Dolby Atmos: In-Ceiling vs Height Speaker! Which is better for your setup? Let's test it out!

so this all started out because I was doing a new admos mix where a sound goes from the front left straight up across and then straight down to your front right and I realized if you're using in ceiling speakers you're not going to experience it that way and then I came to the conclusion that if you are using four in-ceiling speakers you're probably about at an 85 percent at most experience you want to bump that up to 95 to 100 you should go with high channels let's talk about it and I am back what is up YouTube how are you doing trying to do your techno Dad here and we're going to talk today about which is better in ceiling speakers or high channels and we're going to take a deep dive because I've heard from either side you know oh in ceilings better and then I've heard other people say oh hi channels better so which one is better and today I am wearing the Star Wars A New Hope shirt because I am hoping that you know showing the disconnect between how Atmos is created and how it is consumed in your home will kind of shed some light on what is better and how we can get a better Dolby Atmos experience so that is what I am hoping for today so there is an interactive companion video to this video you'll have to go into the description of this video sign up for my newsletter they'll send you a verification email you verify your email then you'll be sent an email another one a welcome email with the link to to download the companion to this video I mixed the companion video in 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos you'll have to take the mp4 file stick it on a thumb drive put in your Blu-ray players the PD Plex some people have been putting it into their TV and e-arcing the Dolby Atmos to their AVR a whole bunch of stuff has been happening so that's really cool but then you'll be able to actually experience what I'm talking about and then come back to this video and you know report back your findings so that we can kind of collect the data and see what's actually happening in your home of course this is for people with four in-ceiling speakers but everybody else can also follow along as well but again you'll need to watch this video first so let's bring on the slideshow oh yeah all right everyone here's the slideshow and I got this image from dolby's website which is a side view of the room within ceiling speakers now if you look at the border of this image this is our room boundary now this picture is what I see when I'm creating Atmos and logic pro this is the Dolby Atmos renderer now this is the one built into Logic the other one from Dolby is pretty much the same thing a little bit different but it's the basic idea now this however is not the room boundary this is the speaker boundary now if we overlay the two we can see that the speaker boundary is smaller than the room's boundary but this is still not 100 correct now back in logic when I place the sound in the front left speaker we'll see a little ball here in this front left bottom corner if I put a sound in the right speaker I'll see a ball in this bottom right this one in the back here is your surround back right and this one on the left is your surround back left so everything on this plane here is an ear level speaker and if we go up to the corners these are your height channels front height left front height right rear height right rear height left so when we look at this image with the speaker boundary is overlaid on top of the room boundary this one is not a hundred percent correct right because if I were to play a sound that isn't really aligned properly with the ear level speakers so this speaker boundary is now adjusted so if I play a sound in your front left speaker and overlay it with the room boundary here we go now everything is aligned the speaker boundary is aligned with the room boundary properly and I think this is one of the disconnects is when we see these images separately we don't actually correlate them to what they actually are so now that the room boundary and speaker boundary diagrams are overlaid and aligned properly there are two things that really catch my eye and it's the fact that with these in-ceiling speakers there are two big holes in the speaker boundary right these sections here there's no coverage when you're using in-ceiling speakers of this space in this room boundary so now if we go back to logic with your augmented I guess room boundary this this is what we're getting however in logic I'm seeing this in logic but this is what you're experiencing in your room here right now we have a huge disconnect so if I place the sound here basically it's a sound that needs to be imaged from your front height left front height right to make the sound appear like it's coming from the center top corner of your speaker boundary and now we move to your speaker boundary you can see that the sound is outside of your speaker boundary now let's bring in dolby's original image the big question is where is this sound going to be placed now some of you will be like oh well you know if the in-ceiling speaker number seven here is pointed down and has good dispersion it'll it'll probably image pretty close to that sound yeah true that could happen but majority of you have already said that your in-ceiling speakers are angled pointed at your main listening position so where is this sound going to be placed could it be placed in this yellow could that be it or how about this Orange or maybe even this red which is probably very very wrong so let's back it up a little bit I've always said you're going to get a better home theater experience if you have better room calibration so let's think about it in that way as well let's say you have an AVR or preprocessor that you know costs three thousand dollars or more you get a sound at this yellow spot which is probably as close as it could be right further front of your speaker boundary as high as possible right and maybe this orange one is an AVR that costs like fifteen hundred dollars and the room correction isn't as good and then maybe this red one is an AVR that costs 500 bucks or less and it's got really bad Rune correction the point is we don't know where Dolby is putting this sound so let's remove the speakers again and just see in Logic the sound is up front in the corner you know this yellow one's not bad the orange one not that great the red one either way you slice it all these three placements are just wrong they're just wrong the original sound is the green circle so all these other circles are just wrong these all these placements are just wrong so which brings me to this if I place a sound right above your head how are your in-ceiling speakers going to image to get that sound properly again if they're pointed down seven and eight if speakers seven and eight are pointed down and have good dispersion maybe it might be able to image that maybe a little bit lower now if your in-ceiling speakers are pointed at your main listening position there's probably no way that they could image this sound properly it's probably going to be a lot lower so you won't get that sense of height above you however if you have high channels they will for sure be able to image that sound without issue they will be able to image a sound closer to your speaker boundary up front and in the rear so now let's remove those sections from earlier in these two sections in the front and rear your in-cealing speakers are just not able to image those sounds properly they just can't physically they just can't because those sounds lay behind the speaker in essence however with high channels you can image all of those sounds properly in the place where I put them in Logic Pro so let's remove the logic pro overlay and keep the high channels but add the angles back if we extend the angle lines from the main listening position person's head in the middle there you can see that these speakers are set up at 30 degrees pretty much you know give or take one or two so 30 degrees 30 degrees that sounds so familiar I don't know where I'm remembering this from do you guys ah who's that ah it's wolf read wolf read so was he just right after all now if we overlay the Dolby Atmos renderer on top here what do we have what does this look like to you because this is what I see now when I am creating Dolby Atmos and not just me everyone else using the Dolby Atmos renderer so everybody creating Dolby Atmos we are creating Dolby Atmos with a speaker boundary that mimics an Oro 3D speaker layout but when you're at home you're experiencing Dolby Atmos in this speaker boundary this is the big disconnect I'm creating Dolby Atmos in this speaker boundary you're listening to Dolby Atmos with this speaker boundary 100 you're missing big sections of the speaker boundary so you will not be hearing the sounds I place closer to the front speaker boundary or rear speaker boundary or even the tops of the ceilings you are going to hear those sounds more forward than they would be both front to back and lower than they would be from top to bottom so there you have it that's the disconnect Atmos is being created with a speaker boundary that lines up with an Oro 3D speaker placement but you're at home and dolby's telling you to use a different speaker placement instead of 30 degrees it's 45 to 55 degrees why is that well it's simple and I've told you guys there's plenty of times that nobody listened and you thought I was crazy but it boils down to one thing and that's the lawsuit so if you want a better Dolby Atmos experience you would want to set up your speakers as height channels as opposed to in-ceiling speakers because the only reason that Dolby has it this way is so they don't get sued so this is where I need your help okay if you have four in-ceiling speakers buy the book Dolby Atmos setup or whatever you want to call it and you want to see where these sounds are ending up and if you can tell me you know where they do end up you know download the file play it in your home theater come back to this video and you know let me know so that we can kind of collect all this data because Dolby just said oh yeah if you have a smaller system or your system isn't exactly the same it'll just Matrix and the sound will be exactly where it needs to be and from my little slide presentation you know that that's just not the case and we're left in the dark I'm just trying to figure it out because there is a 100 a disconnect in creation of Dolby Atmos and the consuming of Dolby Atmos in your home huge disconnect and we need to shed light on that so make sure you sign up for my newsletter verify email you'll get the welcome email and then download the file put it on a thumb drive and then play it in your Blu-ray let me know what happens and give me some details on your system so that we can properly figure out what's happening and if there is a difference in the decoding of Atmos from AV receiver manufacturer to AV receiver manufacturer if the better room correction does a better job at placing that sound or not I don't know so we're all just here learning together now for those of you that have already signed up for the newsletter I already sent out the file for you guys so you should already have it just check her inbox and also check your spam or junk I know there's been a lot of people like I didn't get the email I didn't get the email check your spam or junk it'll probably be coming from China de Silva that's me your techno dad anyway that's it that's all don't forget to subscribe like the video all that YouTube nonsense and we'll see in the next one peace [Music] [Music]

Channel: Techno Dad

Views: 92,401

Keywords: dolby atmos, dolby atmos setup, dolby atmos test, Dolby Atmos Test, dolby atmos height speakers, dolby atmos height speakers test, dolby atmos in ceiling speakers, dolby atmos in ceiling speaker setup

Id: DWjZZwIe71w

Length: 12min 37sec (757 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 08 2022