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Of course, for the home theater, Atmos is scaled down considerably. If a helicopter flies overhead and to the right, the sound will start in the back of the room, move overhead, and disappear off to the right side. For example, if it rains in the movie, the rain comes from directly above you. In a way, you can chase the sound with your ears, tracking it and correlating it to the on-screen action. With Atmos, the ceiling also can be lined with any number of full-range speakers that work in concert with all of the other speakers in the room, so these objects can be placed just about anywhere within a virtual hemisphere. This way, sound engineers can essentially leave the usual restrictions of channels behind, instead placing “sound objects” in pinpointed locations and moving them throughout the theater, in three dimensions. In contrast, Dolby Atmos is capable of processing up to 128 channels of sound, which can be routed to up to 64 individual speakers. But no matter how many speakers get placed in a certain area - say, the left side of the room for the left surround channel - all of those speakers were restricted to one channel of sound, so they all played the same sound at the same time. When designing a film’s soundtrack, directors are guided by these different channels to steer sound effects around the room. Before the advent of Dolby Atmos, theaters could only reproduce a maximum of eight individual tracks of surround sound, spread out among varying numbers of speakers, and used directionally.įor example: With the 7.1-channel surround sound still used in most theaters, you get three channels in front (left, right, and center), two side surround channels (left and right), two rear channels (left and right) - that totals seven - and one subwoofer channel, which makes up the point-one. In theaters, Dolby Atmos significantly expands the speakers used, as well as the way surround sound is employed, opening up new possibilities for movie-makers to provide a more realistic, immersive sound experience. Why your next soundbar should have Dolby Atmosĭolby Atmos in the theater: How is it different? Image courtesy of Dolby Labs.The Best Dolby Atmos movies for your home theater.What is Dolby Atmos Music, and how can you experience it?.
#DOLBY DIGITAL 7.1 REQUIRES A TOTAL OF EIGHT SPEAKERS HOW TO#
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There’s a lot of info to absorb here, so we’ve broken it all down below and will continue updating this article as things evolve.