Dolby Atmos Theatre System - Page 14

Dolby Reaches New Heights at ShowEast 2012

Press Release
http://investor.dolby.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=719057

"Dolby Atmos Cinema Processor CP850 Pre-sale, Dolby IMB with High Frame Rate, and Dolby Digital Cinema solutions raise the standard of the entertainment experience

Hollywood, FL, November 6, 2012-Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE: DLB) will showcase its latest digital cinema offerings at ShowEast 2012 (Westin® Diplomat Resort & Spa, booth 1103). Today, Dolby announced the pre-sale availability of the Dolby® Atmos™ Cinema Processor CP850, which includes the Dolby Atmos Commissioning Service with purchase.

The new Dolby CP850 offers a complete audio solution to today's digital cinema theatres. In addition to Dolby Atmos playback, the Dolby CP850 offers support for 64 speaker feeds, and is configurable between 16 analog outputs and a Dolby Atmos Connect output, Dolby Surround 7.1, and 5.1 digital playback (PCM as part of DCI movies). It also supports common consumer formats used with alternative content in cinemas: Dolby Digital Plus™, Dolby Pro Logic® II, Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby E. When more than 16 channels of output are needed, the Dolby CP850 uses Dolby Atmos Connect, an audio-over-Ethernet protocol designed to efficiently send a high number of digital audio channels to multiple end points, including amplifiers and analog breakout boxes.

The Dolby Atmos Commissioning Service is included with each purchase of the Dolby CP850. The service provides a review of the cinema's sound-system design to ensure that the speakers and amplifiers have the necessary performance and room coverage to deliver a high-quality Dolby Atmos experience. Also included is the initial room equalization after the equipment is installed.
... "

Atmos Cinema Processor
http://www.dolby.com/us/en/professional/hardware/cinema/audio-processor/cp850.html

drool

I wonder what the cost is on that CP850. Don't see it mentioned anywhere. I guess if you have to ask...
Hopefully a consumer grade version becomes available and at an affordable price.

While the technophile in me hopes your wish comes true, the pragmatist wonders if (say) a studio rendered generic 14 channel|speaker layout TrueHD soundtrack on "future disc"--which would permit a simple downmix on much more than 99% of all consumer AV systems--might not deliver a more cost effective solution to "Home Theater replication" of the theatrical Dolby Atmos movie experience...?!

. . . AV aficionados with systems containing 16+ separately addressed|amped speakers will no doubt continue to hold a contrary opinion!
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Edited by SoundChex - 11/7/12 at 11:45am

To what end? Even if you could easily afford a CP850, how would you gain access to Atmos encoded soundtracks?

I did ask yesterday...

It will be well north of $15,000.

Remember that it also includes Lake processing EQ for the entire system, plus many other high end features... it isn't simply a "decoder..."

Why not just create an audiophile grade 24 bit resolution, bit-for-bit lossless, 11.2 or 13.2 discrete, full-frequency channel format for 4k Blu-ray and be done with it?

Use the standard 7.1 channel layout and then add 2 discrete stereo over-head channels and optional discrete Left Front Surround and discrete Right Front Surround to widen out the on-screen soundstage and allow for smoother panning to the side and back surround locations. If you went to 13.2, you'd add discrete Left Center and Right Center screen channels that are on the same plain as the standard left-center-right speakers. A home theater with large, projection screen would be well suited for 13.2.

If you don't have room for the extra center channels or front "surround" channels, then they could be folded into the speakers you have with some fancy logic circuitry. Then you can filter out bass heavy surround effects into optional subwoofer locations... that's basically the Atmos layout, but in a more home-friendly setup. And you wouldn't need all that processing power in your consumer surround unit.

They seem to be going with a more channels, not better sounding channels approach. And slipping back to a "matrix" surround/post-processed school of thought. A discrete channel will give more pin-point accuracy than a matrix derived or "phased" channel anyway, especially when panning.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 11/14/12 at 9:41am

Except Atmos is object based, not channel based.

Simply adding more channels to a base 7.1 signal doesn't do what Atmos does.

Well hopefully a consumer grade atmos receiver shows up next year or a comparable content system like the one DTS is working on. $15k is a bit on the high side unless you are one of those people with the million dollar home theaters. I'm sure once it is available for the home, object based sound will be added to blurays. Anyway, I guess I'll go ahead and wire my home theater for more channels while i'm building it (over heads, side highs, back highs) because sooner or later something is going to come along that will use all of it for object based sound.

What would be "better sounding" than a bit-for-bit copy of the encoding master? Once you already have that, there's no place to go but more channels (or object-based mixes).

Even if you are 'one of those people with the million dollar home theatres', what would you use it for? Supposed Dolby simply handed you an Atmos decoder right now, for free, what would you do with it?

Dan..... object based mixing doesnt care how maby channels exist on the playback side of things... it is channel agnostic....

It is a huge leap forward... in stating that giong 13.2 would be "done.woth it" shows that you arent recognizing the leap forward we are takkng with these new techs, not only with Atmos for theaters but MDA, etc ..

The Atmos or MDA created soundtracks will scale to whatever channel count the user plays it back on, regardless of how many channels it was monitored on when mixing

You also have to seperate hime theater from the discussion of Atmos.

However, since you brought it up, Atmos actually does up the quality of surround presentation..

Discrete full range channels in thr sphere, bass management and Lake processskng add to the experience..

Easily the best large venue surround experience I have had...

Have a dci projector and a $50k movie server so you can watch first run movies in your theater including the new atmos releases as they come out.. Oh and pay the fees to do so :P

At that point, might as well buy a movie theatre; when you're not using it you can charge admission to recoup the cost of your hobby.

Filmmixer... so how does the "object" based mixing work as opposed to the traditional way of layering music, dialog, and sound effects stems and panning each separate element or sound effect around the room on a mixer board to specific channel locations?

It's not a psychoacoustic type of approach like the old SRS system is it?

Is it up to 24 bit/96 kHz lossless audio like DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD on Blu-ray or is it slipping back to a lossy compressed format... or has Dolby not divulged this information?

Truly, I'm curious.

I would assume in your line of work, you've perhaps been able to get some hands-on experience with the Atmos system?

How do you think this would translate to the home? You'd think there would have to be a pretty hard limit on the channel outputs available on consumer-grade equipment and how much audio data space 4k media discs could handle.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 11/15/12 at 1:52pm

Thanks for the heads-up, Roger!

One would think that in order to not cause confusion in the consumer market, there would have to be an industry standard adopted for object oriented mixing. And would these limitations hamper what the sound mixer/engineer could do in this new kind of sound mix?

If you have a very active surround mix with lots of effects flying around the room simultaneously (Saving Private Ryan, as one example) along with multi-channel music score, panned dialog, etc. etc. is it possible that the object based mix would be potentially worse than a traditional "channel-based" mix? Especially if the amount of simultaneous objects with metadata control is curtailed on consumer media and home electronics?

I wouldn't imagine that a 4k Blu-ray would have the storage or bit budget to do a full-bore Atmos type mix plus Ultra-HD 4k video if the BDA insists on being cheap and sticking with BD-50 discs rather than 100 or 200 BDXL discs (or going to holographic disc storage). And what consumer product would have 64 speaker outputs and the processing power to do Atmos plus Lake style auto-EQ calibration? I'd hate to see the bill on something like that!

Also, are you saying that a consumer based object oriented mix might consist of a standard Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA 7.1 channel lossless encoded track with object oriented metadata channels or sound files layered "on top"? If you had an Atmos decoder chip, it would augment the standard mix and enhance it with new and improved sound effects, and if you didn't the Atmos data would be ignored?

Or would you need two separate audio tracks? Or is it possible that something like Atmos is just too much for the consumer market and a lossless 11.1 or 13.1 discrete "channel-based" track be a more "doable" option? With a new 4k media disc on the horizon, that would be the time to introduce an audio improvement. Regular Blu-ray is set in stone, apparently.
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 11/15/12 at 2:32pm

Okay, so according to what I've read, Atmos currently has a 9.1 discrete channel base with an additional 128 separate "objects" that can be controlled via metadata. If this package was delivered at 24 bit / 48 kHz, bit-for-bit lossless, about how many Gigabytes would the average movie soundtrack take up and what kind of bitrate would we be looking at?

I'm trying to get a realistic idea of what would be needed in a consumer format to get a good Atmos-like experience.

Anyone want to take a stab at this?

Also, Roger Dressler mentioned something like Atmos for the home would take 5 or so years to come to fruition. Wouldn't that mean it would not be ready for 4k Blu-ray? I keep hearing 2013/2014 for the new medium to coincide with the UHD TV roll out.

Will DTS/SRS beat Dolby to the punch and make it onto the 4k Blu-ray specs., and how similar/different is their "object oriented" approach to Atmos? Any better? Worse? The same?
Edited by Dan Hitchman - 11/15/12 at 4:40pm

Planning for the inclusion of advanced audio on 4K resolution discs might well be a critical factor in early adoption of any new video format...

Given the extant price points of 4K displays, it seems likely there are currently more consumers able to afford to upgrade the audio element of their Home Theater to "something beyond 7.1" than might replace the video element with a 4K display. So the addition of advanced audio to (still hypothetical) 4K video disks might provide one more incentive for some consumers to buy "next generation discs" in the near term--to gain the benefits of "advanced sound" now . . . in the knowledge that the 4K video step up also available on the discs they have purchased will become accessible to them later--when 4K display prices fall to more acceptable levels...?!
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Edited by SoundChex - 11/16/12 at 7:20am

Roger,

So you're saying that there are knowable unknowables and possibly unknowable knowables in your responses...?

Roger, curious how do you do multiple separate responses to one post like you did ion post #410.

Thirty something. Including engineering.

We will be doing our first screening room with ATMOS. Past the first 16 channels the connectivity to the rest of the 64 is via BLU-LINK (over cat 6).




The system does the autoeq like the datasat and trinnov.

Cool is that the sides and rear base signal can be steered managed. With panning bass above 40hz.
Edited by CINERAMAX - 11/17/12 at 9:27pm

Hmm well all I have to do is get rich now and I'll get one :P also I didn't realize they used a rotary sub in the install.. nice

Just seems to work like cut/paste; do you have to repeat the process for every point separately?

Wow who knew?

Dolby doesnt spec rotary subs AFAIK....

The system he is describing also includes other non-standard parts, such as 5 height spekaers above the screen
...

Probably a set up to accomodate both Atmos and Auro 3D.. unless the Torus screen isnt perforated and they are splitting the low feeq cabinets from the horns/high end drivers which in my experience is one of the worst things you can do .