You have the German Ascot Elite version?Hey, I’ve got this one! I guess I’m already on my way
Poll: Atmos Music: Are You Going to Listen at Home?
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jimfisheye
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
- Joined
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Haven't gotten that far yet. I used to use Protools HD. I still have v7 & v8. I upgraded to Reaper about 10 years ago now when PT crashed and burned with their v9 release. I remember wishing I had upgraded a couple years earlier after that! I screwed up too. I should have sold that old water cooled dual core G5 with the 2 HD cards when it was all still worth something!
If it's only available in that new proprietary PT plugin format they introduced after their fall from grace... then they can shove it!
Anyway, I need to see a release that interests me first to drive the hunger for all this.
I enjoy watching movies as much as I do listening to surround music.
Since my system doubles for both, it's a no-brainer not to take advantage of ATMOS.
If it were music only, I would be slightly less inclined due to the somewhat limited selection.
Since my system doubles for both, it's a no-brainer not to take advantage of ATMOS.
If it were music only, I would be slightly less inclined due to the somewhat limited selection.
markshan
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Like I say, I'm not sure.Haven't gotten that far yet. I used to use Protools HD. I still have v7 & v8. I upgraded to Reaper about 10 years ago now when PT crashed and burned with their v9 release. I remember wishing I had upgraded a couple years earlier after that! I screwed up too. I should have sold that old water cooled dual core G5 with the 2 HD cards when it was all still worth something!
If it's only available in that new proprietary PT plugin format they introduced after their fall from grace... then they can shove it!
Anyway, I need to see a release that interests me first to drive the hunger for all this.
Uh, apparently I have the completely non-elite run-of-the-mill blu-ray... but I still love the way it sounds! So much for getting a head start on my Atmos collection, lol.
I feel your pain. I have 5 TTN BDs!
I agree. For me, wife knows that my AV hobby and photography are non negotiable. I will get what I when I want sooner or later. That being said, I feel I am pretty reasonable in terms of my expenditures and what I get and I don't push my luck.
As the German Ascot Elite is a different region, I can safely skip it 
jimfisheye
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2010
- Messages
- 3,025
Jesus... I kind of left Metallica behind shortly after MoP but the way you've been talking about this is making me want to check it out!
Do you happen to have any idea of the fullest decode of the Atmos surround mix? The full channel format used? (When not folded down at all.)
I'm probably going to try to approach this from the content creator direction and get a plugin or however the software is provided to decode it that way. This a good candidate to wow me? I'm sure I'd like the set either way, so it's a safe pick no matter what.
Same here
Count me firmly in the "excited about Atmos" (and other object-based surround) camp.
A while back I sat through an Atmos demo at a an electronics retailer here in the city, and I was completely wowed, and it was on a system with the upward firing type of speakers (which are apparently not even as good as the ceiling mounted ones) and as someone who's really picky about imaging and localisation, I wasn't left wanting at all. The demo included some bits from a nature documentary where a magpie flew toward you and as it went "over" you it squawked, and the effect was so realistic I involuntarily recoiled downward slightly and looked up. There was also a music video for some electronica group that was fully discrete with stuff ping-ponging and swirling around like some modern-day Enoch Light mix or something.
Like @markshan (whose post in the other thread really summed up everything I was thinking) I'm surprised at all the negativity about it here, because I see pretty much only positives.
Dolby and UMG are pumping money in to this because they want to build a market for it - Dolby for encoding fees, and UMG wants people to come and use their Atmos mixing facilities. This is the kind of chicken-and-egg scenario that befalls every new technology or format, people won't buy the hardware if the software doesn't exist, but companies won't put out the software if no one buys it because they don't have the equipment to play it on. So UMG and Dolby are growing eggs in a lab (by doing all this remixing before there's a market) to get the whole ball rolling. I also wouldn't worry about the wording of a press release - "thousands of tracks" sounds a lot more impressive than "a few hundred albums".
Speaking of 'chicken and egg' scenarios, the complaints that "there are only a few good surround mixers"? If the prerequisite for being a surround mixer was having previous experience as a surround mixer, there wouldn't be any at all. When I spoke to Arthur Stoppe - who worked at Sigma Sound in the 70s and engineered (or assisted on) most of the PIR quads, which I think are some of the best ever done - a while back, I asked him if they had any training, or instruction or anything on how to mix in quad, and he basically said "no, we just did what we thought sounded good". As much as I love Elliot Scheiner and Bob Clearmountain and Steven Wilson, surround mixing needn't be the preserve of septuagenarians...with apologies to Mr. Wilson who's only in his 50s. My hope is that with this new technology, and the push to popularize it will attract a whole new generation of mixers that want to try new things and who don't accept all the accepted dogma about how things "should" be done.
I actually think the whole concept of object-based mixing could (and should) lead to MORE adventurous surround mixing. I think most of us have found that the majority of 5.1 mixes tend to be front-centric, or front heavy at least, and I think that's a subtle (or not so subtle) byproduct of the fact that mixers were sitting there looking at a 5.1 montoring setup that had three big speakers in the front, and two smaller ones behind them, so they thought "big sounds in the front, smaller ones behind". The neat thing about object-based mixing is that it's essentially setup agnostic, so the speakers themselves don't become a consideration, you don't have to worry about the size of the speakers the end user has, or if they're full range, how much bass to redirect to the subwoofer, etc. You're free to put the sounds where you think they should be heard, anywhere inside a 360 degree sphere.
And speaking of that....the "height" effect, as I mentioned earlier, was remarkable - ever since I went to that demo, I've been thinking about the practical applications for music, and there are a million of them. This isn't like "let's put a guitar in the ceiling!" type stuff...although maybe someone will do that...imagine if the opening string bends in Iron Man descended from above you? Awesome! But take drums as a simple example, for decades we've lived with drums in mono, or in stereo-width, but no height to them. Then quad comes along and we get all kinds of weird arrangements that don't actually make logical sense, but are fun anyway - drums in stereo in the rear, drums in 1 speaker, half the kit in the front but the cymbals behind you, drums spread diagonally from one front to the opposite rear. Now imagine drums with height - let's say you have them in front of you like a standard stereo mix - but you can have the crash cymbals up high, rack toms and snare drum kinda 'belt level' and the bass drum and floor toms down low...for the first time ever a "four on the floor" beat can actually be on the floor for the listener. Then add back wall and ceiling reverb and you're actually 'in' the listening space - imagine John Bonham's 'When The Levee Breaks' drums and it actually sounds like you're inside the stone stairwell at Headley Grange. Imagine you're listening to Steely Dan's 'Peg' and not only are Michael McDonald's glorious backing vocals behind you, they're arrayed so it sounds like they've stacked all the "virtual McDonalds" vertically as well as spreading them horizontally in stereo, like he's in rows of choir pews. The possibilities for what you can do are almost limitless.
Also, I don't see the proliferation of soundbars as a bad thing at all. I remember the last time I had to set up my surround system and it took almost a whole day to arrange the equipment, and figure out all the cable routing and wiring (as I got more and more fed up) it was like I had a direct insight in to why this isn't for everyone. I have lots of friends who are more "casual" about audio and have equipment like soundbars etc, and they're really happy with them - everyone listens to music differently, and if someone who buys an Atmos soundbar, loves it, and then buys some Atmos music, it's still one sale the same as it is if someone with a $50k 11.2.4 system buys the same music.
Is there any point (from a surround music standpoint) in going out and getting all outfitted for Atmos right now? Probably not, unless you're independently wealthy. But I feel like right now is kinda like the equivalent of the summer of 1970 for surround lovers - equipment manufacturers made all kinds of announcements about new Q8 decks, and there were a trickle of discrete quad releases (Vanguard, Liberty, etc.) but it was that big announcment from RCA of 70 Q8's in November 1970 that really kind of said "quad has arrived". Were those early RCA quad mixes perfect? No, but there were lots of gems, and they were the start of something great. My hope is that this big UMG announcement is something similar. Sony is apparently waiting in the wings with their own object-based format called "360 Reality Audio," and while I don't think anyone wants another format war, the more companies that are competing to sell surround music the better.
So with my current surround system DOA, as I save my pennies toward a new one (and lust over a lot of equipment I can't afford presently) I'm watching all these new developments with great interest. I don't think I've been this excited about the possibilities for "new" surround music since the initial DVD-A announcement in 2000.
A while back I sat through an Atmos demo at a an electronics retailer here in the city, and I was completely wowed, and it was on a system with the upward firing type of speakers (which are apparently not even as good as the ceiling mounted ones) and as someone who's really picky about imaging and localisation, I wasn't left wanting at all. The demo included some bits from a nature documentary where a magpie flew toward you and as it went "over" you it squawked, and the effect was so realistic I involuntarily recoiled downward slightly and looked up. There was also a music video for some electronica group that was fully discrete with stuff ping-ponging and swirling around like some modern-day Enoch Light mix or something.
Like @markshan (whose post in the other thread really summed up everything I was thinking) I'm surprised at all the negativity about it here, because I see pretty much only positives.
Dolby and UMG are pumping money in to this because they want to build a market for it - Dolby for encoding fees, and UMG wants people to come and use their Atmos mixing facilities. This is the kind of chicken-and-egg scenario that befalls every new technology or format, people won't buy the hardware if the software doesn't exist, but companies won't put out the software if no one buys it because they don't have the equipment to play it on. So UMG and Dolby are growing eggs in a lab (by doing all this remixing before there's a market) to get the whole ball rolling. I also wouldn't worry about the wording of a press release - "thousands of tracks" sounds a lot more impressive than "a few hundred albums".
Speaking of 'chicken and egg' scenarios, the complaints that "there are only a few good surround mixers"? If the prerequisite for being a surround mixer was having previous experience as a surround mixer, there wouldn't be any at all. When I spoke to Arthur Stoppe - who worked at Sigma Sound in the 70s and engineered (or assisted on) most of the PIR quads, which I think are some of the best ever done - a while back, I asked him if they had any training, or instruction or anything on how to mix in quad, and he basically said "no, we just did what we thought sounded good". As much as I love Elliot Scheiner and Bob Clearmountain and Steven Wilson, surround mixing needn't be the preserve of septuagenarians...with apologies to Mr. Wilson who's only in his 50s. My hope is that with this new technology, and the push to popularize it will attract a whole new generation of mixers that want to try new things and who don't accept all the accepted dogma about how things "should" be done.
I actually think the whole concept of object-based mixing could (and should) lead to MORE adventurous surround mixing. I think most of us have found that the majority of 5.1 mixes tend to be front-centric, or front heavy at least, and I think that's a subtle (or not so subtle) byproduct of the fact that mixers were sitting there looking at a 5.1 montoring setup that had three big speakers in the front, and two smaller ones behind them, so they thought "big sounds in the front, smaller ones behind". The neat thing about object-based mixing is that it's essentially setup agnostic, so the speakers themselves don't become a consideration, you don't have to worry about the size of the speakers the end user has, or if they're full range, how much bass to redirect to the subwoofer, etc. You're free to put the sounds where you think they should be heard, anywhere inside a 360 degree sphere.
And speaking of that....the "height" effect, as I mentioned earlier, was remarkable - ever since I went to that demo, I've been thinking about the practical applications for music, and there are a million of them. This isn't like "let's put a guitar in the ceiling!" type stuff...although maybe someone will do that...imagine if the opening string bends in Iron Man descended from above you? Awesome! But take drums as a simple example, for decades we've lived with drums in mono, or in stereo-width, but no height to them. Then quad comes along and we get all kinds of weird arrangements that don't actually make logical sense, but are fun anyway - drums in stereo in the rear, drums in 1 speaker, half the kit in the front but the cymbals behind you, drums spread diagonally from one front to the opposite rear. Now imagine drums with height - let's say you have them in front of you like a standard stereo mix - but you can have the crash cymbals up high, rack toms and snare drum kinda 'belt level' and the bass drum and floor toms down low...for the first time ever a "four on the floor" beat can actually be on the floor for the listener. Then add back wall and ceiling reverb and you're actually 'in' the listening space - imagine John Bonham's 'When The Levee Breaks' drums and it actually sounds like you're inside the stone stairwell at Headley Grange. Imagine you're listening to Steely Dan's 'Peg' and not only are Michael McDonald's glorious backing vocals behind you, they're arrayed so it sounds like they've stacked all the "virtual McDonalds" vertically as well as spreading them horizontally in stereo, like he's in rows of choir pews. The possibilities for what you can do are almost limitless.
Also, I don't see the proliferation of soundbars as a bad thing at all. I remember the last time I had to set up my surround system and it took almost a whole day to arrange the equipment, and figure out all the cable routing and wiring (as I got more and more fed up) it was like I had a direct insight in to why this isn't for everyone. I have lots of friends who are more "casual" about audio and have equipment like soundbars etc, and they're really happy with them - everyone listens to music differently, and if someone who buys an Atmos soundbar, loves it, and then buys some Atmos music, it's still one sale the same as it is if someone with a $50k 11.2.4 system buys the same music.
Is there any point (from a surround music standpoint) in going out and getting all outfitted for Atmos right now? Probably not, unless you're independently wealthy. But I feel like right now is kinda like the equivalent of the summer of 1970 for surround lovers - equipment manufacturers made all kinds of announcements about new Q8 decks, and there were a trickle of discrete quad releases (Vanguard, Liberty, etc.) but it was that big announcment from RCA of 70 Q8's in November 1970 that really kind of said "quad has arrived". Were those early RCA quad mixes perfect? No, but there were lots of gems, and they were the start of something great. My hope is that this big UMG announcement is something similar. Sony is apparently waiting in the wings with their own object-based format called "360 Reality Audio," and while I don't think anyone wants another format war, the more companies that are competing to sell surround music the better.
So with my current surround system DOA, as I save my pennies toward a new one (and lust over a lot of equipment I can't afford presently) I'm watching all these new developments with great interest. I don't think I've been this excited about the possibilities for "new" surround music since the initial DVD-A announcement in 2000.
Amen. Wouldn’t it be incredible if the new breed of Atmos audio engineers produced Adventurous Surround!! (Quad x 4 = 15.1)
If anyone should be excited about these new formats, it’s this bunch right here! I haven’t experienced any object oriented sound outside of a movie theater (or real life) and that’s mostly visual centric. I’ll be buying the content in anticipation of newer equipment of which I’m in need of anyway. If there’s any doubt about my true feelings on this, the first paragraph of my first post I threw in here should help clarify that.Full on crazy!
Now if I can only figure out what my wife needs more; let the negotiations begin!
I'm generally supportive of anything Surround and getting new titles out. If Atmos is backwards compatible with the Blu-ray players to give us new 5.1 or 7.1., bring it on. If Atmos is not backwards compatible, to give us some sort of decent surround mix, our members are going to have a problem here.
Quad and 5.1 as it stands now, is not that expensive for the average person to get into. Nice AMPs can be found used, and combination DVD-A/SACD players and BR can also be found at great prices. Also, used PCs to play files using Foobar can be found cheap. But regardless of how expensive one's system is, or is not now, the fact is we already have our Surround systems dialed in. The idea of getting on a ladder, and putting up four speakers on the ceiling, I'm willing to do this, but you get the idea. So, for the average person who might like to consider Atmos, we need more information. Buying a whole new system with 10 or more speakers is a big ask for anyone. And if the price doesn't go down, and speaker placement is an issue, I'm not sure this is going to become some new standard. In the Quad era, the average person could afford Quadraphonic.
So, we have questions. Just where can I Demo an Atmos system? I have a Best Buy, but there are no Atmos to check anything out. Just how much is an Atmos system to get started, and what do we need? How do we set up the speakers property?
These are just a few simple questions our members have. I don't think our members are against Atmos, but we want to see where this is going. We've seen big announcements from Universal before, like Pure Music Blu-ray, and we know how that ended. Also, Universal burned Master tapes. So what titles we are going to get could be an issue.
Quad and 5.1 as it stands now, is not that expensive for the average person to get into. Nice AMPs can be found used, and combination DVD-A/SACD players and BR can also be found at great prices. Also, used PCs to play files using Foobar can be found cheap. But regardless of how expensive one's system is, or is not now, the fact is we already have our Surround systems dialed in. The idea of getting on a ladder, and putting up four speakers on the ceiling, I'm willing to do this, but you get the idea. So, for the average person who might like to consider Atmos, we need more information. Buying a whole new system with 10 or more speakers is a big ask for anyone. And if the price doesn't go down, and speaker placement is an issue, I'm not sure this is going to become some new standard. In the Quad era, the average person could afford Quadraphonic.
So, we have questions. Just where can I Demo an Atmos system? I have a Best Buy, but there are no Atmos to check anything out. Just how much is an Atmos system to get started, and what do we need? How do we set up the speakers property?
These are just a few simple questions our members have. I don't think our members are against Atmos, but we want to see where this is going. We've seen big announcements from Universal before, like Pure Music Blu-ray, and we know how that ended. Also, Universal burned Master tapes. So what titles we are going to get could be an issue.
salsdali
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
just get upfiring speakers
Does everyone know why the mirrors on an 18 wheeler say "If you can't see me I can't see you"?
It's because light waves (photons) travel in an exact straight line.
Sound waves do the same so if you reflect 45 degrees upward towards the ceiling the sound waves will bounce back to you at the opposite 45 degree angle (angle of incidence) and arrive at your ear almost as if they have been from ceiling mounted speakers.
Problem solved (thru the use of physics).
Does everyone know why the mirrors on an 18 wheeler say "If you can't see me I can't see you"?
It's because light waves (photons) travel in an exact straight line.
Sound waves do the same so if you reflect 45 degrees upward towards the ceiling the sound waves will bounce back to you at the opposite 45 degree angle (angle of incidence) and arrive at your ear almost as if they have been from ceiling mounted speakers.
Problem solved (thru the use of physics).
That wont work for everyone. Like in my case, the ceiling in my listening room is constructed of acoustic panels. Those panels are meant to absorb sound, not reflect it. I would have to mount speakers in the ceiling. Its not a big deal, and I can do it fairly easily. A more expensive issue for me would be purchasing a new compatible pre/pro and the additional amplifier channels. Like others here, I'm gonna hold off on the new equipment purchases until I see how it all pans out. I will however buy Atmos software, provided I can downmix it.
markshan
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Actually, no. Sound waves bend (diffract). If they didn't, you wouldn't be able to hear anything that isn't line of sight. Your larger point is valid though as much of the sound stays on axis.
The56Kid
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Kudos to Dave for a fantastic response to my 'not enough good surround mixers' argument. The man is not only an amazing writer, he's an equally adept thinker.
Wow, so sorry to hear about your system. I can't imagine life at this stage if mine was DOA!!!
Kal Rubinson
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
So does light. The only differences are the wavelengths and, consequently, the types of interference that cause the diffraction.
Jim, I'm not sure TTN will win you over. The music is mainly front-centric. There are theatrical moments that are very Atmosy. This video might help you with your question, though my hunch is nothing exists in Atmos, right now, that is quite what you're looking for. I could be wrong!
Music in Atmos - Worst to Best
Albums discussed:
Sgt Pepper's - The Beatles
Live in Madrid - Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock
The Dolby Atmos Experience - Luca Turilli's Rhapsody
RPWL - A New Dawn
Hans Zimmer - Live in Prague
Roger Waters - The Wall Live
Metallica - Through the Never
Booka Shade - Galvany Street
INXS - Kick 30th Anniversary
Kraftwerk - Numbers (The Catalogue)
R.E.M. Automatic for the People (AFtP)
More info, including links to Atmos music lists, in video description.
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