Microsoft Xbox One and Windows 10 Getting Dolby Atmos Surround Sound (betanews.com) 37
BrianFagioli quotes a report from BetaNews: When people think of the technology behind video games and movies, they often just focus on the visuals. True, when creating an immersive experience, the video is probably the most important aspect from a technological perspective. With that said, audio quality is very important too. Today, Microsoft announces that both Xbox One And Windows 10 will be getting Dolby Atmos support in future updates. If you aren't familiar, it is a surround sound technology with a focus on immersion. Don't have compatible audio hardware? Don't worry -- the Windows-maker is promising a "virtual" Atmos experience too. Larry Hryb, Xbox Live's Major Nelson said in a statement, "Xbox will be the first game console to feature Dolby Atmos and game developers are excited about using the new capabilities to make their games richer and more engaging. Atmos support for the Blu-ray app on Xbox is already available in Preview and will be released to GA soon -- and we're very excited now to offer Atmos support to games on Xbox One and Windows 10."
Dolby are a nightmare to deal with (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this just some advertising for Dolby? They're a nightmare to deal with from a licensing and certification perspective. Give your money and time to DTS and Fraunhofer and stop supporting this monster.
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There's a license for that!
I think they went here [dolby.com].
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I love how a competing group (dedicated to sound, DTS), and a Dolby product spec (Digital theater sound, DTS) have the same acronym.
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Digital Theatre Sound isn't a Dolby spec, the Dolby system for cinemas is called Dolby Digital. Digital Theatre Sound comes from the same company that now calls themselves Dedicated To Sound.
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Isn't the point of Atmos not to add more physical channels, but rather to add logical channels? Each logical channel contains positioning information and it is up to the specific implementation to map the logical channel to whatever physical channels are available. For example a logical channel might be a helicopter flying overhead from behind the listener's right to in front of the listener's left. If played
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You still have only two ears remember?!
You only have 2 eyes, so I suppose anything more than a line is overkill?
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Sounds great for games, especially if you don't mind wearing headphones, or a headset that knows which way you're looking. For things like movie content, that's a hell of a lot of manual work in production and post-production to take full advantage of it - they'll probably just use templates, so really it'll be an incremental update to existing multichannel, perhaps with more control over what's mixed in or not. I've gone from having a full home theatre setup to a minimalistic TV approach (no surround spe
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So it does the same thing various positional sound standards have been doing on the PC for 10+ years? I guess it does not exist until Apple/Dolby do it.
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Unfortunately, only Dolby Atmos is mature enough to properly work - DTS:X (DTS's equivalent) is completely immature, so much so that instead of processing the sound objects like it should, it's still relying a lot on pre-rendered sound streams for the extra channels. (Atmos is processing objects and adding th
Dolby Atmos = E-AC-3, MLP & AC-4 with objects (Score:2)
Dolby Atmos = structured sound (Score:2)
It's the per-object positional metadata that's the interesting part in Atmos. With up to 128 individually placed sound sources (and a few ambient channels) in the bitstream, sounds can be rendered on-the-fly through whatever speakers are nearest to the source position.
While much has been made about new ceiling channels, those are entirely optional. The whole point of the Atmos stream is that it can be rendered with best-available accuracy on *any* speaker setup, from a 12+6 cinema arrangement to 7.2 home ci
Trash (Score:2, Troll)
If you aren't familiar, it is a surround sound technology with a focus on immersion. Don't have compatible audio hardware? Don't worry -- the Windows-maker is promising a "virtual" Atmos experience too.
Atmos adds more surround channels. Typically this is 1 or 2 surround channels directly above you.
No one sane has a setup that can support this. Even in the theaters it's pointless. It adds nothing (and I say this as someone who has a 7.1 setup instead of your typical 5.1).
Al the virtual shit Dolby puts out is awful, as well.
Don't give them money for this shit. Atmos is a (shitty) solution in search of a problem. When most people think a soundbar provides great audio, you know they're trembling in their
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Indeed. I have a home brewed klipsch 5.1 setup using a cheap Sony head, and it works fine.
The main problem is that despite the head advertising 5.1 positional audio capability to connected HDMI devices, most only send a 2.1 stream. My computer makes full use of the setup, but it is game dependent when it comes to consoles. Some will output 5.1, others only 2.0.
I don't see how MS can get positional audio from a stereo only application, so this update seems "whut?" To me.
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I disagree. Good stereo is great and yes, they'll always make sure it sounds good because they can't count on everyone having surround sound. But a decent surround setup adds a lot when playing games or watching movies.
When you're talking about $500 for a 5.1 system or $500 for a pair of stereo speakers, I'd wager most people would prefer the 5.1 system. Nearly everyone can instantly appreciate the difference between stereo and surround, but your average person won't be able to tell the difference betwee
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Directsound was killed off in windows vista. Openal was supposed to replace it but that's pretty much a dead stick too, though some engines still support it. The current standard in windows, xbox, and phone is xaudio2 which does support multichannel with a low latency software mixer. However, there is no hardware acceleration for it. Some titles do their own mixing and dsp in-game with libraries like FMOD and just push the output to xaudio. Titles typically expose multiple speaker modes so adding multic
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Microsoft eliminated hardware-level mixing for audio in Vista (even for DirectSound), and in hindsight, it was a very good decision. The problem with hardware mixing is that it kills off a lot of mixing flexibility, and it only was necessary when CPUs were so slow that they would have struggled to mix a few dozen sounds simultaneously. Not only that, it changes the mix between hardware devices and software fallbacks, making it harder to balance things properly.
These days, not only can a CPU handle the mix
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Windows (Score:2)
You thought you haven't had enough Windows Updates? Fear no more. Introducing Windows 10 to the Dolby Atmos family.
Instead of sitting around in your living room doing Absolutely Nothing for 2 hrs waiting for Windows Update to finish, NOW you will get the privilege to sit around a 60 feet wide movie theater screen doing Absolutely Nothing for 2 hrs waiting for Windows Update to finish.
Coming Soon in every Dolby Atmos movie theaters everywhere!
What about DTS-X? (Score:2)
What about DTS-X?
Doesn't anyone at Dolby watch Doctor Who? (Score:2)
Nothing good can come from naming a product "ATMOS".
Do you want Sontarans? Because that's how you get Sontarans.
The question is: Why? (Score:2)
There is little doubt that modern technology can achieve incredible results and we can reproduce sounds and images almost better than the original; but why go to such lengths, when there is so little content that is worth reproducing to any high standard? I remember back in the 70es, there was a similar craze for the most crystal clear sound and so on - and a few people would have a special listening room, with one chair in the optimal position etc etc, and maybe for that rare breed it was worth it all. But
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It's meh. (Score:2)
I have dealt with high end home theaters and the "atmos" hype is all hype. all they are doing is mixing audio into the other channels at phase differences. Almost NO movies are sending the full 16 channel audio as nobody wants to pay the sound guy to do more than a 5.1 mix. it's rare as hell to even find something with a full 7.1 audio mix in it.
Also you have to have an acoustically controlled room, 99% of you dont have sound treated walls and ceiling in a room that get's larger to the rear on a taper.