This report is a counterpart to my original report from the first demo I was kindly invited to at Dolby's London HQ. Dolby Atmos For The Home - A Second 'Ears-on' Experience at Dolby's London HQ. I was privileged to be invited to a second demonstration of Atmos For The Home on Wednesday, 13th August, at Dolby's magnificent Soho Square HQ in London.
Inside “probably the best Atmos experience in Europe”.: As before, the presentation was split into two parts: the initial briefing and demo in Dolby's truly magnificent screening room, and the second part in their special 'HT' demo room, which is the size of a typical HT room in the UK.
Dolby's 'domestic HT room' setup.
But the main event of the day was yet to come and we filed into the special Home Theater demo room which Dolby have created to showcase Atmos. Stephen and JJ told us that we would hear the exact same clips as we had previously heard and that we would get the opportunity to hear them played through Atmos-enabled speakers and physical ceiling-mounted speakers, for comparison.
Before going into more detail, let me describe this room. It is a modestly sized room with 5 chairs in two rows (3 in front, 2 behind) and a ceiling height of 2.4m (roughly 8 feet). As can be seen in the photograph taken from the back of the room, there are some acoustic treatments on the walls.
What is less clear is the way the ceiling has been designed. The central section is a suspended design which features 4 reflective panels in its centre, and these are flanked by the ceiling-mounted speakers which are concealed behind acoustically transparent panels. In the photograph below you can see the central, reflective area and, to the bottom right you can just make out the acoustically transparent material covering the ceiling-mounted speakers. In the second photograph below you can see a close-up of that panel covering one of the speakers (to the right).
What surprised me is how small the reflective area is. It covered an area roughly, I am guessing, 4ft x 4ft and it is at this area that the Atmos speaker modules were 'aimed'. Inevitably, there is some 'overspill' onto the slightly higher plastered part of the ceiling but, as JJ pointed out, the distance between the suspended part of the ceiling and the plastered part is only about 1 foot or so - a millisecond in terms of sound travel - and this difference will have no significance in terms of what we hear. This bodes well for those with smaller rooms, as it seems that the full Atmos experience can be gained even from a relatively small reflective area. Those with ceiling treatments may yet be able to use Atmos-enabled speakers or modules so long as they can create this clear central reflective area I saw in Dolby's room.
(Incidentally I should give credit to Gizmodo for the above photograph of the room and I hope they do not mind me using it here as it is so much better than the photograph I took myself. Gizmodo's take on the event can be seen
here.)
Speakers and placement considerations.
The speakers used at listener level were all Kef designs: the tower and centre speakers are from the Kef R700 range. The upwards-firing modules are built by Kef according to the Dolby Atmos-enabled speaker specification but Dolby has no further information on that aspect of the speaker. As before, the surrounds were all placed at approximately ear level. Stephen later confirmed that this was to create the maximum distance between the listener level speakers and the ceiling speakers. In fact, Stephen said that ideally the ceiling speakers should be between 2 and 3 times the height of the listener level speakers. So in other words, if your main speakers' tweeters are 3.5 feet off the ground, then you will need a ceiling speaker to be at least 7 feet from the floor for the best effect, and preferably a little more. This should allow most people with a standard height ceiling to accommodate ceiling-mounted speakers, but may necessitate lowering the surround speakers somewhat, which is what I am having to do in my own room.
Again, I thank Gizmodo for the pictures of the Kef speakers and their Atmos upfiring module.
The incredible upward-firing Atmos speakers! No compromise!
JJ began the presentation by playing two Atmos trailers and asking us to guess whether they had been played via the Atmos speakers or via the ceiling-mounted physical speakers. I was the only person present who was able to detect that both clips were, in fact, played by the Atmos speakers. I am sure that the reason for this is that, having heard a similar demo before, I was much more tuned in as to what to listen for. Atmos speakers give a slightly more diffuse presentation while the ceiling-mounted speakers are slightly more 'precise' in where they place the sounds (objects). Neither one is better than the other: they are both excellent but (slightly) different.
It is a testament to the effectiveness of the Atmos speakers that even highly experienced listeners such as Richard and Gerald could not detect that these speakers were being used for this part of the demo. Once again, most people present later confirmed that they actually preferred the Atmos speakers to the ceiling-mounted speakers. There is absolutely no sense of 'compromise' if domestic circumstances mean you have to go the Atmos speakers route. I think it is especially important to stress this for two reasons: one is that it is almost incredible that sound bounced off the ceiling can sound this good and the other is that, for most people, Atmos speakers will be the only way they can incorporate Atmos into their home. If you fall into the latter group, do not hesitate for one moment to go with Atmos-enabled speakers or modules. I can guarantee that you will in no way at all be disappointed.
JJ then played us the STID clip, using both types of speaker in turn so that we could compare. Again, my impressions of slightly more diffuseness vs slightly more precision were confirmed.
Don't just hear the sound - see the sound.
We were next treated to an incredibly interesting section of the presentation where a graphic was overlaid onto the screen, simultaneously with a clip being played, which showed the sound objects moving in real time around the room.
And finally…. How did it sound?
No report of an Atmos demo would be complete without some attempt to convey in words how it all actually sounds. Well, in Dolby's multi-million dollar screening room, it sounds as good as the best commercial cinema in which you may have already heard Atmos movies: fabulous. The sense of immersion, the precision with which sounds are placed around you, the dynamic way that sounds move through the room, with such precision that you often end up following the sound with your eyes, as well as with your ears… all these are part of the commercial Atmos experience, and they all help take cinema sound to a whole new level (pun intended). As I said in my first report, Atmos is much, much more than 'height effects' and the occasional flyover of a helicopter.
But it is when you move to a typical HT environment that you will be truly amazed. Here, in a typical sized domestic space, Dolby seem to have worked a miracle. So little is lost compared with the commercial theater experience that you can scarcely believe it. In many ways, the HT demo is even more impressive than the 'big room' demo, simply because the result is so much less expected.
Using either Atmos speakers or ceiling-mounted speakers, your HT room will suddenly become the environment in which the action is taking place. Walls and ceiling simply disappear and you are transported to a cave, to outer space, to a forest, adding immensely to the enjoyment of the on-screen action in a way which you will not have previously experienced. In the opening scenes of Star Trek Into Darkness, when the aliens throw their spears, they don't just move from front to back of the room, as before. Now they also move overhead as well. As the aliens and the Enterprise crew run through the forest, you can hear precisely where they are, where their voices are coming from; the rustle of leaves and the snapping of branches happen above you, to your left, your right, in front of you. You are there. When I got home, I played that scene in my own HT, which is substantially treated and has high quality speakers, subs and amplification. The difference left me feeling 'flat'. So I say to Dolby, the AVR manufacturers, the content creators, the studios:
bring it on! I can't wait. And I would love to hear how the upmixing algorithm treats my legacy version of STID and how it compares with the full fat Atmos version - but that is something, I hope, for another demo on another day.