5.1.2 Dolby Atmos Home Theater System
Cyndi Barca
Bring the cinema experience home with the incredible sound of the Klipsch R-625FA 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos Home Theater System. Klipsch signature controlled directivity and acoustic technology make this home theater system unlike any other.
Klipsch exclusive 90 x 90 Tractrix horn technology ensures the Reference series speaker's high-frequency energy is aimed at the listener and reduces artificial reverb or filtering caused by indirect sound bouncing off of walls. Using this proprietary focused technology gives you the best clarity, dynamics, and detail from your movies and music.
Klipsch exclusive Linear Travel Suspension (LTS) aluminum tweeter minimizes distortion for enhanced, detailed performances. Using Kapton, an extremely light and rigid material, in the tweeter suspension provides high efficiency and improves resolution and detail. LTS tweeters are a hallmark of Klipsch speakers, making them some of the best speakers in the world.
IMMERSE IN THEATER-LIKE SOUND: Experience a captivating home entertainment experience with the Monaco 5.1.2 speaker system. This all-inclusive package delivers uncompressed high-definition, multi-channel audio that envelops you from all directions.
DOLBY ATMOS EXPERIENCE: Elevate your audio with front satellite speakers equipped with up-firing drivers designed for Dolby Atmos sound and Dolby Atmos Music. Enjoy a sound environment that surrounds and elevates, enhancing both cinematic and musical enjoyment.
WiSA CERTIFIED: Thanks to WiSA technology, Monaco 5.1.2 creates its own dedicated wireless network, ensuring seamless, lag-free audio that's crystal clear. Enjoy reliable performance without the hassle.
Don't get me wrong: I love Dolby's immersive, object-based audio technology as much as the next audio nerd. But finding shows mixed in Atmos or DTS:X is harder than you might think. Except for house-produced shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime, very little content is mixed using the height channels available to stream on most Atmos systems, which extend the listening plane from the horizontal to the vertical for sound effects like rain or wind.
The top of the bar has five raised buttons that let you turn the thing on, change inputs, pair to Bluetooth, and adjust volume. It has two HDMI inputs, though just one eARC port to connect to your TV.
Whether you're someone who has finally been convinced to just buy a soundbar already, or you're looking for an audio companion to your new TV, the M-Series soundbar is a great option. I recently reviewed (and liked!) the Polk React, but I prefer the sound of the M-Series bar for both clarity and immersion.
It's cheap relative to its features, super easy to use, and comes from a brand that has made some of the best (and most reliable) soundbars for years. Starting from unboxing to watching Andy Samberg slam into the side of a ramp in Hot Rod took less than 15 minutes. If I was setting up a home theater in an apartment, medium-size living room, or gaming den, this would be at the top of my list.
Dolby Atmos has also found a home in the music business. Dolby Atmos Music is now at the forefront of a new wave of spatial audio that you can experience on almost any smartphone as long as you have a set of headphones.
To get to stereo sound, we need two channels of recorded sound (each with its own unique audio) and at least two speakers. The more channels (and thus the more speakers), the more control sound engineers have over the level of immersion and realism they can deliver.
Surround sound, at its most basic, involves three channels and four speakers: a set of stereo front speakers (left and right) and a set of surround speakers, which are usually placed just to the sides and just behind a central listening position. The next step up involves the addition of a fourth channel and a fifth speaker, placed between the front left and right speakers, that is primarily responsible for dialogue.
It was the summer of 1969 when surround sound first became available in the home. It was called Quadraphonic sound, and as the name suggests, it provided four channels of discrete sound routed to four speakers placed in each corner of a room. It first appeared on reel-to-reel tape, but eventually became available on vinyl too.
It was a genius idea that proved to be a commercial failure. Quadrophonic sound was difficult to create and even harder to play at home due to the expense and complexity of the equipment needed. Keep in mind, this was in the pre-digital era.
With the release of the film Clear and Present Danger on LaserDisc in 1995, the first Dolby Digital surround sound hit home theaters. By the time DVDs came out in 1997, Dolby Digital had become the default surround sound format. To this day, Dolby Digital 5.1 is considered by many to be the surround sound standard and is still included on most Blu-ray discs and tons of streamed movies.
DTS, on the other hand, offered two separate 6.1 versions. DTS-ES Discrete and DTS-ES Matrix perform as their names suggest. With ES Discrete, specific sound information is programmed onto a DVD or Blu-ray disc, while DTS-ES Matrix uses the same technique as Dolby Digital EX to extrapolate information from the surround channels.
Just when people started getting used to 6.1, along came 7.1 in conjunction with HD DVD and Blu-ray discs becoming the new must-have surround format and essentially supplanting its predecessor. Like 6.1, there are several different versions of 7.1, all of which add in a second back surround speaker.
For most people, a single subwoofer will provide ample low-end bass and rumble. However, adding a second sub can enhance this effect, especially in larger media rooms. Check out our subwoofer placement guide to learn why a second sub might be right for you.
Because these channels no longer need to extrapolate their signals from audio running to other speakers as they did with Pro Logic IIz 7.1, they get their own number. A 5.1.2 system, for example, would feature the traditional five channels and a subwoofer, but it would also feature two additional speakers adding height information in stereo at the front. A 5.1.4 system would add four additional height channels to 5.1, including two at the front and two at the rear.
Atmos debuted on compatible AV receivers in 2015, but in a much more limited capacity than the professional format. As mentioned above, the most common configurations are 5.1.2 or 5.1.4, which add two and four height speakers to a traditional 5.1 surround setup respectively, though Dolby supports much larger configurations.
Atmos took off relatively quickly, and most AV receivers above the low-end range of the spectrum now support the format. In fact, every receiver on the list of our favorite AV receivers supports Atmos, even models priced at $500 or less.
In 2015, Yamaha introduced the first Atmos-capable soundbar, the YSP-5600, which uses up-firing drivers to bounce sound off the ceiling. Since then, soundbar manufacturers have fully embraced Dolby Atmos. Some achieve the Atmos effect by using dedicated wireless surround speakers with up-firing drivers to complement the front speakers in the bar. Others use a technique known as virtualized Dolby Atmos to convincingly simulate the Atmos effect using fewer speakers.
Movies with Dolby Atmos soundtracks are now very common on Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. And streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Apple TV+ all offer a selection of Atmos movies and shows. Atmos is even starting to appear in some live broadcasts.
Just like with other types of surround sound, DTS has its own version of object-based audio, DTS:X, which was unveiled in 2015. DTS:X aims to be more flexible and accessible than Atmos, making use of preexisting speaker layouts in theaters and supporting up to 32 different speaker configurations in the home.
DTS also recognizes that not all movie lovers have the space or the time to put together an object-based sound system. Research gathered by DTS showed that less than 30% of customers actually connect height speakers to their systems, and less than 50% even bother connecting surround speakers.
While not exactly new and yet to be widely adopted, MPEG-H support is showing up in more and more TVs, set-top boxes, soundbars, AV receivers, and more, allowing users to do some pretty cool sound fine-tuning -- from simple adjustments like enhancing and increasing movie dialog to more advanced personalizations like tweaking the audio mix to turn down the fans of the opposing sports team, all using your remote or an app. It's a neat level of control we've not seen before.
When it comes to getting a true Dolby Atmos home theater sound experience, your choices are pretty simple. You either buy an A/V receiver and hook it up to a bunch of wired speakers, or you go the soundbar route. But now there's a third choice, with Platin Audio's new Monaco 5.1.2 wireless home speaker system, which can be pre-ordered starting September 13 for $1,499, with deliveries beginning in mid-October.
The Monaco 5.1.2 includes two front speakers, two surround speakers, a center channel, and a subwoofer, all of which communicate via the WiSA system for wireless audio. This means that each speaker is independently powered and can be placed anywhere within the same room. The speakers get their signal wirelessly from the included WiSA Sound Send module, which can transmit eight channels of lossless audio at up to 24-bit/96kHz, with incredibly low latency, so audio sync problems shouldn't arise.
Those devices join the likes of smart TVs from LG, Samsung, and Vizio, as well as older-model Chromecasts, which already had support for 5.1 audio. Still waiting are Amazon Fire TV (the biggest platform in the world and No. 2 in the U.S.), Apple TV, and game consoles.
Upgrade your lifestyleDigital Trends helps readers keep tabs on the fast-paced world of tech with all the latest news, fun product reviews, insightful editorials, and one-of-a-kind sneak peeks.
c80f0f1006