Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems Trifield alternatives

Processors such as the Trinnov offer very good upmix features for two channel sources.

Movie studios have decided to cheat the public by almost never using any of the capabilities built-in to Dolby Atmos or DTS:X when they create Immersive Sound soundtracks for theatrical or home movies. Doing that properly requires putting one or more sound engineers at mixing consoles for days at a time while they work out what sounds should appear in height channels, what sounds should be in ear-level channels and what sounds should be in BOTH ear-level and height channels.

Dolby and DTS both allow sophisticated placement and movement of objects in 3D space, but you might hear that done properly in one out of 50 movie soundtracks and then it might last for the duration of one helicopter fly-over and never again during an entire two-hour movie. It’s quite pathetic. And the studios don’t do any better with DTS:X mixing. It’s not the fault of Dolby Atmos or DTS:X that their soundtracks are so terrible. The problem is 100 percent created by the studios being interested only in putting “Dolby Atmos” or “DTS:X” on the boxes so they will sell without putting any actual intelligence into their ersatz Immersive Sound soundtracks. With streaming, there’s even LESS “name recognition” of Immersive Sound. Streaming programming also never gets actual sound engineers. Instead, for Dolby Atmos soundtracks, they appear to put the original 5.1 or 7.1 mix through Dolby Surround (a terrible sounding upmixer that makes everything sound worse) to upmix the 5.1 or 7.1 to 11.1. Then they encode those 11 fake and bad-sounding channels as though they are 11 discrete channels created by sound engineers at the console. Except studios don’t do proper Dolby Atmos or DTS:X soundtracks more than one or two out of 100 titles. DTS:X soundtracks happen the same way, only those are upmixed through Neural:X. Neural:X sounds a little better than Dolby Surround, but not much.

To hear these movies with actual decent Immersive Sound, you have to forget the DTS:X or Dolby Atmos decoding completely, and use the AuroMatic upmixer instead. It is a revelation. You simply shouldn’t bother with Immersive Sound in 2024 if you don’t have AuroMatic in your system. In Star Trek Beyond, there is a scene when 100s or 1,000s of one-man ships swarm Enterprise and gain entry through the hull by making man-sized holes. Once they get inside Enterprise, fighting breaks out all over the ship. Using native decoding, the height channels are silent for this entire boarding scene except for the computer voice saying “Red Alert” several times that comes through in the height channels. There is literally no other sound in the height channels. Yet if you were there on the ship while that was happening, you would be surrounded by the sounds of combat and weapons echoing off the ceiling everywhere… you would be immersed in that sound, but as released by the studios, you get terrible, dumb, awful, and useless Immersive Sound. But turn off Dolby Atmos or DTS:X and switch to AuroMatic and you experience a revelation of realistic on-ship combat and the “Red Alert” announcements remain in the height channels.