How to Setup Your Room for Atmos and Immersive Audio

More reasons to do Atmos, it is mushrooming:

Unlike stereo Atmos is mixed so it will translate on any platform. I like the remixes they have done in Atmos like the Beatles but the mixes that are new so the artist is able to translate their intentions in the Atmos palate continue to amaze. Check out some of the dedicated channels for Spatial audio in Apple Music, particularly new album drops:

“As a stereo mixer, what keeps me awake at night is how my mixes are going to translate on someone’s headphones, in a club, on the kitchen radio or on a very nice pair of Focal home hi-fi speakers. I have one mix that has to serve all platforms. Atmos for music is actually a dynamic format so when I create an Atmos mix, it will adapt to the device that it is playing on. Play it on your Sonos Soundbar which is 5.1.2, and it will optimise to play on that device. Play it on your Sennheiser 660 headphones and you’ll get the binaural mix and so on.”

@donavabdear

How is your studio setup going? Are you going to isolate it from the HT?

And treatment for your HT need not be ugly. I went with Auralex because I love bamboo. All of those wooden diffusors you see in my pics are made from sustainable bamboo. It sounded better than fiberglass diffusors in my room. There are plenty of vendors to suit your taste, ASC stuff looks great and is very functional. If you get an Attack Wall the same company could treat both spaces:

@donavabdear

My room has no parallel walls only the floor and ceiling.

OK, do you have any room measurements yet? How will you apply room correction to your 5.1 setup?

The reason I posted those links above is the panels are portable. With the ASC or Auralex solutions you could have any "walls" (like the Attack Wall") you want.

You talked about acoustics, the reps of these companies help you setup as part of their service.

So, can you post some measurements?

@donavabdear 

if I get to excited about mixing for the rears and the tops my mix won't translate like it should back to 5.1 or stereo

I guess you know your client base and until someone asks for an Atmos mix no need to go there. Better to setup your 5.1 setup just right first.

Thanks @mikelavigne , I got it. I like this better than the guide Dolby puts out, more detailed. I was watching an interview of Peter Lyngdorf who felt the ideal number of speakers in a HT was less than 16, I think he felt the max he says you should do was around 12. I am very glad I saw that video because it saved me $$$ on upgrading to one of the 16 channel processors. The best resource I found for listening to MCH music was Tomlinson Holman’s research when he was working with Audyssey. They found that wide channels were more important than rear surrounds or height channels. (see page 23 in the Trinnov Guide linked below) I A/B with and without wide channels and find his research to be spot on. This link might work:

@donavabdear

This is one of the reasons I like Tom Holman’s work. BTW, if you haven’t checked out @mikelavigne virtual system yet I think you’ll find it a great (perfect?) example of room setup:

Tomlinson Holman research on wide’s states:

1) The front half of the room is more important than the back half!
What is perhaps the most repeated mantra I heard during my visit was how the decision to add 2 rear channels when 7 channel sound offered itself as an improvement over 5 channels is according to Audyssey, a serious error. IF these extra channels are available, they should be added to the front, NOT the rear. Why? Human hearing has far better spatial acuity in the front of us than we do behind us. According to Tom Holman, we can resolve auditory spatial information to about 1 degree in angle in front of us from right to left, (Horizontal plane) and about 3 degrees in height (Vertical plane). Both of these sensitivities are far greater than what we have for sounds coming from behind us. Hence Audyssey’s preference of multiple channels in front and sides, and one required for rear channel sound.

2) Width is more important than height!
Width is crucially important in placing instruments and recreating acoustical space. Concert halls with side walls perpendicular to the stage are considered by experts on the subject to be acoustically superior spaces to fan shaped halls. One of the reasons here is the importance of the early reflections from the right and left side walls perpendicular to the stage. In the "fan shaped" concert halls, the splayed side walls did not support the same kind of early reflections and are one of the main reasons these halls are not judged as good by the experts. To quote Mr Holman, "it is known in concert hall acoustics that the first side wall reflection is the single most important reflection direction, it sets the auditory source width... Channels constrained to plus/minus 30 degrees are too narrow for that". For this reason, the DSX standards (7.1, 9.1 and 10.2) support a left wide and right wide channel at plus/minus 60 degrees to reproduce the kind of side wall reflection you would hear if you were seated in a great concert hall."

@mikelavigne

That is very helpful, thank you. I have been in the Marantz ecosystem and felt that everything at the $3K to $7K price point was more of a lateral move regarding features than a step up in SQ, regardless of the brand. There was a night and day difference when I stepped up to the paid Audyssey license and a calibrated mic so the DSP is very important. @brianlucey is a mastering engineer who is mastering in Atmos and gave the Trinnov very high marks. He felt it was essential and to your point, it wasn’t about the channel count but their proprietary DSP. Thanks for the heads up. BTW, I had an issue with a picture window on my right wall. I didn’t want to block the light with a heavy acoustic or blackout curtain. I hung an acoustic lens 3D diffusor (auralex) that let’s the light pass through. It may not be very attractive but completely resolved the acoustic problem that was plaguing my MLP from the window without blocking it.

@mikelavigne 

That guide was good, using those tables I decided to move my top middle atmos speakers to top rear speakers so they can double as my surround heights for Auro-3D (aiming the angle at the MLP as suggested, not firing down at the floor) and I'll leave my rear heights only for Atmos. I was using rear heights for auro 3D, not ideal. Thanks!

@donavabdear

If you use Vudu you can search for atmos and they have the dolby test tracks loaded and you can play for free.

When can you post your measurements?? I don’t know protools so no help there. You will find out quickly if your mixes hold up when you test them in your car or someone elses space.

Listening to Apple Spatial audio atmos mixes are like anything else, some good, some not so good. I like "We Take Requests" atmos mix by Oscar Peterson, all of the Beatle atmos mixes, and Kraftwerk in atmos is really good, play it loud and it just pressurizes the entire room.

@donavabdear

You have the "magic" ingredient to knock your sox off immersive audio, POWER. Your Genelec speakers are already TRI-AMPED! Why not make THAT system the ONE and make your HT about your chill space?

With your background there isn’t any reason you couldn’t have a killer studio at home. You got the ears from your years in the studios, now get your home studio acoustically the way you want. You know some engineers actually prefer the ASC Attack Wall over a traditional space. You can set them up on a dime.
You got the speakers, you got the IP, now what about the space?

Measurements??

@donavabdear 

To me the only way to fix this is to not have the surround channels symmetric.

My room treatments are not symmetric, worked fantastic for me. See "Anthony Grimmani's acoustic recipe.

say you have a signal from 225 degrees on your left behind you. You can’t perceive a phantom center channel between them but that is how Atmos works

My room has a setup less than ideal for back surround speakers so I chose a specific speaker that uses a Harman proprietary technology (HST) to deal with it. It makes it seem like the entire back wall is a speaker in my room:

What do you think?

I can't say what will work for you. What worked for me was following the Dolby specs for speaker setup, measuring, treating my room, using a calibrated mic and upgraded audyssey for DSP, measuring, tweaking and listening, until it met or exceeded what I wanted (both objectively and subjectively). Now I just got that tip about top middle speaker placement from the Trinnov guide so I will tweak. 

@donavabdear 

In  acoustics and photography and many other arts there is something called the rule of thirds, 

I prefer Fibonacci ratios

 I was a musician and a monitor mixer for bands

Talk about a sweet spot. Some of my favorite tracks are sound board mixes from concerts you can get at nugs.net and wolfgangs.com

@donavabdear

Is it possible my room sounds better without DSP

DSP is limited in what it can do. If you post your measurements there will be a before and after graph and we can discuss.

I use fib ratios for placing seats, placing panels, not really for equipment.

The HST speakers place the woofer on the back, about 2 inches from the wall, facing it. Two tweeters angled out at left and right directions. It worked better for my room than traditional on walls.

@donavabdear 

Does this give you any ideas for your home atmos studio:

Studio D – Dolby Atmos, Post-production & Mastering

Studio D is a our new mixing, mastering, and music production studio featuring an Avid S6 48-channel digital mixing console with Dolby Atmos 7.4.1 surround sound designed by world-reknowned studio designer John Storyk. 

@donavabdear

You were thinking about dropping six figures on some speakers or getting some new gear. The answer you are looking for is in the post above. How many clients would you get if you took that budget and invested it to have a guy with a rep like Storyk design your home studio?

"The sound guy from Titanic will mix your content in immersive audio in his studio designed by World Renowned Studio Designer_______________ (Storyk, etc)."

That would immediately give you creds in BOTH communities, pro and audiophile. Case closed.

Here is something on fib ratios:

@mikelavigne

So I took the idea from the Trinnov guide you posted to move my top middle surround atmos speaker from above the MLP (where they doubled as VOG for auro 3d) to top rear (right above the surround speakers so they now double as auro 3D surround height channels). Since I moved the speakers I took the opportunity to get new speaker wire (audioquest G-2 in bulk for the long run) and change the amp ( from a parasound Z amp to a Carver AV505), I also installed a new single VOG channel above the MLP. Now my center height, VOG, and top rear speakers are all being driven by the same Carver 5 channel amp. So I fired it up after redoing my calibration and everything sounds smoother. Before I could slightly localize the top middle speakers and now in the new location they blend much better forming that nice immersive bubble. It was a bit of a pain running the speaker wires but it actually looks better to. I’ll need to rewire the new VOG channel next week, I ran out of cable. Well worth the effort and thanks for posting that guide 👍