Dolby Atmos will use your TV to expand living room speaker setups | Hacker News Reader

Dolby Atmos will use your TV to expand living room speaker setups

engadget.com

20 pointsthunderbong65 comments

I guess they really want to collect data for Atmos development, because 1) always-on microphones in smart TVs seems like a bad idea and 2) Atmos isn't very compelling without overhead speakers. The overlap of sets of people who care about quality audio and the people who would buy Atmos in a TCL TV is probably pretty sparse.

For instance, I have a modest 5.1.2 system, positioned according to my best understanding and calibrated with a flat response mic, and current Atmos content is still pretty underwhelming. I can only imagine bouncing audio off a popcorn ceiling with a fan in the way in an imbalanced room would not be an improvement.

I guess the real test will be if FlexConnect works without internet or when opted out of ad services, or if it's only enabled for approved streaming apps.

> The overlap of sets of people who care about quality audio and the people who would buy Atmos in a TCL TV is probably pretty sparse.

I used to think that too, but the proliferation of soundbars has shown that there is a market for better home theater experiences in the "middle" between bad TV speakers and higher end home theater setups. TCL's upper end range of TVs are really popular in a similar market segment (people who care about good picture/features but still want value) and generally perform very well, so it might be a feature that is popular especially if they start bundling in a kit for a good price. I've used the Sony equivalent with the TV acting as a center speaker in a larger setup and it sounded really good, so it can definitely work.

The soundbar market exists in part because tv speakers got a lot worse. 80s and 90s CRT tv speakers and early LCDs that still had forward-facing speaker grills and enough depth to fit decent-size speakers, were a lot better than what ship in almost all TVs now.

>Atmos isn't very compelling without overhead speakers.

Why does this myth persist? ATMOS is substantially better than hardcoded channels even with a barebones 5.1 system. Obviously more is better, but object-based spatial audio is a major step up.

Yes, it certainly can be, and it appears Dolby believes that this partnership with TCL will in some way ensure that that's true.

The effect of Atmos is pretty marginal in cases of well-mixed audio. It doesn't automatically improve a bad mix, and it can be implemented poorly. The most noticeable differentiator is >180° audio, which in the majority of cases is overhead.

Yes, it's cool. Is it like nothing we've ever experienced before? No, but I expect to change my opinion more favorably once it's at least up to the level of a 1990s PC game with A3D or EAX.

The real myth is always the hype.

> This creates a customized Dolby Atmos sound profile unique to each user's home.

They failed to add this:

1) "We need a mic for this to work. Or several mics. The more the better. And they must be on all the time, because we make <<dynamic adjustments>>."

2) "We won't ask you how the speakers are connected. We'll scan Bluetooth to make it <<easy>> for you!"

3) "We need internet connection for this to work, 'cause all the processing is on our servers."

4) "We know your TV and speakers brand and model. We calculated how big your house is. We know what neighborhood you live in. We know how rich you are!"

5) "We listen to everything you say and everything you watch on <<our>> TV."

6) "We profile you, your family, your visiting friends (voice print) and deliver customized ads to that TV (and your friends' TV) to make you all buy stuff you don't need from companies you hate."

7) "At some point some of you may realise we're doing this and how good we've become at advertising. You may want out. We don't care!"

8) "You may have control over the wifi password, but we have a contract with the ISP or the mobile phone company for a backup connection."

9) "No mic, no net, disagree to our terms? We'll use the worst EQ and DSP possible to drive you mad. We'll also nag. Frequently."

10) "We're everywhere. Pay 10x for an industrial TV if you want something without our stuff. And that TV isn't ceritified to play Netflix. Or BR. Or DVDs."

I have the last "smart" TV that isn't smart enough to spy. Panasonic Viera ST 2012. No cam, no mic. It's smartness is also affected by cloud rot. And I have 2 more in storage in case this one breaks down. Yet, I'm still worried the world is going to hell.

Atmos sucks. Everything mixed for shows these days sucks at home. You can never hear what people are saying and then you get blasted with 10-20db higher music or sound effects.

I wish there was an easy fix for THAT which works across any device without having to buy a receiver and speakers and deal with all the connections or needing the same on basically every TV in the house.

I swear they used to mix for two channel AND multichannel. I know they did because I’ll rip a dvd or Blu-ray and see four or five English channels of various formats.

Online stuff especially seems to only mix for multichannel and it doesn’t downgrade to two channel well at all.

Yeah, that’s the whole selling point of Atmos. No more discrete channels to mix to, instead spatial locations that the receiver decodes for your system.

Yes. I still buy everything I can on BD (or DVD as a fallback)[1], and nearly every release has separate stereo and surround mixes for the primary language of the film. Sometimes even for multiple languages.

I assume only having one audio mix on streaming services is a cost-cutting measure, like how most streaming services seem to omit professionally-produced subtitles from third-party content in favour of awful phonetic subtitles they produce themselves using ML or similar.

[1] So I'll still have it when obscure content is inevitably removed from streaming services, for the higher picture quality, and for the finer-grained playback control.

Streaming services are absolutely awful for image quality and your favorite shows will disappear at the whims of corporate lawyers and executives. Netflix 4K streams are less than 16 mbps at the absolute max with 4 mbps being commonplace whereas the specification for UHD Blu-Ray discs allows for three disc capacities, each with its own data rate: 50 GB at 72 or 92 Mbit/s, and 66 GB and 100 GB at 92 Mbit/s, 123 or 144 Mbit/s. The bitrate difference is not something advances in codecs can make up for because the gulf is too wide.

The vast majority of us are thrilled with streaming quality and would rather use speakers from our TV than a sound system. I actually have a sound system and haven't bothered to turn it on in a few years.

We are optimizing for the minority.

I agree. Just give me a stereo track, and I'm happy enough. I don't want to buy a receiver and install multiple speakers in my living room/kitchen/office, thank you

Object-based audio is a great idea that makes the most sense with some sort of headphones while watching something on TV so you can be fully immersed in the scene as you turn your head. It is definitely the next major frontier on the audio frontier. Unfortunately, it is mired in proprietary protocols, very expensive hardware that doesn't work right, totally deceptive advertising, and poorly mastered source material.

And, like VR, works wonders if you're in a room by yourself; once you are watching something with a group, now everyone has headphones on and it's all a mess.

It turns out the vast majority of people around the world prefer the convenience of streaming (large choice, worldwide selection of content, immediate access, etc.) over waiting for and managing physical discs. Moreover, nobody would want to wait for the next episode of a TV show to arrive on a disc.

You could stream at higher bitrates (apparently Apple does) without resorting to discs.

You might even be able to design an adaptive bit-rate codec that improves/devolves as your internet connection demands.

On the flip side, every blu ray player I've ever had the pleasure of using has been clearly audible over the content I've been watching.

I gave up and bought an Xbox as a blurry player, and it works decently well.

But I prefer to rip everything anyway, and the Apple TV that plays the rips is silent as far as I can tell.

There's two easy options for this:

Put the player in a cabinet with glass doors. That will dampen most of the noise.

Turn the movie up. This also works for road noise in a car.

> Put the player in a cabinet with glass doors. That will dampen most of the noise.

So replace my furniture? No thanks.

> Turn the movie up. This also works for road noise in a car.

Have you heard the sound balance on movies these days?

> Have you heard the sound balance on movies these days?

Yeah, it's not always great, but it's usually enough to drown out the sound of the disc rotation. About the only time I hear the player is on DVDs with rough layer transitions, the video and audio pause a bit and you can often hear the pickup seeking or refocusing, especially if it's a parallel track path disc so the next layer begins at the other end of the disc from where the current layer ends.

There is an exception here with AppleTV+ which has a 20-40Mbit/s bit rate. Not quite Blu-ray level but it's very obvious when compared to Netflix.

That is a good bitrate for 4K with modern codecs.

A true stereo Lt/Rt mix was standard in the DVD era. But even before Blu-ray/HD-DVD was released, the move to removing the Lt/Rt mix in favor of 5.1 only was already gaining traction. The number of 5.1 mixes encoded correctly that would allow for a decent 2.0 fold down was quite small.

Even today, I'm dealing with 5.1 content where the LFE was not bussed correctly so that there is frequencies > 120Hz. This isn't from Bob's Audio Post House. These are from people that should know better.

In the future that will probably be Auracast (Bluetooth LE Audio) and using personalized earbuds (or hearing aids). Then everyone can manage their own volume and preferences.

I'm super excited for Auracast. It's been shocking to me that products haven't really materialized in the 20 months since announcement. Samsung's next flagship ultra expensive TV and their top of the line earbuds were rumored - just this week - to gain Auracast.

I wish I had a little more hope for it in these entertainment scenarios. It's got a fancy proprietary codec, but pretty mediocre bandwidth. I think right now it's only spec is for stereo. Trying to get custom immersive audio to a bunch of people requires spatial audio & fancier multi-stream sending.

I wish they would just provide a simple stereo mix for those of us that don't want to clutter their living room with a receiver and speakers. Netflix actually provides a stereo mix that works quite well, while Disney plus has an horrible Dolby mix where you lose half of the speech unless you increase your volume to insane levels

They are mixing for phones and ipads.

If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd call it a stealth effort to make people Return To Theaters and stop watching movies at home.

Most soundbars, I think, allow you to control this. My Sonos does, at least, and I absolutely employ that feature!

I got Atmos with my new Soundbar, a Samsung Q990C, which admittedly was not cheap, but with Atmos it really does work well. It sounds like thunder is above me, planes flying above, with the sound bouncing off the ceiling. I was quite impressed.

I have to disagree that Atmos itself sucks. The problem is that for marketing reasons it was decided to put Atmos in situations that it should never be in. A soundbar cannot benefit from Atmos and it should have never been put there in the first place.

I have a 5.1.2 setup that I setup myself, I did the optimizations (really just used the automated thing) and its great. I never have an issue with not hearing things.

I have even seen arguments that if you only have a 5.1 (or 5.2) setup Atmos is worthless for you, but at least in that situation at worst you are just getting roughly the same output.

Basically, if you don't have those extra speakers (or real surround sound) there was no reason that Atmos should have ever been marketed to you and it is doing everyone (including the spec) a disservice.

>A soundbar cannot benefit from Atmos and it should have never been put there in the first place.

ATMOS is a new way of doing things, where the object's position is recored and your hardware can adapt to it based on its configuration.

This is infinitely better than shipping stereo, 5.1, 7.1 etc hardcoded mixes and switching between them. Now you only need to ship ONE spatial track (ok, multiple because of things like TrueHD, but you only have one spatial variant per-quality-tier).

ATMOS means you can have 1 set of media that scales from 1 to N speakers seamlessly.

Theoretically yes that is true, however in practice it has been shown time and time again that if you have less than a 5.1.2 setup Atmos is at best worthless and not actually getting you a benefit and at worse giving you a negative experience due to loosing the ability to properly balance.

Atmos was shoved into setups that it does not belong.

I've got a 5.1.4 home theater setup that all together — including LG OLED TV, Elac Debut speakers, Pioneer AV Receiver, shelves, etc — cost about 2000€ (pretty much everything was bought used, I had to repair several parts myself)

And it turns out with a properly calibrated setup, the mix is perfectly fine. Everything sounds just as it should, music envelops you without becoming overwhelming, the dialog is easily audible and absolutely crisp.

And the atmos effects actually work. For example Altered Carbon S1 made really good use of the overhead speakers.

Considering how much worse the audio was with a soundbar, and how streaming has been hurting cinemas for years, I can't help but wonder if these shitty stereo mixes might be intentional.

I've got an over the top 7.1.4 setup, and after running with the calibrated setup for a while, bumping the center speaker several notches was very helpful with hearing dialogue from all sources I've tried. Even in my 4.1 setups, I've boosted the center virtual speaker. So I'm not surprised people are having trouble with the mixes if they don't have the ability to adjust things.

Personally, I haven't used soundbars, the home theater shop that put together my theater did a demo with one that had two wireless? satellites and it was actually pretty good, but most soundbars are using small drivers so it takes a lot of tech to make them sound good for mid-low frequency. Otoh, modern very thin tvs have such minimal speakers that anything else is better.

That's great that you have a great setup. There's a bit of an issue in practice, where only a tiny bit of people have a good setup, so sound isn't great for 99.99% of people.

That's the point — even my relatively affordable (for a home theater setup) system is still far outside the price range of 99.9% of the world.

So for the vast majority of people, the only way to properly listen to a movie is in cinemas.

As I already touched upon earlier, I don't think that's by accident.

That's interesting, I figure it's just they don't want to spend any money to do sound settings differently for people's houses. They just don't care.

>Atmos sucks. Everything mixed for shows these days sucks at home. You can never hear what people are saying and then you get blasted with 10-20db higher music or sound effects.

This is certainly not true in the generic sense, and is likely an issue with your setup/hardware.

Subtitles everywhere, baby. [explosion]

My current setup allows me to use the TV built in speakers (Sony TV and SoundBar). It’s absolutely awful. The built in speaker sounds like a speaker sealed in cheap plastic box. It only degrades the experience. I turned it off.

This is such a scam. Atmos content sounds dreadful, and its just a last ditch to keep dolby relevant in the consumer space. Find a single audio engineer who supports it, they are hens teeth and this is an advert.

If anyone seems excited about Atmos its a handful of audio engineers. Most people aren't set up for Atmos mixing and so some see it as a way to differentiate their studios, but the reality is its very scammy and an Atmos set up is expensive.

The basic idea of Atmos is having audio streams with spatial coordinates and then downmixing them to however many speakers you actually have and where ever they happen to be placed. That's a great idea (and basically how games have worked for donkeys years).

But even if you do get the object-based streams, it still contains a "bed" of 7.1(.2) audio channels that still require precise placement of your speakers.

Besides which, even 5.1 content is mixed horribly by content providers (use the center channel for dialogue, people! And lay off the explosions for a bit..)

What makes it ultra disappointing, is that the atmos brand is just slapped on any old thing. If it's not in a cinema, it's not 128 objects, but maybe 20. If it's atmos music, it's something else. And how does a tiny soundbar deliver on immersive sound from all of those channels and objects?

Well-mixed 5.1 is still a joy to hear.

Atmos or DTS:X or Aura3D content sounds absolutely incredible, with a proper setup.

And yet, most atmos mixes aren't very good. Even movies with good atmos mixes for cinema often have a shitty mix on streaming or BR with only the surround soundscape expanded into the overhead channels.

And that's not a surprise — if you know the overhead and surround speakers are dedicated speakers of high quality, e.g. in cinemas, you can put dialogue and important audio onto these channels. But if the atmos and surround speakers might just be reflected from the ceiling or tiny satellites you obviously can't use them for audio that's essential for understanding the plot.

And for music it's even worse, while some music was originally mixed for quadrophonic or 5.1 listening — kraftwerk 3D, pink floyd's dark side of the moon — most atmos mixes are just upmixed from the stereo mix and provide no benefit whatsoever.

And so the way most people interact with atmos — cheap soundbars reflecting channels off the walls and lazy upmixes of pop music — provide no benefit whatsoever and just result in disillusionment.

The same has already happened with 3D films (Avatar looked spectacular in 3D, but obviously if you watched 3D-converted films on a cheap TV it sucked) and is happening again with HDR content (properly mastered content on a mastering monitor or even a good 1000nits Rec.2020 OLED looks absolutely spectacular, but converted content on a 400nits IPS sRGB panel obviously sucks).

>most atmos mixes are just upmixed from the stereo mix and provide no benefit whatsoever.

There is a large library of _freakin incredible_ made-for-spatial-audio tracks on Apple Music.

It makes for a great demo when people come over, they're always blown away.

Tbh, all the Apple Music tracks I've heard so far were absolutely underwhelming. If you can recommend some great tracks, please do tell!

> This is such a scam. Atmos content sounds dreadful

Complete nonsense. Maybe on _your_ setup this is true, but that has nothing to do with ATMOS.

It's funny because the absolute highest commercially-available quality out there at the moment is Apple Music's ATMOS tracks/high-resolution lossless. On a proper high-end system the difference is night and day.

>Find a single audio engineer who supports it, they are hens teeth and this is an advert.

I don't take people seriously who call themselves "engineers" who are not actually Engineers.

I recently started collecting 4K UHD Blu-Rays since I got a Samsung Q990c.

The most obvious difference to me is the audio. Though the discs do look better than say Netflix 4K, the audio is way better on my particular setup.

I do wonder if streaming is really the same "atmos" as a 4K Blu-Ray. From my experience there must be some serious compression or misrepresentation.

Will be interested in trying FlexConnect with and without Blu-Ray once it's available for me (though not sure it would be better than my current setup).

You are correct that streaming atmos is different. Blu-rays deliver audio using the Dolby TrueHD audio codec, which is a lossless codec whose streams average 6 mbps, but can peak up to 18 mbps. Streaming services use Dolby Digital Plus to deliver dolby atmos content, which is typically encoded at 768 kbps.

Most of todays TV speakers are awful. Doesn't matter since the audio bitrate from streaming services are also very low. Even BluRay cannot help in many cases as localized audio often comes without the good mix. I don't even know good websites to check if things come with good localized audio on the blurays so I can only look at piracy releases since they list bitrates and audio.

Spotify sounds great out of my TV. Movies are absolutely horrible though

Netflix (and others) are streamin Dolby Atmos at 768kbps, which is... fine. You do need a device supporting that though.

Blurays come with 5000+ kbps and the home cinema is a 9.2 setup.

I found this video by Benn Jordan very enlightening about the whole Atmos nonsense: "Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Dw3aKbw5Wo

TL;DW: It's just not worth it. (but do watch it to understand why)

Speaking of surround sound. What is the best surround sound nowadays? I used to be a big Sonos fan but I've waned on them over the years since. What are folks doing nowadays?

Bonus if its wireless and supports Airplay 2, but not required

The Samsung Q990c supports both. Not sure if it's the best, though, but I'm happy with mine.

What do you mean by "best sorround sound"? The typical high end "best" setup is still getting a Dolby Atmos capable 7.1.2 AV Receiver (from Denon, Maranz, Sony or Onkyo) and connect a Dolby Atmos configuration to it (7 sorround speakers, 2 ceiling speakers and a subwoofer... you can get away with 5.1.2 or just 5.1 setup as well). For speakers, brands like Klipsch are good value for money... but there's a whole flamewar to be had there.

All receivers these days will do AirPlay, Spotify and Bluetooth on top of HDMI and other inputs.

But... somehow I doubt that's what you were thinking of with "best"? Something cheaper maybe? :)

Nope, I had no real thoughts, just parameters

- Wireless if at all possible. Really almost a must, as I can't run the wires in the wall

- Airplay 2 support would be ideal, since I use an Apple TV and have many Apple devices this would be a nice to have, but not required strictly

- I do prefer a 7.1 setup over 5.1

- Dolby Atmos would be great

Best comes in 2 flavors, I think.

Technically best - dedicated AV receiver that supports as many channels as you're interested in (5.1, 7.1.2?), if you're looking at anything above bargain bin this probably includes Airplay 2. Dedicated hard-wired speakers for each channel, making sure to get a set that has good frequency response and focus on a subwoofer that provides adequate range to prevent roll-off.

Advantages: incredibly broad options, can go as high or low-end as you want. Independently up-gradable, most components are very repairable, often this provides the lowest latency possible, generally has the least amount of "magic" in the software stack.

Disadvantages: high price floor relative to a lot of consumers, usually lots of wires (wireless options exist for satellites, but add disadvantages of latency and software messiness). Adds lots of boxes to a room (front LR pair usually kind of large, center channel kind of large, receivers are often pretty large).

Aesthetic best - Broadly speaking, soundbars. Sonos is the name to beat generally here. I like the Sony HT-A9 as it breaks the mold a bit, I think there's probably a lot of disagreement as to what stands out in this space. I think Samsung stuff is generally well regarded, the HW-Q990C is spoken highly of.

Advantages: very few wires and very few boxes. Usually fairly affordable.

Disadvantages: lower overall quality and customization. If anything breaks, you're at the whim of the manufacturer.

I've recently gone the route of the dedicated receiver and it _is_ great. I'm pretty sensitive to audio qualities in ways my wife isn't, but it's made a world of difference to me just upgrading from an old 2.1 system I'd used for 15 years.

With a traditional dedicated receiver setup, you can reduce the price floor if you go with used equipment. Speakers that haven't been abused continue to work for decades. Receivers are less bullet proof, so it helps if you can test/demo the equipment before you buy it. But there's several recent tiers of obsolescence that mean you can likely get a bargain on quality early equipment from someone who upgraded. Pre-HDMI surround receivers with coax/optical SPDIF is still a pretty good baseline, IMHO. Depending on your sources, you might be ok with an HDMI receiver won't pass 4K, or will only pass some flavors of 4k. If your TV and your receiver support ARC, you can cable higher resolution sources direct to the TV, and then pass audio to the receiver from the TV; with ARC that gets you Dolby Digital Plus which isn't available via SPDIF, with eARC (if supported), that gets you full fidelity audio. A few sources have separate HDMI outputs for audio, but that seems pretty rare / mostly for higher end devices, in which case you're likely not skimping on a receiver.

If you go with a receiver which will do Atmos/TrueHD etc but won't pass 4K (or won't pass newer formats eg Dolby Vision/HDR10+/etc) then the easiest route is to go with a splitter which allows you to send the audio to the receiver separately. You need to be careful to get one which won't downgrade the signal to "lowest common denominator". You can also find splitters which will will convert ARC/eARC audio into a standard HDMI signal if you have a TV which supports ARC/eARC but your receiver doesn't.

The only real downside of this is you won't see any OSD information from the receiver when using the splitter.

A splitter would also help if your source can decode TrueHD/DTS-MasterAudio, your receiver can accept multichannel PCM (I think most can?), and pass through / eARC isn't an option.

No OSD is unfortunate, but certainly usable. You'll miss out on volume and source indicators if you can't see the receiver's screen, but you can connect a cable for receiver menus, and usually once you get things setup, you don't need to spend much time in receiver menus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com