in the room they appear to be. If it's music, I'm more interested in hearing all the instruments and the dynamics than any positioning that I wouldn't know about anyway.
If you have visual cues then this positioning information will be more effective than playing with sound phase relationships etc. If you don't have such cues then does it matter at all?
more like twenty to fifty bucks for the glasses nowadays. ..since the 3d ready tv is already 400-500 bucks..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Most TV's out there are 3D now and most new content is 3D. 3D showings at the theater are generally packed.
I appreciate it, you fall into one of the three groups who don't like 3D. People with glasses, People who are super sensitive and get headaches even with the new great refresh rates, or People who formed an opinion without having seen modern 3D. For the rest of us, we are oddballs who fall into the "life is in 3D therefore a quality 3D picture is more realistic."
They did seriously overrate 3D in the pitch to sell it. Close one eye, open it back up, is there a difference in depth perception? Yes. But that difference is all 3D is and all it should be. Ideally they don't do anything different because they are filming 3D. No gimmicks or throwing things at you. You should forget you are watching 3D and just walk away feeling like the movie was especially exciting and immersive.
Why do you think 3D tv was a failure? most people don't have depth perception that is adequate enough to watch it without headaches.
That and you had to wear ugly glasses. So many people who can barely read won't wear glasses unless some one forces them too.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I find it unsurprising that Atmos will fall on its ass in home cinema. Who is going to plaster their walls and ceilings with speakers?
Then why do all the TVs over 50 inches include it?
Included =/= being used. My TV is 3D capable, yet I never use that feature, because I consider it to be a gimmick. If there had been a cheaper version of my TV without 3D capability, I would have bought that one (same for all the "smart TV" Internet features, btw - all I want is a huge display with a couple HDMI inputs...). Sadly, that option did not exist. My totally unscientific research among friends/relatives shows that if they have a 3D TV, at most it has been used for one or two 3D movies like Ice Age "for the kids" to try it out, and that's it.
As someone who watches ASMR videos, the ability to control the direction where the viewer experiences sounds coming from is a really great thing, and if it's used properly it could be really beneficial to the entertainment experience.
No need, I keep the doors and windows closed.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Already commented so not able to mod - someone else with mod points out there? You've hit the nail on the head - atmos (or equivalent systems) with positional info distinct from the speaker channels should definitely get the best out of whatever installation
of course, there'll be the guys on here that point out that nothing will ever sound as good as their perfectly set up reference system, but they'll also be the ones complaining about 'the masses' having really badly set up rooms.
maybe that's it? a little bit of a frightner that time and effort may soon be nearly caught up with digital trickery?
I always knew the majority of people didn't care about 3D, but I'd still like to think it's not going away anytime soon. Surely there's enough of a die-hard market that high-end TVs will still include a 3D option? I can only hope. Admittedly, I don't watch a lot of movies in 3D, but games are a different story. Games can be so much more immersive when played in 3D.
3D TV requires you to disassociate your depth perception and your eye focus. 3D needs to stay properly sharp despite your eyes changing focus (and ideally blur the things which are out-of-focus, but that is less important). The technology to do so is almost here now.
Alternatively, most children today probably watch enough 3D that their vision adapts.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
what is the remote like?
If you have more than one component in your configuration, you almost certainly need a universal remote, so the TV remote doesn't matter that much.
I've used the same remote through 2 TVs, 3 receivers, 2 DVD players, several media players, cable and satellite STBs, and even my HTPC.
I own a 3D TV, So I'm part of that statistic that proves how well 3D TVs sell. .. I also do not own any 3D glasses, or any 3D content, or have any intention of ever doing so.
I have a 3D TV, not because I wanted one, but because the manufacturer wanted me to. I couldn't find my other requirements without it at a price I was willing to pay. I'm certainly not alone in this category, many people have no interest in 3D, but own 3D TVs, not because they want a 3D TV, but because the TV they want happens to have that feature.
Look at sales of 3D content and 3D glasses, not 3D TVs to gauge the interest, I'm sure it's a lot lower than the industry would have you believe.
Thing is, the industry is desperate, we just went through the transition from SD to HD, which provided real value to the end user, this caused millions of people to go out and buy new TVs to replace ones that were still working fine, that's petering out now and most people have already replaced their old SD TVs. The industry desperately wants to replicate that situation and force people to go buy all new TVs again, but people just aren't biting.
You work for Dolby and want an Atmos mix of Dark Side of the Moon originally produced and mixed in an inherently planar format? What is there to actually gain? If it's just to take the original stems and mix them, the sound mixer is going to do that anyway before it's released. In fact, for most people, they will never use this feature and it will be a waste of bandwidth at a time when streaming media is quickly becoming a margin business and the vast majority of media is consumed in really poor environments with really poor reproduction equipment. As a mezzanine or mastering format, sure. For publishing? Not so much.
The ".1" is supposed to be the low frequency effects channel. Are you saying that a bandwidth-limited LFE has any other position in the EIA/CEA-861 speaker configurations? Do you even know WHY it is called a ".1"? (Hint: the channel is LPF'd)
More importantly, who cares when you need extra hardware? Most people don't buy A/V receivers and extra speakers, and what few are out there are improperly configured just as the article says. I can't see how one issue should be conflated with the other.
Finally: I've heard Atmos in the theaters. Unless the content is specifically produced to take advantage of height speakers, I stop caring about it very quickly since my other senses are also being inundated. This means most of the movie. Who knows how much money a theater operator has to spend to put this stuff in and if they'll get a single dollar more for it from the audience. Same thing happened with 3D and boy did these guys take a bath.
...so who is going to pay for this extra feature vs. what we've got today? Are people even going to care if they hear in three dimensions versus on a single plane? Most people aren't because most people don't care about surround sound in the home, and most people can't tell the difference between even 5.1 and 7.1.
I think ATMOS was revealed to be a Sontaran plot to turn earth into a cloning center. No wonder it will never become popular.
I've played around with surround myself, and eventually came to the conclusion that for any reasonable budget, you're better off with a stereo system. As in, if you're going to spend $400 on speakers, you're much better off with two $200 speakers than with eight $50 speakers needed to do 7.1. Having two speakers also makes the setup a lot easier too, and unless you're going to set up a surround set up correctly you might as well not bother. Most home surround set ups that I have are set up incorrectly, which is pretty understandable given that most people can't dedicate a room to a home theater.
I love 3DTV....
The problem is content....often you can find a blu-ray of a movie on sale for $12.99, but then they want $35 for the 3D version. 3D should be priced at $5 more than the regular versions. And get the same sales. That would do wonders.
Passive 3D is great....lightweight....tons of fun.
"and a handful of other sensory information" renders your attempted correction incorrect. That is a different thing.
And you still can't "hear" the location. You simply infer it, and are often correct.
Using only ears, you absolutely cannot. And using other sensory information, you usually already have it narrowed down; so you think you hear where it came from, but you didn't. You saw where it came from, or where it didn't.