Dolby Atmos 7.1 Home Theater

[Baldomero Prado]

Traditionalsurround soundtracks must confine all sounds to the 5.1 or 7.1 channels of a typical home theater setup. If a scene requires, say, a helicopter taking off, that sound has to be assigned to specific channels and mixed together with other sounds.

While that helicopter can move across channels, it can't go above you. You hear it only from the small number of predetermined locations defined by the speaker setup, not as you'd hear it in real life.

Through the use of audio objects, overhead sound, and all the richness, clarity, and power of Dolby sound, Dolby Atmos turns your room into an amazing place for entertainment. You'll feel like you're inside the action, in ways you've never before experienced.

This approach allows the filmmakers to focus on the story. For channel-based audio, filmmakers must determine which speakers should reproduce which sounds, an approach that could compromise the artistic intent. With Dolby Atmos, filmmakers simply determine where the sound should be located within a scene, and the system intelligently makes the speaker-assignment decisions. Audio objects originate and move anywhere in three-dimensional space, including anywhere overhead. You will experience a soundtrack as you would in a real-world environment.

Dolby Atmos supports up to 128 simultaneous audio objects. These include stationary sounds that are reproduced through all the speakers, such as a music background or ambient effects. Content mastered for home reproduction includes all the audio objects from the original film, placed in three-dimensional space, just as in the cinema.

Descriptive metadata accompanies every Dolby Atmos soundtrack, specifying the exact placement and movement of the audio objects. A Dolby Atmos powered AVR reads the metadata and determines how to use the speakers in your specific setup to best recreate this precise placement and movement. Dolby Atmos is highly scalable. You can play a Dolby Atmos movie and get the spatial effects on nearly any speaker configuration in a home Dolby Atmos system, and adding speakers increases the precision of the audio placement. You can have up to 24 speakers on the floor and 10 overhead.

The technology also enables overhead sounds that enhance realism and make the sound more expansive. Overhead sounds can be produced by either overhead speakers or special Dolby Atmos enabled speakers that fire sound up to the ceiling, where it is reflected back down as overhead sound.

Other home theater audio technologies, even those that add height information, still rely on channels and do not create audio objects. No matter how many channels they use, they cannot duplicate the free movement of sounds that gives Dolby Atmos its unique realism.

You'll find a growing number of Dolby Atmos movies on Blu-ray Disc or through streaming video services. As Hollywood increases the number of cinematic movies in Dolby Atmos, you'll see the list of home releases grow, too.

Dolby Atmos discs and streaming feeds are backward compatible. Even if you don't have a Dolby Atmos setup, you can still play Dolby Atmos content and enjoy the same outstanding sound you've been getting from your stereo, 5.1, or 7.1 system.

Dolby Atmos combines traditional home theater speaker layouts with additional speaker positions. These include either overhead speakers or new Dolby Atmos enabled speakers designed to reproduce the overhead audio objects. Alternatively, you can choose a Dolby Atmos enabled sound bar.

If you already have a 5.1, 7.1, or greater surround sound system, you'll most likely be able to build on it. Because Dolby Atmos uses the same basic speaker layouts, you probably won't need to reconfigure your room.

Here's a brief overview of the equipment you'll need. For more comprehensive information, see the Home Theater Setup Guide and the Dolby Atmos Speaker Setup Guide. For equipment choices, check out the latest Dolby Atmos Home Theater Products, and watch for announcements throughout the year.

Whichever you choose, set the player to bitstream output and connect to the receiver via HDMI. (Be sure to also disengage the secondary audio feature on your Blu-ray player.) Dolby Atmos is compatible with the current HDMI specification (v1.4 and later). Be sure your player supports this version.

You'll need an AVR or a preamp/processor that supports Dolby Atmos. This handles all of the necessary signal processing and rendering. You'll find a growing selection from leading AVR and component manufacturers.

This is the more practical alternative for most setups. Dolby Atmos enabled speakers are specially engineered to direct sound upward, where it reflects off the ceiling to produce an incredibly lifelike recreation of overhead sound. Dolby Atmos enabled speakers come in two versions:

Dolby Atmos enabled speakers are designed to work best in rooms with ceilings that are from 2.3 to 4.3 meters (7.5 to 14 feet) in height and that have acoustically reflective surfaces, such as drywall or plaster.

A Dolby Atmos enabled HTIB will include the receiver, sometimes a Blu-ray player, a matched set of speakers, and all necessary wires. Usually it's all packaged in a single box, hence the name. An HTIB may be an ideal choice for a small room.

A Dolby Atmos enabled sound bar is the simplest path to the Dolby Atmos experience. The sound bar contains all the Dolby Atmos processing, amplification, and direct- and upward-firing speakers. Setup involves only a single-wire connection to your TV and single-wire or Wi-Fi connections to your program sources (set-top box, media streamer, Blu-ray player.)

Dolby Atmos home theaters can be built upon traditional 5.1 and 7.1 layouts. For Dolby Atmos, the nomenclature differs slightly: a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos system is a traditional 7.1 layout with four overhead or Dolby Atmos enabled speakers.

Take a leading position in the rollout of UHD video with support for premium immersive audio. Position your network for the future with next-generation broadcast technologies and experiences, and give consumers access to the premier immersive sound experience.

Enable the delivery of the rapidly growing list of premium content available in Dolby Atmos, and take a leadership position in delivering immersive audio for live sports to draw fans closer to the action and the experience on the field.

Supporting Dolby Atmos primes your products for the next era in audio, giving broadcasters and OTT operators the flexibility to deliver the best home entertainment experiences now and into the future.

When I select Manage Audio Devices > Sound > Playback > DENON-AVR High Definition Audio Device > Configure > Audio Channels I have to manually select Dolby Atmos for home theater, remind it I have Center-Sub-Side and Rear, not just Rear speakers and that the Front left and right are full range, not the surrounds.

I get tired of having to do this manually when it should remember my selections. Also, on occasion, Windows thinks I don't actually need that setup and reverts to Stereo (more often than not). I have to go back in and select Dolby Atmos for home theater manually. Every. Time.

What I would like is a way to identify which registry entry I need to isolate and run in task manager (for example) that reminds Windows of my actual setup so I can hotkey the task and get on with my movies/games/etc.

I need a way to lock in my choices without spending hundreds of dollars on a keep-alive signal device to fool Windows into leaving my setup alone. This is likely due to the computer being always on but the AVR power cycling or the LG screen using Smart Features that pull audio focus from the PC, bypasses the PC by sending Audio directly to the AVR (eARC, etc).

My PC (Windows 10 Home v10.0.19043 Build 19043), AVR, speakers and RTX 3070 are all Atmos ready and switches formats automatically from 5.1, 7.1 and back to Atmos as the signal dictates and all my digital streams (PCM vs Bitstream) and connections (HDMI 2.1, 8k certified cables, eARC for Dolby Vision, etc) are working fine. What it DOESN'T do is keep Windows from randomly sneaking in a "did you actually mean STEREO?" switcharoo which I aim to prevent if at all possible.

I have found very little in the way of help isolating this in REG and what I did find I couldn't achieve the described effect. I have used automated scripts that open, right click, select, tab up and down, enter, enter, etc., to put things back to Dolby Atmos for home theater but it requires focus and selection that I have to wait for it to finish before I can use my mouse again and it doesn't always work due to the everchanging sound environment that Windows detects and automatically switches for me - no matter what I do to prevent it.

Any info, links, scripts, apps or help pages will be appreciated. I'm very comfortable working with AHK (even tho it's taboo right now and I'm only a beginner coding with it) to achieve this effect but I don't have the necessary DLL calls. I'm also comfortable working with REG edits but again, I don't know which one achieves the entire setup I need to reinforce or the one needed to activate Dolby Atmos for home theater that I can use with Task Manager. I hope to achieve this without upgrading to Windows 11.

NOTE: I do NOT have an issue selecting default devices - never have and doing so does nothing to preserve which speaker setup I prefer and prevent Stereo from even being an option. I only have one Mic and one Audio output anyway so I've nailed the default device thing. It's the desired Speaker setup (no enhancements, only audio channels) I need to get working, keeping, checking and correcting as needed or hotkeyed for my issue to be resolved.

@adam deltinger Thank you for the suggestion. I'm trying to find a Microsoft forum to find my answer since the issue is with Microsoft software programming. The audio sites have no solution for less than $1100 and there's no software I can find or programmer that is willing to tackle the issue. If you know of a Microsoft forum you think could discuss this better please link it to me. Otherwise I'll let this fade away on it's own and keep looking.

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