How To Set Up a DOLBY ATMOS Home Theater! EASY Atmos Guide

adobe atmos is all the rage in home theater and many of you have asked for help on how to set up your very own dolby atmos home theater and what you need to get started well let's just jump into it with this easy to follow guide to setting up your very own dolby atmos home theater [Music] before we get started this video is meant as a simple how-to to get you started with dolby atmos i know you're eager to start setting things up but let's first make sure we have all of the right equipment in this tutorial we will be setting up a basic 5.1.2 channel dolby atmos home theater so first we need to make sure we have a dolby atmos capable av receiver i'm using a marantz nr1711 in this example but any 7.1 channel or greater dolby atmos compatible receiver will work if you aren't sure if the receiver you are considering is 7.1 we'll leave a few examples in the description below to help you narrow the field for a 5.1.2 setup you need seven total speakers two left and right main speakers a center speaker left and right surrounds and a pair of dolby atmos enabled speakers to cover that dot one in our setup we need a single subwoofer for speakers we are using our monitor audio bronze series but you can use any speakers you want or that you already have because atmos doesn't necessarily require you to have new speakers for the visuals you'll need a video player of your choice like an apple tv 4k which is what i'm using today but you might also use a blu-ray player playstation xbox or even the internal apps on your tv so obviously we also need a display we're using the sony x95j wrapping up our equipment list you'll need high-speed hdmi cables one for every source you plan on using enough speaker cable to connect all of the speakers in this setup and an rca cable long enough to connect your subwoofer to your receiver as for cables you will find several affordable options ones i use regularly below in the description first let's get our speakers placed in our room the left and right main speakers should be situated to the left and right side of your display we want them positioned so that if we were to draw a line between where we sit and the speakers we would end up with a triangle you can experiment with their positioning by towing them in towards your listening position but you don't necessarily have to in fact some speakers may sound better facing directly forward so just find what sounds best for you and your room next place the center speaker between the left and right main speakers most likely just below your tv for the surround speakers we're going to place them either to the side or just to the side and slightly behind our main listening position making sure that they are more or less pointed at us you can also mount them to the wall which is a bit more labor-intensive with our five main speakers set we can place the subwoofer in our room where it sounds best if you're not sure where that spot is check out my video on proper subwoofer placement which i'll link to down below don't just guess or go where you think the subwoofer looks the best because that may not be where it sounds the best so proper subwoofer placement is key this point you should have five speakers and a sub placed in your room now one of the easiest ways to enjoy dolby atmos and its overhead sound effects is to use upward firing speakers that sit either atop the left and right main speakers or our surrounds these upward angled speakers are designed to bounce the sound off of your ceiling and then back down towards your listening position giving you the sensation of having overhead speakers now you can totally use in-ceiling speakers which may give you better performance especially if your ceilings are really high but upward firing atmos speakers are arguably the easiest way to enjoy the enhanced surround sound of dolby atmos without having to make permanent changes to your living space the only easier way is if the atmos speaker is already built into the top of your speakers like for instance the focal 826d now if you are wondering whether or not your ceilings would be considered high or not as long as your ceilings are between 8 and say 12 feet in height should be just fine anything beyond that and you might be better served by going with in-ceiling speakers now it is time to connect our speakers to the av receiver using the appropriate length of speaker cable connect each speaker to the corresponding speaker terminal or binding post on the rear of your av receiver the right main connects to the right main terminal and so on and so forth do this for every speaker but don't connect your atmos speakers just yet depending on your av receiver you may have to connect your atmos speakers to the terminals marked back height or assignable as you can see with the marantz we're using here the atmos speakers connect to the terminals labeled surround back left and right that we will later assign now go ahead and connect your atmos speakers to the appropriate terminal on the back of your av receiver the last speaker we need to connect is our subwoofer using an rca cable connect your sub to your av receivers subwoofer out now plug in your subwoofer to a nearby wall outlet and set its crossover frequency dial to its highest setting and set the volume or level dial to 12 o'clock now it's time to connect our display to our receiver using a high speed hdmi cable plug one end into your receiver's primary hdmi monitor out using the one that is labeled arc earc now connect the other end to the hdmi input on your tv marked arc earc if you are using the internal streaming apps included on your tv this is the only cable you will need to connect if you have other video devices again we're using an apple tv 4k plug them into your av receiver using another hdmi cable most av receivers hdmi inputs are labeled cable satellite blu-ray streamer game etc so go ahead plug your hdmi equipped devices into the proper hdmi input doing this will ensure we won't need to make any additional changes within the av receiver in order to enjoy our devices now turn on your av receiver your television and any other connected devices on your tv remote change the input to the one used to connect your av receiver next hit setup on your av receiver remote you should see an on-screen menu appear every receiver is going to be a little bit different but you should see a menu option marked speakers or speaker setup select that option now if your av receiver has auto room correction software like odyssey dirac accu eq y pal or similar you can go ahead and use that now following the on-screen menus will walk you through the auto calibration procedure and let you skip this next part but for the sake of this video let's set things up the manual way one of the first things you're going to see when manually configuring your av receivers speaker setup is an option called amp assign this is very important inside this sub menu you need to tell your av receiver that you have two dolby atmos speakers connected and where they're placed within your room as you can see in our example under assign mode ours are labeled front dolby and if we go to view terminal configuration we see a graphic showing us that the speaker terminals on the back of our av receiver labeled left and right back are now being used for our dolby atmos speakers that sit atop our left and right main front speakers next go to speaker configuration in this step we are going to tell our av receiver what speakers are connected and what size they are large aka full range or small as in limited in base all of the speakers in this example classify as small so we're going to go set all of the speaker options to small because deep deep bass in this instance will ultimately be routed to our subwoofer if you have tower speakers or speakers capable of playing back deep bass set those speakers to large next go to the sub menu labeled crossover inside this menu we're going to set the point with which our speakers are crossed over with our subwoofer in other words the point with which bass is going to be directed away from our speakers and sent to the sub typically 80 hertz is standard though for large or more full range speakers you can set the crossover to say 50 hertz now we need to set the distance of our speakers using a tape measure measure the distance between your primary listening position and each of the speakers in your home theater enter the distance for each speaker and your subwoofer inside your receiver's menu option for distance if your receiver has a sub menu marked dolby speaker setup go ahead and select it inside this menu you will set the distance between your atmos speakers and your ceiling setting the distance as accurately as possible is important because it ensures that all of the various surround sound effects reach your listening position at the right time the last thing we need to do in order to make sure our speakers are set up correctly is set their levels we want all of the speakers to play at the same volume so using a sound pressure level or spl meter we can make sure that all of our speakers are level matched you can totally download a free spl meter on your phone for this step select the first speaker option on the list a test tone will be produced note the level on your spl meter now move to the next speaker option if the level of that speaker is lower or higher than the previous speaker adjust the level setting inside your av receiver until they match do this for every speaker including your subwoofer congratulations your av receiver is now manually set up for dolby atmos soundtracks we only have a few more steps before we hit play on our favorite atmos enabled films now before you go grabbing the popcorn i need you to go into your displays setting menu and select the sound sub menu locate the option labeled arc or earc mode make sure this is set to on or auto so that if you use your tv to stream movies from say netflix or hbo max you'll be able to enjoy atmos it also means that if you have a gaming console connected directly to your tv you'll be able to have the highest quality audio like dolby atmos sent to your av receiver and thus your loudspeakers lastly we now have to make sure that the audio output of our video devices is set to output at most using your device's remote select the settings menu on an apple tv you access this by selecting the gear icon on your dashboard go to the video and audio menu under audio format select auto and make sure dolby atmos is turned on by default many new source components like apple tv 4k or atmos enabled blu-ray players have dolby atmos enabled by default but never hurts to double check all that's left to do now is select a dolby atmos encoded film and enjoy the show i highly recommend free guy or avengers end game on the front display of your av receiver you should see the word atmos when playing back atmos content if you are ever unsure you can always hit the display or info button on your receiver's remote to pull up all of the technical details for what it is that you are watching that's it you are done you have successfully set up your first dolby atmos surround sound home theater system i know it may have been daunting at times but hopefully after watching this video once or maybe twice it will become second nature but more than that i really hope this video helps you to enjoy your home theater that much more so that's it that is it for this video what did you guys think let me know down in the comments below and i have a question of the day for you and that is what other educational videos would you like to see on this channel let me know because you guys often drive the content that we talk about here if you like this video please do give it a thumbs up like and subscribe go ahead and ring that bell so that you're notified when new videos come out if you use any of the links that christy left for you down below and they're going to be a lot for this video because we want you to have the right hardware to enjoy dolby atmos know that if you use those links you are helping to support the channel and christy and i really appreciate it follow me on instagram at recovering audiophile and that is it so remember the only person who has to like the sound of your system is you so happy listening everybody thank you so much for watching see on the next video bye

Channel: Andrew Robinson

Views: 354,547

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Id: W79dWPiItIQ

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021