Dolby Atmos is everywhere
Dolby Atmos is an immersive sound experience that brings cinema to life; but, Joe Cox argues, the trend towards Atmos-badged TVs, soundbars and smartphones is lowering the benchmark for quality sound.
As it happens, you really can have too much of a good thing. Here at TechLife we have been champions of the Dolby Atmos technology since the very beginning, and we love this ultimate example of surround sound cinema heaven.
But Dolby Atmos is everywhere. While we love to see the standard supported by more home cinema amplifiers and speaker packages, its appearance on soundbars, TVs and even smartphones concerns us – is this really the Dolby Atmos we know and love?
After all, how can these products possibly deliver true threedimensional sound, as Atmos promises? And if people believe that’s what the next-gen sound format is all about, what chance do we have to convince them that they can do so much better? That’s why we believe that seeing the Atmos badge on anything and everything is no good thing.
Dolby Atmos began in cinemas, with Dolby calling it ‘the most significant development in cinema audio since surround-sound’
– and we wouldn’t argue with that. It expanded upon what had become the standard 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound formats to add height channels. Using speakers placed along walls and, crucially, in the ceiling, you really could have audio channels firing at you from every direction.
Take the Dolby Atmos experience at my local cinema. Here, there are an incredible 400 speakers giving movie fans a staggeringly immersive sound experience. If you’ve heard it in action, there’s no arguing that this has taken cinema sound to a whole new, brilliant level. That is what Dolby Atmos is about.
Of course, most of us probably aren’t in a position to build a 400-speaker cinema in our homes. Nevertheless, bringing Dolby Atmos to the home in some form or other made perfect sense. Having created this clever technology, which could expand home cinema sound into a new dimension, why wouldn’t we want this tech to trickle down into hi-fi kit that we could use at home and actually afford? Bring it on.
Atmos for the home arrived with certified AV receivers and the necessary content on Blu-ray, with the first Dolby Atmos disc, Transformers: Age Of Extinction, being released in 2014. To enjoy the true effect, though, it required you to have speakers in your ceiling. These are the crucial component – and the third figure – in a Dolby Atmos system: 5.1.2 denotes two ceiling speakers, 7.1.4 means four, for example.
Hitting a ceiling
If you didn’t have the ability or desire to put speakers in your ceiling, which is understandable, you could also explore the option of upward-firing speaker modules. These are placed on top of your standard surround sound speakers, and attempt to replicate the job of a ceiling speaker. KEF, Elac, Elipson, Focal, Tangent and others all offer Atmos modules, too. It is more realistic and more affordable, and there is still logic to how these modules can offer more ‘height’ than standard speakers, due to the angle of the drivers.
But that turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Dolby Atmos speaker systems and upward-firing modules were soon joined by Atmos soundbars. Now, can a single unit, placed horizontally under your TV, really deliver Dolby Atmos? Think back to that 400-speaker cinema experience.
While we can’t replicate that at home, anything labelled Dolby Atmos, should surely try to get close. That should mean immersive, encompassing sound, that comes from above as well as in front and behind. For a soundbar, that’s really tough.
Of course surround sound from a soundbar isn’t new. Yamaha is one of the class-leaders when it comes to cinema sound from a single box. The company’s DSP (digital signal processor) tech pioneered delivering surround sound from a soundbar, using processing, your room’s walls and a plethora of compact, angled speaker drivers, to fire sound around your seating position.
Reviewers have rated many of these Yamaha soundbars highly, and also confirmed they were an alternative to ‘true’ surround sound. Of course, they were a compromise, compared with 5.1 speaker systems, but also a convenient and welcome addition to the market.
Fast forward to 2020 and not only have soundbars improved with time but you can also find any number of Dolby Atmos soundbars on the market, priced from as little as $500 right up to $5,000+, and including multi-room soundbars such as the Sonos Arc. So these aren’t just offering surround sound, but something similar to what Dolby Atmos promises to deliver.
The best soundbars we’ve heard, such as the Sennheiser Ambeo and the Sony HT-ST5000, really are impressive (and expensive) – and we have heartily recommended them within these very pages.
But, we still wouldn’t say they match an Atmos system with multiple speakers positioned around your room.
That said, our real issue is with the cheaper models, which simply aren’t delivering anything approaching Dolby Atmos sound. One key factor is the lack of upward-firing drivers – if your soundbar doesn’t have these, it will be that much harder to replicate any height effect. So while Sony’s HT-ST5000, which has two upward-firing drivers, delivers the goods, the much cheaper HT-ZF9, which doesn’t have any, really doesn’t. It’s a reasonable soundbar, but is it Dolby Atmos? Not in our book.
There are now Dolby Atmos TVs from LG, TCL, Vizio and more, proclaiming Atmos straight from your TV’s speakers. Even tablets and smartphones now come with Dolby Atmos support. Will these products really “move sound all around you” and add “an overhead dimension”, two of the key pillars of Atmos according to the Dolby website? We’re not sure.
While we’re in favour of ways to hook new consumers into exploring and enjoying better quality sound, does a watereddown version of the technology serve the right purpose? Or does it leave consumers, who are unwittingly using a poorer version of the product, neither impressed by the tech, nor inclined to explore more advanced examples of it?
Of course, this phenomenon is nothing new. From Full HD, to high-resolution audio, 4K and more, we’ve seen new technologies launched and then subsequently diluted. In the name of making the tech accessible, it is often done in a way that’s unsatisfying, confusing and potentially damaging. Should high-resolution headphones really be a thing? Maybe you remember the confusion of HD Ready? What about 4K Mastered? We’re not sure any of these labels are helpful.
Tape measures
Dolby is no stranger to this technique. In fact, you can go back to the company’s beginnings for a good example. Released in 1965, Dolby A was the first professional noise-reduction standard, and used four intricate filters to reduce unwanted tape noise. Naturally, Dolby wanted a version for home use: enter Dolby B, a much cheaper and cruder take on the original noise reduction tech.
Ultimately, this all comes down to the fact that Dolby is a licensing business. Dolby wants brands to pay to certify its products and display the logos. And when exciting advancements arrive, such as Dolby Atmos, we too want to see a whole range of products adopt it, as well as the content. We just wish the quality bar was a little higher.
The true Dolby Atmos experience is grin-inducingly brilliant. If you haven’t already, you really should experience a Dolby Atmos cinema. And we’re thrilled to have the ability to bring some of that magic into our homes – the best home Atmos systems add a whole dimension to surround sound. That’s why if you do want Dolby Atmos in your home, we’d advise you to get the best possible products you can accommodate, in order to do the technology justice.