Atmos Full-Range Discussion

[CINERAMAX]

WRONG!!! They should be lined up with the imaginary between the left and center and center and right middle. That will get them closer to you and you might get more mid bass pouding and near binaural head encirclement. The Dolby Home Atmos standard is too far apart to recreate any of those 2 proximity effects.

 

[WozzaDog]

Right now I’m listening to Apricot by Bicep using lots of left right imaging in the heights. If I put them where you suggested I will lose that stereo imaging vs wider apart.

My couch is a 5 seat wide couch and an engineer on Spare Change channel said the person on the far left can’t have the height left on their right side otherwise they won’t get a left right height experience. I like wide sound not narrow hence the Polk SDA L800 which is arguably one of the best speakers for binaural recordings. I literally get a 180. degree soundstage on two channel on some recordings. I’m also using Polks Ring Tweeters on all speakers.

Thanks for opinion. Why do you not like a wide height spread?

Do you use Dirac?

 

[WozzaDog]

 

[WozzaDog]

 

[WozzaDog]

The inside tweeters and mid driver points onwards whilst the outside driver points outwards. A cross cable between the speakers perform Polks SDA technology. The speakers are specked to be 6ft apart inside distance for a 10 ft seating distance from center speaker. At the moment the heights are 196cm / 6.5ft apart.

 

[mandrix]

I heard it said on a Youtube that the CPUs within processors do not have the bandwidth to run 24/96 or 24/192. The person who said it was from Audyssey on a call with DM holdings that their processor could process all signals at all times and had to drop processing room correction on some data if the CPU was too busy. The music wasn't dropped, just didn't apply room correction to the music. Phil from DM holdings was doing some damage control because it didnt reflect well and at that point the Audyssey person said that Dirac and their Dirac Live product instead reduces the bandwidth down to 48k so it can process the data.

It will be interesting how these new Dirac Art systems (which sounds like Anthem ART) will perform as they require even more processing. Maybe the hardware processor specifications requirements are higher.

I spoke at length with Anthem last year and they advise me that their CPUs were spec'd to run their Anthem Arc (not Dirac Art) at full bandwidth.

At the end of the day with Atmos on an 8k system and DSD supported by Roon at DSD512, what size CPU do we need to process at full bandwidth?

Of course higher CPUs have higher costs. Maybe we need PCs with input / output cards like Trinov uses. Dirac Live is licensable for PCs. Emotiva's next gen processors will be running a Linux OS, it will be interesting to see what CPUs will be used. Will it be an AMD CPU/GPU combo?

The more "this stuff" evolves the more I wonder if the manufacturers aren't getting ahead of themselves. Hard to keep up, at least for me as I just don't have the time to devote to it.

Brief recap: when my wife retired, I moved all audio equipment into a bedroom. It's full of furniture like most functioning bedrooms and also all my pc gear/desks, which is extensive. A difficult room for audio even based on speaker placement alone.
Last December I bought an Onkyo TX-RZ50.
To date I've only ran the Dirac Live "full" speaker adjustment as built into the firmware. But it has made quite the difference. I have an Atmos 7.1.4 setup.

To date on the two occasions I've had a quiet house and the time, I've been unsuccessful in running the Dirac Live from my pc as the software always informs me that I'm not "logged in" to the site, when I most assuredly am. So more time I need to spend to find out how to correct this so I can get the full effect of Dirac and get all my speakers set up properly. The Onkyo is supposed to be able to store 3 profiles if run through the pc software, and the profiles are configurable.
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But backing up to your point on cpu's and processing, too bad some/all processing could not be offloaded somehow to a pc.
Of course that would never happen with Windows, an OS that is dedicated to running legacy programs and sometimes lately seems less designed to increase architectural robustness and more by the whims of grade schoolers.

 

[WozzaDog]

The more "this stuff" evolves the more I wonder if the manufacturers aren't getting ahead of themselves. Hard to keep up, at least for me as I just don't have the time to devote to it.

Brief recap: when my wife retired, I moved all audio equipment into a bedroom. It's full of furniture like most functioning bedrooms and also all my pc gear/desks, which is extensive. A difficult room for audio even based on speaker placement alone.
Last December I bought an Onkyo TX-RZ50.
To date I've only ran the Dirac Live "full" speaker adjustment as built into the firmware. But it has made quite the difference. I have an Atmos 7.1.4 setup.

To date on the two occasions I've had a quiet house and the time, I've been unsuccessful in running the Dirac Live from my pc as the software always informs me that I'm not "logged in" to the site, when I most assuredly am. So more time I need to spend to find out how to correct this so I can get the full effect of Dirac and get all my speakers set up properly. The Onkyo is supposed to be able to store 3 profiles if run through the pc software, and the profiles are configurable.
----------
But backing up to your point on cpu's and processing, too bad some/all processing could not be offloaded somehow to a pc.
Of course that would never happen with Windows, an OS that is dedicated to running legacy programs and sometimes lately seems less designed to increase architectural robustness and more by the whims of grade schoolers.

I think if someone develops an os and add-in cards with pre/in and pre-outs for a modern day (<2yrs) motherboard, and remote, people can build their own processors.

 

[pir8radio]

Atmos is not full range. There is no 20Hz (Or even close) content present. That is why Atmos speakers are smaller (Usually 4-8") and only utilize a tweeter and some midrange drivers.

Just chiming in, first post ran across this site from google. Hi All!

Below is a paragraph from the Atmos specification for commercial theaters. True that surround speakers are not "required" to go as low as 20Hz but they do specify 40Hz, they also call it "full-range". That said, I don't think the human ear can tell what direction anything below 80Hz is coming from anyway. But all of my surround speakers as well as the two ceiling speakers have a 8" driver, mid, and tweeter. So that's 8x 8" subs around my room, and the LFE is a 15" folded horn. I can say the eight 8's put out a decent amount of low end. So you are both correct.. It seems the spec is more of a suggestion, but does pretty much say surround channels can contain 40Hz.

4.6 Surround Sound Frequency Response: 40 Hz to 16 kHz, +3/–6 dB Dolby Atmos auditoriums must support playback of full-range surround signals. To meet this specification standard, cinema surround speakers with limited bass response require bass management. If bass management is used, the recommended surround speaker frequency response (+/-3 dB) is 90 Hz or lower. The required surround speaker frequency response is (+/-3 dB) at < 130 Hz. The crossover frequency should be set based on the capabilities of the surround speakers, but must not be higher than 130 Hz.

 

[mandrix]

Well time moves on. I've rearranged speakers and other things multiple times, now have finished many Dirac Live calibrations because of that.
If I listened to everything said on here I'd throw up my hands because I don't own any $1000 or > speakers, and have them placed "ideally" by some guideline.
Nice for you that can I guess. Go with my blessing. I doubt you enjoy the music more than I do.

 

[barfle]

Just chiming in, first post ran across this site from google. Hi All!

Below is a paragraph from the Atmos specification for commercial theaters. True that surround speakers are not "required" to go as low as 20Hz but they do specify 40Hz, they also call it "full-range". That said, I don't think the human ear can tell what direction anything below 80Hz is coming from anyway. But all of my surround speakers as well as the two ceiling speakers have a 8" driver, mid, and tweeter. So that's 8x 8" subs around my room, and the LFE is a 15" folded horn. I can say the eight 8's put out a decent amount of low end. So you are both correct.. It seems the spec is more of a suggestion, but does pretty much say surround channels can contain 40Hz.

4.6 Surround Sound Frequency Response: 40 Hz to 16 kHz, +3/–6 dB Dolby Atmos auditoriums must support playback of full-range surround signals. To meet this specification standard, cinema surround speakers with limited bass response require bass management. If bass management is used, the recommended surround speaker frequency response (+/-3 dB) is 90 Hz or lower. The required surround speaker frequency response is (+/-3 dB) at < 130 Hz. The crossover frequency should be set based on the capabilities of the surround speakers, but must not be higher than 130 Hz.

Welcome aboard! My surrounds certainly don’t look anything like 8”, although my fronts have 8” drivers to go with my 24” sub. So far, so good.

 

[barfle]

Well time moves on. I've rearranged speakers and other things multiple times, now have finished many Dirac Live calibrations because of that.
If I listened to everything said on here I'd throw up my hands because I don't own any $1000 or > speakers, and have them placed "ideally" by some guideline.
Nice for you that can I guess. Go with my blessing. I doubt you enjoy the music more than I do.

None of my speakers hit that price point, either, and I did start over from the beginning trying to set up my new Marantz 7706.

I know my room is full of compromises, and I can’t imagine one that isn’t. That doesn’t mean I don’t love every minute I spend listening to music in there. Well, I have picked up a few tracks that make me cringe, but they are few and far between.