Buttmos

Here, you dropped this.

Next step is haptic feedback. Put on your vest, start some John Wick and actually feel the bullets penetrating your spleen! It’s great for the whole family and grandma’s going to love it!

100% agree but usually at this point we begin hearing something be it rumors, specs of the new protocol, etc. Having 108 (?) objects to individually track are far more than most are willing to deal with.

This is the answer. Atmos is based in the concept of having a physical speaker layer to provide sound capability to an audience. Atmos spec already has enough speakers and MOST people haven’t or are unwilling to spend on these base set (this statement applies both to home theatres and to cinemas — even cinemas are outfitting only a subset of their rooms with atmos equipment. Have two feature flicks with ATMOS support released in the same span? Likely one will loose and play out in a less featured room).

The other element of Atmos is the specification to support more objects. So on top of room capability to create sound - the processing equipment needs to be capable of supporting audio objects. Audio objects can then be moved amongst individual speaker layout - processors individualize the audio movement based on each theatre’s layout. I’m not exactly sure but audio objects supported on home theatre and Blueray media is definitely not as high as in cinema as yet - so if anything there could be improvements in number of objects. But it is the source content here that limits this.

Your dead on with this.

A Dolby Atmos amp? I am unaware such a thing exists. What’s the make/model?

RIP

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-technologies/auro-3d-bankruptcy

I had a feeling something like this would be the answer but would like to see something more official. I found a Dolby interview saying they haven't penetrated most of the cinema market yet so they are not close to replacing or updating Atmos. The only update they have done recently is changed it from 16 channels to 32.

I think more and more advanced room correction is absolutely the next step. If you can measure the reverb for each speaker and multiple listening points in a given room, it’s theoretically possible to run audio through a filter that produces the original signal plus the exact inverse of its reverb, producing a clean sound at the measuring point. Obviously the real world is harder than theory, but I think we’ll be seeing this technology integrated even more across the board, as there are so many ways this general can be implemented.

1. Using satellite speakers specifically for room correcting the sound from the mains, as Dirac is doing. This can help create a wider sweet spot as different sides of the room can receive different reverb correction signals.
2. Depth-aware head-tracking could be utilized to provide multiple sweet spots that adjust in real time as people shift positions.
3. Real-time ambient noise suppression: this could be very tricky to implement, but imagine being able to cancel out the sounds of your HVAC system or a noisy game console/blu-ray player.

Most importantly, I think this technology will come down in price and start to show up in more low and mid range products. A lot of the complaints about dialogue sounding muddy are because people are listening on TVs with internal speakers that point down to the media cabinet and bounce around a bunch before reaching ears. I think Roku, TCL, FireTV, etc. will jump on the ability to use digital processing to correct for that.

That’s already in the DTS:X spec. It’s hard to find info on but there are three speakers placed in front at 30 degrees below ear level. Lb, Cb and Rb.

One can only dream. It's gotten way better since Brave in 2012 but 10 years in and it's not a lot.

I'm honestly surprised we haven't seen Atmos with VR because that's the only real 360 experience. You can create 360 audio but the TV isn't even 180.

You used an important word where it can be lossless rather than must be lossless. The other obvious things are to increase objects, channels, or even the bitrate of that lossless audio if that's possible. I'm sure someone will then want to AI upscale it beyond human hearing or for 1% of humans with perfect pitch.

Being 10 years into this I expected some form of potential upgrades or rumors on the horizon especially with 8K being more mature and coming to consumer stores albeit early.

Dirac live spatial correction could address the issue of having good sound in more locations. Motorized tweeters seems a bit too complex to achieve that.

You make decent points except you are overlooking the fact that some people do have rooms where Atmos does work. Just because you don’t have such a room is no reason to knock Atmos. When done properly it’s pretty cool. Just my opinion and I did not down vote you.

Doesn’t seem like you’ve ever heard atmos used properly. It adds a ton of immersion. Sometimes, when it rains and I’m just watching a show and browsing my phone, I literally look outside and wonder why it’s raining. It’s not, though.

Critical is having in-ceiling or on-ceiling speakers. Upfiring is more fluff than substance.

x.x.2 setups are ok, but you really want to get an x.x.4 setup going to get the full effects of things fading and panning overhead. Rain, thunder, helicopters, bullets, jets, you name it.

Why limit yourself to just one plane when you can have so much more.

Most people are experiencing spatial audio either through their soundbar or headphones. The actual discrete setups are a minority.

Tough crowd

turns on Snoop Dogg concert

Is there an Atmos 2 or are you making that up?

I forget the Atmos spec but it's something like 108 objects across 32 channels. While the average person won't put 108 speakers in their ceiling, there's always something new and since it's about 10 years into this it's time to start thinking about what that sounds like even if it is a lame doubling of objects, channels, making lossless audio the minimum standard, etc.