ES said an interesting thing that is true of different formats over the years...and it's so true..."quadraphonic sound came too soon"....if introduced at a later time...who knows where it could have gone...it's mind blowing to me that using the equipment of that time period they were able to make such impressive recordings....hearing these recordings now on a modern format is just remarkable...
Universal Music to Remix Thousands of Songs Into Dolby Atmos
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ES said an interesting thing that is true of different formats over the years...and it's so true..."quadraphonic sound came too soon"....if introduced at a later time...who knows where it could have gone...it's mind blowing to me that using the equipment of that time period they were able to make such impressive recordings....hearing these recordings now on a modern format is just remarkable...
It may depend more on the spaciousness of the room and the overall room acoustics (from photos/videos) it looks like you (Baggins) have a fairly large room for your system; which would separate the extra height speakers more for better discrete activity. I believe it could work well given that it's installed correctly and with a large enough area. Also, not just speaker placement, but the angle the speakers are pointing, especially height speakers.
As far as the rear ceiling speakers in my 5.1 system; they currently point straight down, if I were to replace them I believe some speakers I've seen like Paradigm have ceiling speakers that are angled and could point towards the sweet spot which might perform better.
https://www.paradigm.com/en/in-ceiling-speakers/sig-15r-30-v3
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markshan
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
He also mixed Gaucho twice, so he can change his mind. That interview is at least a few years old.
I share your feelings about Atmos and Auro. There are mixes that leave me cold, but others are really impressive. Discreteness is a plus for me, and REM or Mando Diao's mixes rule in that area. However, in some cases where the objective is reproducing the playing environment, Atmos also shines. I've got a Dolby Atmos demo disc where a single female sings in an open hall. The difference between 5.1 and Atmos is so noticeable that even my wife amazed at it.
For the non believers in the format, I urge you to listen to Arnold Layne in the Pink Floyd exhibition. Believe me there's no mudiness or loss of discreteness when playing its new mix over 20+ speakers. Jaw dropping.
I don't mind if UMG releases single songs or full albums as long as the Atmos mixed music offer increases and attracts the talent of the top mixers. I really wish all PF catalogue was remixed by Andy in Atmos, although I know this will never happen. But releasing the already existing Pepper may happen, who knows.
And the thing no one talks about: Are mch mixes made with 5 similar speakers and listened-to in an HT setup, with many types of surround speakers typically placed well above the height of the main speakers?
Audiowannabee
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Who is gonna setup 20+ speakers in their house??? I doubt even anyone here would do that....never gonna happen....joe public listens to earbuds on their phones
20+ bose ???
Most likely, nobody. My comment was related to a previous post where ES argumented against the use of more than 5 channels. Andy's mix did not lose any discreteness because of having more than twenty. It was just an example.
Maybe in ten years from now we will all have implants and hear the music in perfect surround from inside our heads and will have to worry no more about speaker placement
Audiowannabee
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Most likely, nobody. My comment was related to a previous post where ES argumented against the use of more than 5 channels. Andy's mix did not lose any discreteness because of having more than twenty. It was just an example.
Maybe in ten years from now we will all have implants and hear the music in perfect surround from inside our heads and will have to worry no more about speaker placement
I see 1984 meets the matrix...lol
I've been using rear height speakers in a 7.1 system since 1989. (The Lexicon CP-1 DSP) I've always had them mounted way up towards the ceiling. They can make a difference depending on the material...great with videos, variable with music. With music they sometimes just muddle things up...like when listening to a really good quad or 5.1 mix. As usual, with Atmos execution will be key.
The56Kid
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Those baby steps are still too expensive to ‘check out’ Atmos if you ask me.
Most likely, nobody. My comment was related to a previous post where ES argumented against the use of more than 5 channels. Andy's mix did not lose any discreteness because of having more than twenty. It was just an example.
Maybe in ten years from now we will all have implants and hear the music in perfect surround from inside our heads and will have to worry no more about speaker placement
Oh no...I already hear voices...now you want surround music
Like others have said, if Mr. & Mrs. Joseph Q. Public do not want speakers in their living area, and especially don't want 5.1 speakers in their living area, why would they be so happy to embrace Dolby Atmos with speakers all over the place, even in the ceiling? Unless all speakers were bluetooth or something.
Buy hey, that doesn't mean I'm not for it. Anything that's more than 5.1 can be remixed to 5.1 easily so the more audio files the better. I can't wait to see how this all shakes out but I am getting some serious Deja Vu from all of this, and it has nothing to do with CSN&Y.
Buy hey, that doesn't mean I'm not for it. Anything that's more than 5.1 can be remixed to 5.1 easily so the more audio files the better. I can't wait to see how this all shakes out but I am getting some serious Deja Vu from all of this, and it has nothing to do with CSN&Y.
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You said a mouthful Jon ....... and if you do want to do Atmos right ..... all speakers should be somewhat matched ..... you just can't 'arbitrarily' add some overheard speakers that happen to be lying in storage and in ceiling speakers are limiting in that you cannot properly 'image' them once they're installed or if you want to move your speakers around.
I have to say, I haven't heard any Atmos music mixes, nor have I heard an Atmos system. So my ideas may be way off base here.
I think the need to have closely matched speakers (or lack thereof) depends on what the goal is. Should we be expecting imaginative Atmos mixers to try to set up sound stages in the ceiling similar to the way they set up left, right and front soundstages? I guess I cant imagine that yet, But then again swirling synths up at the ceiling might be cool. What I'm trying to say is, should we actually be expecting an Atmos experience where the height channels create a defined image on their own or are they meant to supplant the existing image created by the traditional sound stages?
It would seem to be that the height channels would, in most cases, (and especially considering the kind of geezer rock I tend to listen to) not carry truly discreet information but would likely be employed to produce additional ambience and effects. Maybe a better way to project sound to give that illusion of "vocals in the center of the room" that many on the forum seem to dislike. At best the height channels might provide an effective way to simply extend the overall height of an image, like the hugely tall stage you could achieve with large Magneplanars or Infinity line source designs back in the day.
Is there a suggested layout that's been published yet like was done for Quad back in the 70's and 5.1 in the 2000's. With all the bouncing off the ceiling gadgets and front vs rear height channels it all just seems so imprecise and random.
Frogmort
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
I would love some best of's albums in Atmos, but literally 'thousands' of songs? Seems more like they're trying to create a generalized algorythm instead of carefully crafting each track. Why not mix each individual song, on a song by song basis, instead of bragging about doing 'thousands' at once?
salsdali
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Yes, I've seen many diagrams on where to place the speakers, the angles, etc.
Atmos makes sound go from a 2D (2 dimensional plane X,Y) to a 3D space (X,Y,Z). Adding another axis makes the sound more realistic because we live in a 3D world.
2D sound was never realistic, it was a limitation of technology. 2D sound wasn't created because it was the best way to reproduce sound, it was created because they simply hadn't figured out the technology to reproduce 3D sound, most importantly the mixing of the 3D soundscape. It took computers to finally allow that to happen. Back in the quad era they had overhead speakers in movie theaters but didn't have a computer that let them mix that sound to best utilize those speakers.
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So are you saying that all these Atmos mixes we are discussing are basically produced using computer controlled algorithms that route signals to the height speakers in a more or less, generic way?
salsdali
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
not at all. I'm saying that today if you are a mixer and want to route a certain sound to a height channel you can now easily do it with computer software that will do it more precisely than if you just tried to calculate it manually (like the old days) and the software will warn you about the "phase shifts" that Elliot says can happen past a 5.1 speaker 2D plane.
BUT the mixer still has to make the choice of what sounds to place where. The computer is just a tool to allow that.
A software algorithm could make those choices for a mixer and I'm sure will see some of that in the future but it's unknown whether this will be the case for these 1000's of songs so I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are using a traditional human mixer to make those decisions because I have no evidence to the contrary.
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