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How to Setup Your Room for Atmos and Immersive Audio

I think this video by the Dolby Institute is targeted at professionals but the principals translate to the home. You’ll notice that they don’t use the ceiling speakers pointing straight down but bookshelves that are angled toward the MLP. The other thing you’ll notice is that all of the bed channel speakers are at the same height (that includes the center channel). At 16:00 minute in the video make sure to watch the part about room tuning, very helpful as to what DSP can and cannot do:

" I feel like money spent on this type of help (room treatments and acoustics) will be more valuable than any piece of gear you will ever buy"

 

kota1

Showing 3 responses by mikelavigne

mikelavigne
2,144 posts
 

@kota1

as far as number of speakers, past a certain number it’s more a room size and immersion by degrees issue. and then there is the reality that to get the best processor and the best feature set, that’s Trinnov, and their entry level is 16 channels (which can be expanded to 20 if need be).

i went from my Anthem AV60 with 7.1.4 to the Trinnov with 9.3.6 the quality difference of what i heard profound. same speakers, just a couple more of them. but night and day. the processor quality difference was game changing. and also the ability of the processor to ’re-map’ the locations of your speakers can make all the difference depending on your room challenges. i have a side window and side patio doors which effect where my 2 side speakers can be. no problem with the Trinnov, it will ’steer’ the perceived location with it’s set-up wizard.

pure magic.

so more speakers only help if the processor is up to the task of optimization.

and the Trinnov is really just a very large powerful computer, not any off the shelf chip set. and completely software based. so upgrades are downloaded and easy. little worry about the normal obsolescence as movie sound evolves.

mikelavigne
2,144 posts
 

here is the hot tip for the most advanced information on multi-channel speaker positioning from the world’s leader on this subject. when i was positioning my own 9.3.6 multichannel set-up, i choose the Trinnov approach instead of the Dolby Atmos approach for my ceiling after much research.

looks like the link to the pdf does not work properly. so google "Trinnov Multichannel playbook", scroll down to "Loudspeaker Position Guide -AVS Forum", then select to get the download of the PDF, then open the PDF.

 

http://file:///C:/Users/mplav/Downloads/Trinnov_Loudspeaker_Position_Guide_2020.pdf

mikelavigne
2,144 posts
 

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 👍

@kota1 

you are welcome. great to read that the guide helped. 

helped me too. 

i had been all ready to use the Dolby Atmos ceiling pattern then Trinnov convinced me to switch and i'm very happy too.

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