DTS Neo.X - Page 23

A mix I have M&K 150;s with tri-poles for surrounds, 2 M&K 350 THX subs and use Klipschs for the overhead and presence speakers as acquiring M&Ks to fill out the system are harder and harder to come by.

Eventually I will replace them all with the exception of the subs, (love these subs) for a single brand matched set, just have not decided what yet and won't until I decide on a final configuration and that will be a while.. For example I might put back my rear center surround, also toying with the idea of adding side presence speakers, not to mention emerging technology that might change everything.

In the meantime I will continue to have fun experimenting.

 M&K great speakers :)

 

I have a sub from them in my exercise room :)

I've got a couple of those lying around, was planning to try and create ceiling surround center channel with it.

So how is this setup? Are your 7NT's being fed by either the surround or surround rear output on their own with the Y splitter being used for the four 802's on either just the surround or surround rear outputs or are you using the Y splitter to run the 7NT's off of either the surround or surround rears in which a pair of 802's is also being run? I hope it's the latter and you aren't depriving a pair of 802's from their own discrete channel.

Careful what you ask for, if the SSP-800 had dts Neo:X you would be short an additional pair of either 800's or 802's for the wides

If you mean a single speaker directly over listening position, it would be easy, if you have 7.1 just use the left and right side surrounds outs as front left and right inputs on the CS3XJR then use the SP1 out to feed the overhead. The key when calibrating it is not to be able to hear it when it is on (you will want to) but be able to tell when it is turned off if that makes sense.

Yes on everything but "a single speaker", I would more likely have to be 4 speakers with the same signal to have better function across all seats.

( I think the reason I bought two was to also to the same with the surround back into a surround back center, they've been sitting in their boxes a couple of years now, so memory has become a bit vague... )

What signal do you feed to the overhead speakers?

 

I am using custom made Canare Y XLR cables to run the 7NT's off the surround rears in which a pair of 802's is also being driven. I am not depriving a pair of 802's from their own discrete channel.

 

I might try the Y Cables to feed 802Ds for just surround!

 

Classe, please bring it on DTS NEOX

Depends on seating arrangement and speaker placement, if it is 4 seats in a single row you could split the out to feed all four speaker or you could use two CS3XJR's use front left and rear surround left as inputs and split the out for the two speakers for the seats to the left form one box and front right and rear right for inputs and split the out for the two speakers over the right seats, essentially creating left and right overhead channels which may give you better surround steering front to back and visa-versa. You would really need to experiment and see which way sounds better in your room.

If it is two rows of two seats with two speakers per row it could get a little trickier.

You can do the same trick I mention for a center overhead for a surround back center speaker using the left and right rears as inputs and center out on the box.

I do not want to derail this thread more than I have already, but I basically I use CS3XJR boxes to derive side axis and over head channels from 7.1 surround, quite accurately I may add.

Here is an old thread on the subject;

http://www.avsforum.com/t/982996/11-1-1-4-surround-sound-experimenting-in-enhancing-expanding-5-1-7-1-formats

Three seats front row, two seats second row. I was planning to split signal. I just want multiple speakers to better maintain direction "up" for all seats.

Impressive experimentation in that old thread.

If your side surrounds are positioned between the two rows of seats the mono overhead split 4 ways would probably work. If your side surrounds are positioned in line with the first row of seats you could do the mono for the first row with one of your boxes then acquire two more CS3XJR's giving you a total of four. Use the side left and rear left for left and right inputs to box 1, use side right and rear right as left and right inputs on box two, then use the center out on each of those boxes for left and right inputs on box 3 and the SP1 out of that box to feed the two speakers above 2nd row of seats. ( told you it would be trickier)

This would create a second mono overhead channel that displays the sound as it leaves the first row overheads but before the sound makes it to the rear surrounds and visa-versa giving you smoother transition, and better sound quality from either row..

Thanks, I still have a lot of experimenting I would like to do; for example I use one CS3XJR to create front left side axis and front left overhead using center out for the side axis and sp1 out for the overhead, I am thinking of using the SP2 out for a small speaker placed on the floor below the side axis and do the same for all the surround sound speakers extending the surround stage all the way down to the ground.

Another idea I want to try is get 7 small subs, in addition to my 2 big subs, use the two sub outs on my receiver for the big subs, then similarly to above use the sub outs on the CS3XJRs placing subs on the floor below the front side axis, side surrounds, rear side axis and rear center surround for 9 channel sub surround.

After reading though this thread I think my next experiment might be upgrading to a DTS Neo-X 11.2 receiver and incorporating the heights in to my existing mix, might have to remove my front presence speakers, or perhaps make them side presence, or perhaps remove them altogether.

I have three side surrounds on each side...

I'm going with 6 big ones in front (stereo coupled with .1-channel added). Wouldn't have space for anything different either. But also because that's where I want them for pure stereo listening.

At least you'll free up som CS3XJR's for more experiments.

I'm not familiar with AAD. However, after trying several other strategies to improve the intelligibility of dialog, I found that buying a better center speaker was the only thing that worked for me. I got an Axiom M2i for about $128 around 8 years ago -- no more dialog problems.
Edited by GregLee - 2/28/13 at 9:42am

Instead of buying a bunch of outdated SMART decoders and/or a new, really expensive DTS Neo:X receiver (or pre-amp), why not just wait a little bit and see what shakes out with object oriented audio? We should know more either this year or sometime next (it's all tied into UHD media launch windows). Unless you guys have money to burn to keep upgrading equipment as it comes, that is. If you do, my address and bank routing number is...

Then the mono overhead split to four speakers should work fine.

That should be something to hear when you are done!

Yes am looking forward to that but it still maybe a while before it trickles down to affordability for most of us.

If we don't know what the best of the last generation sound is like, we won't be able to judge whether the next generation sound is truly better.

Everything I've read up about Dolby Atmos and DTS MDA, it does seem like engineers and audience attendees agree that it is definitely a big improvement in sound steering technology given the state-of-the-art. Instead of having a set amount of fixed channels, you could practically have as many as feasible. It's not just standard panning by sound amplitude (making the sound louder or softer as it moves from one channel to another in a fixed plane), but by more sophisticated psychoacoustic means allowing for "height," "width," and "depth." The metadata instructions embedded in the bitstreamed soundtrack data "package" during the original sound mixing sessions then tells the surround decoder where to place the various sounds in the room.

As an example, if you have left/right arrays of three side surround speakers each hooked up and wired separately... they don't all get hit with the same sound all at once (as if you only had one set of L/R side surrounds). If a particular effect has been instructed to come more from off-screen in the front left quadrant, if you have a side surround speaker there (and the decoder is designed for that amount of side speakers and has been told that information during the calibration phase), that's where it will be placed. If you don't, then it will be phantom imaged between the two adjacent speakers (like a "virtual" speaker). Every speaker in the room has now become a channel, in a manner of speaking. The more speakers you have, the more "detailed" the soundtrack becomes... until it matches the original track as envisioned by the original mixer (he/she could have mixed using 22 speaker quadrants, as an example).

Obviously, there will be a fixed number of speaker output instructions for the decoder and audio outputs on the surround processor. But just like Atmos can handle 64, you could possibly have that many in the most advanced surround processors.

Pretty cool, eh?
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 2/28/13 at 6:16pm

While I agree that object-oriented sound is a superior methodology, I don't think we will see it in the home for several years, except at the very upper echelons of cost. Given the limited number of movies being created right now with Atmos (Dolby lists 16 in the first half of 2013), I suspect that it will be quite a while before there is enough content to truly justify the expense over a "traditional" 9- or 11-channel system. Plus most "normal" consumers are barely at 5.1 and will have no desire to add more speakers.

That said, I would be happy to be wrong and have the manufacturers surprise me with an affordable Atmos option in the near future!!

Because some people aren't in the hobby of waiting. Until object based audio shows up for consumers, some folks will use other means to get the height effect in their systems.

Consumer 7.1 pre-pros went on sale in 1986. Consumer 7.1 content didn't show up on home video until 2006. Some wanted 7.1 back in the '80s. Others preferred waiting a couple of decades. Same today with heights: Neo:X vs waiting. Different hobbies for different folks. Where in the Atmos literature does it say that it's not amplitude-based panning (albeit to more speakers)? What "sophisticated psychoacoustic means" are they using to achieve height, width and depth (as opposed to simply panning sounds to speakers at those locations)? If you can point to where you're getting this info, that would be much appreciated.

I agree 100%

Atmos for home use will be quite a while up the road... the bluray disc I put in yesterday didn't even have a 7.1 track on it. And given how hard it is to put 7.1 systems in non-nerd homes, even if home-atmos do happen, it probably most often won't be hooked to more speakers, while a select few will build rooms out of stacked speakers rather than walls...

I'm building my theater now, and going for 11.2 and thinking of manually extracting and overhead channel seems quite decent planning for the future. It will most likely be hit with 5.1 tracks more often than 11.1 Neo:X matrixed onto 7 channels for quite a while to come. With the possibility of decoupling my side surrounds for another three channels - home-atmos with 15/16.2 (or .6 with subs decoupled) should yield decent results methinks.

Psychoacoustic panning using sound spatialization methodology and embedded metadata instructions is the backbone of object-oriented mixing. They use information on how humans perceive sound to simulate 3D audio spatial cues. They can make multiple sound effects seem like they're coming at you and then passing around your head... like individual bullets from a gun fired from on-screen, more precisely than traditional linear panning. In the Atmos mix for "Brave," they used that effect for the will-o-the-wisps scenes.

Google "SRS MDA" and "3D audio object oriented coding" for more. Dolby Atmos still has 9.1 discrete "fixed" audio beds and 128 objects that can be controlled by spatial panning. It's a hybrid system. Supposedly, SRS MDA (now DTS MDA) drops the traditional channel based system altogether and is a completely object-oriented bitstream with no set object or speaker limits. It's using open source 3D coding, so it can be cross-platformed and used for Atmos theaters, DTS MDA theaters, home use, etc. etc.

They even go into why Dolby Atmos and MDA didn't go with the spatial matrix coding tricks of DTS Neo:X and Audyssey. It's not precise and more of a "blob" of audio sort-of positioned else-where (kind of like Dolby Stereo encoding of yore). Metadata instruction tagged to each sound is far more sophisticated for controlling each and every sound object in 3D space.

European UHD broadcasting could choose to go with object oriented audio as an option (and are strongly considering doing so). It could be used in the U.S. for UHD broadcasts as well.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 3/1/13 at 10:13am

There are no "channels" with the DTS/SRS MDA version of object-oriented sound. It's completely scalable and upgradeable as the hardware adds more speaker outputs. You can play it back on any number. You don't have to buy a new UHD movie version just to have more channels (like some of these Disney Blu-ray discs that started with a 5.1 track and then were remixed to 7.1)... you just add more speakers if you have open output plugs available.

There won't be a 7.1 track or 2.0 track or 11.1 track with UHD media using this codec. It will be whatever your particular object-based decoder and receiver or pre-amp has been wired to handle and how many metadata "rendering" instructions and spatial cues were fed into the bitstream during the mixing stage.

For those movies that were not re-mixed or re-imagined for object-oriented surround soundtracks, you will still have "channel-based" codecs available.

This is the one big reason object-oriented mixing is such a substantial industry-wide hit: almost unlimited scalability and the ease of rendering a complete 3D audio mix. The adoption of object mixing software at post production houses, once a standard has been set, will probably be a lot quicker than other surround formats of the past.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 3/1/13 at 10:15am

So we can safely say it will be 4 or 5 more years before we see object oriented mixing hit the consumer level, yes? It has not even been adopted by the production houses yet.

24 movies from various studios have been mixed with at least Dolby Atmos' version of object-oriented sound and the technology just received a test run last year in certain theaters. And now more are being mixed this way. Oblivion, The Croods, Monsters University, and Iron Man 3 will also get object-oriented sound mixes.

Dolby is not pushing this for the home, but DTS is. This format can't add it to Blu-ray's specs., but it will be ready as an option for UHD media and broadcasting. If the buzz is correct, we could see it hit homes in less than two years, though probably it will be included on more advanced surround processors to start. NHK broadcasting in Japan is already starting to use a version that has 22 speakers.

The 22.2 that comes with Super HV is not object based rendering I believe.

Do you have that on good authority? Hint. They were wrong -- technically. Whether it would ever happen is another matter entirely.
Kevin is right that it is a channel-based format, but it can more efficiently be delivered as objects, since when the channel falls silent, the bitstream stops. Plus it can be much more effectively mapped to "whatever speakers" by using object rendering than other forms of downmixing. So I'd expect this to be a happy marriage of NHK creation and object audio delivery, odd as that might seem at first blush.

I's a bit of a semantics thing. MDA an define an object that exists the full duration of the program and points to a given speaker. It'll operate the same as a channel in that case.
I would not rule these forms of audio out at least as contributors to the mix.
I like your enthusiasm!