The future of Surround Sound ?

[Barakka]

Auro3D and Galaxy Studios tour for AVForums

It's a complete geek out video, but if you're interested in surround sound it's a good watch. An explanation of Auro3D sound including why height channels are important, and why getting their placement correct is essential.

Dolby has the Atmos system it is rolling out to cinemas worldwide, but that's never going to filter down to consumers, whereas this builds on the existing 5.1 configuration in layers, making it much more compatible.

Oh and the guy is a legend

[Lowe]

Haven't watched the video yet but there's been various studies that have shown 5.1 is optimal for most room sizes until reaching a significant size. Height is also interesting - since I was under the impression that we were unable to perceive height. Our ears are on a horizontal plane, so I'm not entirely convinced. Our reaction to look up for aircraft is mostly a learned one - next time something flies over really concentrate and listen...

[Barakka]

Haven't watched the video yet but there's been various studies that have shown 5.1 is optimal for most room sizes until reaching a significant size. Height is also interesting - since I was under the impression that we were unable to perceive height. Our ears are on a horizontal plane, so I'm not entirely convinced. Our reaction to look up for aircraft is mostly a learned one - next time something flies over really concentrate and listen...

Completely agree, but his approach is different, unlike other 'emersive sound' systems it uses 11.1 based on an existing 5.1 arrangement with another 5 channels directly above the main 5 channels at 30° higher. With 40° cited as being the maximum we can differentiate sound in a vertical plane (rather than maximum top corner distances like other systems) and crucially these extra height channels are used for reflections to assist the brain in sound localisation rather than locations to pan sound to. The 11th channel (voice of God as he calls it) is directly overhead for when you do need to pan a sound/effect directly over, fly-overs etc.

It has the advantages too that it's free (unlike Dolby), is easy to adapt a system to from an existing 5.1, requires no extra disc space as it can be encoded virtually lossless into a standard 5.1 stream on a Blu-Ray, and can apparently be adapted for headphones, cars, and mobiles.

Interestingly the standard for 4K TV broadcast is looking like it will include 9.1 sound based on a very similar 5.1 configuration with a quad config above the main 5 speakers

[Funkstar]

Speaker manufacturers must love all these new surround technologies!

edit without reading more into it (which I should do at some point) the 11.1 system makes sense to me. That 11th speaker in the middle of the ceiling seems pretty logical.

[Butuz]

For me - a good 7.1 sounds fapping awesome so no real need to go for any more height speakers. Like Lowe I am also dubious of the benefits of any sort of high speakers.