Questions Manual

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT DOLBY ATMOS

FOR

THE HOME

August 2014

Q: What is Dolby Atmos?

Dolby Atmos

is a revolutionary new audio technology that transports you into extraordinary

entertainment experiences.

 Fills your room with captivating sound

o Sound comes from all directions, including overhead, to fill the room with

astonishing clarity, richness, detail, and depth.

 Puts sounds into motion all around you

o The specific sounds of people, music, and things move all around you in

multidimensional space, so you feel like you are inside the action.

 Delivers the full impact of the artist’s work

o Artists have amazing new capabilities to tell their stories, accent their games, or

perform their music to achieve the greatest expressive impact.

 Moves your mind, body, and soul

o Sound excites your senses and inspires your emotions, flowing around you and

connecting with you to create a more profoundly moving experience.

Q: How does Dolby Atmos audio work?

Until now, cinema sound designers have had to mix independent sounds together into channels

for soundtrack creation. A discrete sound, such as a helicopter, has been assigned to an

individual channel rather than precisely to where it would occur naturally in the scene. While a

sound can move across channels, there’s no height dimension. For example, you might hear the

helicopter from a side channel and not above you. This approach limits your audio experience

because it can’t come close to matching the way you hear in real life, with sounds coming from

every direction.

Dolby Atmos is the first home theater system that is based not on channels, but on audio

objects. What is an audio object? Any sound heard in a movie scene—a child yelling, a helicopter

taking off, a car horn blaring—is an audio object. Filmmakers using Dolby Atmos can decide

exactly where those sounds should originate and precisely where they move as the scene

develops.

Thinking about sound in this way eliminates many of the limitations of channel-based audio. In a

channel-based system, filmmakers have to think about the speaker setup: Should this sound

come from the left rear surrounds or the left side surrounds? With Dolby Atmos, filmmakers just

have to think about the story: Where is that yelling child going to run? How will the helicopter

move overhead after takeoff? The Dolby Atmos system, whether in the cinema or a home

theater, has the intelligence to determine what speakers to use to precisely recreate the child’s

movement in the way the filmmakers intend. They can now precisely place and move sounds as

independent objects in multidimensional space, including anywhere overhead, so you can hear

them as you would naturally.

A Dolby Atmos home theater is also far more flexible and adaptable than channel-based home

theater. In a channel-based system with channel-based content, the number of playback

Summary of content (6 pages)

PAGE 1
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT DOLBY ATMOS® FOR THE HOME August 2014 Q: What is Dolby Atmos? Dolby Atmos® is a revolutionary new audio technology that transports you into extraordinary entertainment experiences.     Fills your room with captivating sound o Sound comes from all directions, including overhead, to fill the room with astonishing clarity, richness, detail, and depth.
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speakers is fixed: a 7.1 system consisting of seven speakers and one subwoofer is used to play 7.1 content. Additionally, there is no height information in the content. With Dolby Atmos, in contrast, you have amazing flexibility: the format provides even richer, more detailed sound by rendering to overhead or height speakers and/or to more than seven speakers at the listener level. As you add speakers, a Dolby Atmos enabled receiver will use them to create even more fantastic, immersive audio.
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Q: What home setup do I need to experience Dolby Atmos? To experience this sound revolution, you’ll need a way to play or stream Dolby Atmos content, and to create your own Dolby Atmos home theater environment. Options to Play or Stream Content 1. You can play Dolby Atmos content from a Blu-ray Disc™ through an existing Blu-ray Disc player. Be sure you have a player that’s fully compliant with Blu-ray specifications.* Or 2.
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But installing ceiling speakers may not be possible or desirable for you. Installing speakers in or on your ceiling and running the necessary wiring can be expensive and time consuming. If you rent your home, the property owner may not allow it. And if your ceiling is made of a material such as concrete, plaster, or brick, installing speakers in the ceiling is impossible. Finally, you may not like the look of overhead speakers.
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have a full 7.1.4 system or a 5.1.2 system, your receiver will get the same content and play it back in a way that takes full advantage of your specific setup. Q: If Dolby Atmos allows me to add more speakers, why do I see A/V receivers with just 11 channels? Many hardware partners are building or planning to build Dolby Atmos enabled A/V receivers and speakers. Those partners decide what product configurations make the most sense for their customers. But Dolby Atmos for the home is almost unlimited.
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Q: What if I build a Dolby Atmos system but want to play content that isn’t in Dolby Atmos? A Dolby Atmos home theater can play any stereo, 5.1, or 7.1 content. Using the Dolby surround upmixer function in Dolby Atmos enabled AVRs, you can choose to have our technology automatically adapt that channel-based signal to use the full capabilities of your new system, including your overhead speakers, ensuring that you hear realistic and immersive sound.