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Hub AI
Dolby Atmos AI simulator
(@Dolby Atmos_simulator)
Hub AI
Dolby Atmos AI simulator
(@Dolby Atmos_simulator)
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels as well as free-moving sound objects, interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal nor vertical limitations. Following the release of Atmos for the cinema market, a variety of consumer technologies have been released under the Atmos brand. The initial cinema Atmos systems used in-ceiling speakers, then upward-firing speakers (e.g. for soundbars) were introduced as an alternative for consumer products. Atmos is also used on some devices that do not have a height channel, such as headphones, televisions, mobile phones, and tablets.
The first Dolby Atmos installation was in the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, for the premiere of Brave in June 2012. Throughout 2012, it saw a limited release of about 25 installations worldwide, with an increase to more than 300 locations in 2013. As of April 2023, there were over 7,800 cinema screens, across 105 countries, which supported or were committed to support Dolby Atmos. Dolby Atmos has also been adapted to a home theater format and is the audio component of Dolby Cinema. Electronic devices from 2016 onwards, along with smartphones starting in 2017, have included support for Dolby Atmos recording and mixing capabilities. The full set of technical specifications for Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos are standardized and published in ETSI TS 103 420.
In 2016, Power was the first television show natively mixed and broadcast in Atmos for its third season, though in the same year, Game of Thrones upmixed their previous 5.1 presentations for the Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray reissue. R.E.M.'s 1992 album Automatic for the People was the first major music release with its 25th anniversary reissue in 2017.
In 2022, Dolby Atmos collaborated with NetEase to offer spatial audio to the Chinese music streaming market. The collaboration will entail NetEase to implement Atmos support on compatible smartphones and vehicles.
Dolby Atmos technology allows the storage and distribution of 128 audio tracks with metadata describing sound properties such as position and volume (and their variation over time). The audio mix is rendered specifically for the theater's setup using the loudspeakers available. Each audio track can be assigned to an audio channel, the conventional format for distribution, or to an audio "object". Dolby Atmos in theaters has a 9.1 (commonly referred to as 7.1.2) channel-based "bed" channels for ambience stems or center dialogue, leaving 118 tracks for objects. Atmos for home in film, television, and music uses a technique called "spatial coding" to reduce the audio to up to a maximum of 16 concurrent "elements" or audio location clusters, that adapt to the content dynamically. In Atmos games, ISF (Intermediate Spatial format) is used, which supports 32 total active objects (using a 7.1.4 bed, 20 additional dynamic objects can be active). Each object specifies its apparent source location in the theater as a set of three-dimensional rectangular coordinates relative to the defined audio channel locations and theater boundaries.
Dolby Atmos home theaters can be built upon conventional 5.1 and 7.1 layouts. For Dolby Atmos, the nomenclature differs slightly by an additional number at the end, which represents the number of overhead or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers: a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos system is a conventional 7.1 layout with four overhead or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers. The simplest Dolby Atmos setup is 3.1.2, the most complex one is 24.1.10.
Dolby Atmos content is authored using compatible digital audio workstation software (Dolby supplies a plug-in for Pro Tools and Cubase) or a suitably equipped large format audio mixing console such as AMS Neve's DFC or Harrison's MPC5.
The Dolby Atmos sound system consists of a compatible speaker system, a TV or AV media player, and an AV receiver (or preprocessor), with a Dolby Atmos object audio renderer. During playback, each theater's Dolby Atmos system renders the audio objects in real time based on the known locations of the loudspeakers present in the target theater, such that each audio object is heard as originating from its designated set of coordinates. By way of contrast, conventional multichannel technology essentially burns all the source audio tracks into a fixed number of channels during post-production. This has conventionally forced the re-recording mixer to make assumptions about the playback environment that may not apply very well to a particular theater. The addition of audio objects allows the mixer to be more creative, to bring more sounds off the screen, and to be confident of the results.
Dolby Atmos
Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels as well as free-moving sound objects, interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal nor vertical limitations. Following the release of Atmos for the cinema market, a variety of consumer technologies have been released under the Atmos brand. The initial cinema Atmos systems used in-ceiling speakers, then upward-firing speakers (e.g. for soundbars) were introduced as an alternative for consumer products. Atmos is also used on some devices that do not have a height channel, such as headphones, televisions, mobile phones, and tablets.
The first Dolby Atmos installation was in the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles, for the premiere of Brave in June 2012. Throughout 2012, it saw a limited release of about 25 installations worldwide, with an increase to more than 300 locations in 2013. As of April 2023, there were over 7,800 cinema screens, across 105 countries, which supported or were committed to support Dolby Atmos. Dolby Atmos has also been adapted to a home theater format and is the audio component of Dolby Cinema. Electronic devices from 2016 onwards, along with smartphones starting in 2017, have included support for Dolby Atmos recording and mixing capabilities. The full set of technical specifications for Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos are standardized and published in ETSI TS 103 420.
In 2016, Power was the first television show natively mixed and broadcast in Atmos for its third season, though in the same year, Game of Thrones upmixed their previous 5.1 presentations for the Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray reissue. R.E.M.'s 1992 album Automatic for the People was the first major music release with its 25th anniversary reissue in 2017.
In 2022, Dolby Atmos collaborated with NetEase to offer spatial audio to the Chinese music streaming market. The collaboration will entail NetEase to implement Atmos support on compatible smartphones and vehicles.
Dolby Atmos technology allows the storage and distribution of 128 audio tracks with metadata describing sound properties such as position and volume (and their variation over time). The audio mix is rendered specifically for the theater's setup using the loudspeakers available. Each audio track can be assigned to an audio channel, the conventional format for distribution, or to an audio "object". Dolby Atmos in theaters has a 9.1 (commonly referred to as 7.1.2) channel-based "bed" channels for ambience stems or center dialogue, leaving 118 tracks for objects. Atmos for home in film, television, and music uses a technique called "spatial coding" to reduce the audio to up to a maximum of 16 concurrent "elements" or audio location clusters, that adapt to the content dynamically. In Atmos games, ISF (Intermediate Spatial format) is used, which supports 32 total active objects (using a 7.1.4 bed, 20 additional dynamic objects can be active). Each object specifies its apparent source location in the theater as a set of three-dimensional rectangular coordinates relative to the defined audio channel locations and theater boundaries.
Dolby Atmos home theaters can be built upon conventional 5.1 and 7.1 layouts. For Dolby Atmos, the nomenclature differs slightly by an additional number at the end, which represents the number of overhead or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers: a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos system is a conventional 7.1 layout with four overhead or Dolby Atmos-enabled speakers. The simplest Dolby Atmos setup is 3.1.2, the most complex one is 24.1.10.
Dolby Atmos content is authored using compatible digital audio workstation software (Dolby supplies a plug-in for Pro Tools and Cubase) or a suitably equipped large format audio mixing console such as AMS Neve's DFC or Harrison's MPC5.
The Dolby Atmos sound system consists of a compatible speaker system, a TV or AV media player, and an AV receiver (or preprocessor), with a Dolby Atmos object audio renderer. During playback, each theater's Dolby Atmos system renders the audio objects in real time based on the known locations of the loudspeakers present in the target theater, such that each audio object is heard as originating from its designated set of coordinates. By way of contrast, conventional multichannel technology essentially burns all the source audio tracks into a fixed number of channels during post-production. This has conventionally forced the re-recording mixer to make assumptions about the playback environment that may not apply very well to a particular theater. The addition of audio objects allows the mixer to be more creative, to bring more sounds off the screen, and to be confident of the results.