Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat Dolby Atmos for Home Theater

The Dolby Atmos link had films shown in cinemas with Atmos. Most Blu-ray films listed do not include Atmos, in fact I can't find any in my collection.

The first Atmos encoded discs are apparently due for release in the next few months to coincide with all the hardware.

I haven't been around here all that much in the last year or so ... has there been any discussions about how/if Meridian would support additional channels for something like Atmos?

Did a quick search and didn't find anything here on HH. I know Atmos is new, and may never take off, so perhaps my question is premature, but any insights would be appreciated.

There's a discussion in this thread

I'm currently looking into a 2 processor solution with my 861

I think it will take off. It will just take time. Manufacturers' are making gear already.

Link Here

Cheers

How can you do this as Atmos only works with bitstream and not PCM.

The latest Transformers film has just been released with an Atmos soundtrack.

I don't know whether to cry or cry! Watching 20 mins of Transformers: The Dark of the Moon gave me permanent brain damage.

Yes, the bitstream would go to the first processor (an Atmos capable pre\pro) which would do all the processing and churn out an analogue 5.1.4 Atmos layout ), i.e. standard 5.1 + 4 height channels. This processor would also control the system volume and feed a power amp for the 4 height channels. The 5.1 channels would go through my 861 via the analogue inputs to the DSP speakers (or whatever). So the 861 would solely act as pass-through device and would be set to a fixed high volume setting.

Not the simplest of set-ups (but you did ask). I'm going to wait a while to see how Atmos takes off but I think the above is doable and easy to automate.

Time alignment will be a challenge, I guess the Atmos processor would've have to add extra delays to compensate for the latency in the M system.

Regards,
Carl

Time alignment is a concern. However, I've done some preliminary experimentation using a stereo passive preamp by passing one channel through the analogue inputs of my 861 and the other directly to the poweramp. Suprisingly, there is virtually no latency introduced by the 861 so I'm reasonably confident that any issues can be dealt with using speaker distance setting etc. Now if the film industry will just release some content to give the format a vague chance of success...

Yes, we'd noticed .