Dolby Atmos-Equipped Home Theater Gear

[jayanji]

Yamaha today announced that it will support Dolby Atmos[REGISTERED SIGN] through the new AVENTAGE RX-A3040 and RX-A2040 AV receivers. Both models will enable Dolby Atmos playback through a firmware update later this fall.

Yamaha’s top rated AVENTAGE AV receivers represent a dramatic, inspired leap forward with best in class audio/video component design. They bring studio grade sound and sophisticated video enhancements to your home with unparalleled attention to detail in design, engineering and fabrication.

With Dolby Atmos, sound comes alive from all directions, including overhead, to fill the home theater with astonishing clarity, power, detail and depth.

“The combination of Dolby Atmos and Yamaha AV receivers will fill the room with multidimensional sound that makes the viewer feel as if they are right in the middle of the story unfolding on the screen,” “The addition of Dolby Atmos is a natural fit for Yamaha AV receivers which are designed to provide the ultimate cinema experience at home.”

 

[jayanji]

Denon, Marantz, Pioneer, Onkyo, Integra Reveal Dolby Atmos-Equipped Home Theater Gear

Though we got Onkyo's Dolby Atmos news earlier than the rest, sure enough, other electronics manufacturer are showing their support for Dolby Atmos surround by offering home theater products (mostly A/V receivers) with built-in Dolby Atmos decoding. Pioneer, Denon, Marantz and Integra have all sent out official announcements for upcoming products that will include Dolby Atmos decoding.

Dolby Atmos is a new surround sound format, developed by Dolby for theater owners who said they needed better sound in order to lure prospective movie-goers away from their comfy couch or easy chair. It's an object-oriented surround platform which supports up to 64 discrete speakers including height or "voice of God" speakers placed above the viewers. Dolby first unveiled the format in April of 2012 and the first feature film to include a Dolby Atmos soundtrack (Disney's "Brave") debuted in a handful of theaters in Dolby Atmos surround in June of that year. Since then over 100 feature films have been encoded and released in Dolby Atmos and the surround format is available in hundreds of premium theaters around the world. You can find a Dolby Atmos-equipped theater near you.

And now that special kind of surround is coming to a home theater near you as multiple manufacturers confirmed their plans today for Dolby Atmos-equipped products for the home. Each of these upcoming home theater receivers offers at least seven amplified speaker channels, plus one or two subwoofer outputs. Seven channels are required to support the minimum Dolby Atmos configuration, which is referred to as "5.1.2" - the first number is traditional surround channels, second is for the subwoofer, and the third is for height channels.

A Dolby Atmos 5.1.2-configuration includes the five regular surround channels (Front, Center, Right, Right Surround, Left Surround), one subwoofer, plus two height channels. Higher end models have nine or more channels of amplification to support 7.1.2, 5.1.4, or even 7.1.4 speaker configurations. For those companies offering preamp/processors, the Dolby Atmos-equipped devices will include at least seven preamp channel outputs (not including subwoofers).

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[jayanji]

'Transformers 4' will be first Dolby Atmos Blu-ray

Paramount will launch the "Transformers: Age of Extinction" Blu-ray on September 30, 2014, in the US and says it plans further Atmos titles via online streaming and Blu-ray Disc later this year.

According to Dolby there are hundreds of cinema titles that have been encoded in Atmos since it debuted in 2011, including "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Brave," and "The Life of Pi."

In the coming months a host of new receivers will come online supporting the Dolby standard, as well as some existing models that can be upgraded via firmware. Manufacturers that have announced Atmos-enabled equipment include Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, and Yamaha.

Dolby Atmos offers a different way to render surround-sound information that is "object-based" rather than channel-based, which enables Atmos systems to adapt surround soundtracks on the fly to a user's own speaker configuration. Dolby Atmos is backward-compatible with existing True HD decoding equipment.

One of the biggest challenges Dolby faces in popularizing the format in the home is convincing customers to invest in height speakers, or buy new speakers with ceiling-facing drivers, such as the Pioneer Elite speakers.

According to Dolby, some as-yet-unnamed manufacturers will bundle add-on modules for existing speakers with the purchase of new Atmos receivers.

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