In Dolby Atmos’ guidelines for home theater, 5.1.x setups specify that the surrounds are placed at 110 degrees vs 90 degrees, and directly at ear level. The first thing I noticed, DTS:X does a really good job of making 5.1 sound more like 7.1, Atmos does this too. The demo file can be downloaded from The Digital Theater. You can see a preview of it here (in stereo obviously). It’s basically a floating ball that moves around different channel layouts, the sound follows the ball. How will this translate to my 5.1.2 setup with a single pair of Top Middle speakers? To find out, I first used the DTS:X Object Emulator. Looks to me like classic 11.1 with 7 bed channels and 4 height (not top) channels. But what about the studios who mix in DTS:X? What setup are they using? I managed to find a few pictures of a studio setup here.
#Dolby atmos vs dts x how to#
Dolby recommends using Top Middle speakers for a 5.1.2 config, and that’s what I had originally set my system up with, similar to this:īefore we delve into whether or not DTS:X really works with any layout, let’s look at what DTS:X classical layouts look like.ĭTS has no recommendations on how to configure your system on their site for DTS:X, obviously, if it’s supposed to be compatible with any layout, you shouldn’t need to follow any prescribed setup. Obviously, it only allows me to use one pair of height speakers, either Top Front, Top Middle, Top Rear, Rear Height, and Top Height. It’s a 7.2 receiver with both DTS:X decoding and Atmos decoding capabilities.
The biggest question I have is does it actually work the way DTS:X claims, and how does the ability to scale to different layouts compare between Atmos and DTS:X? That’s what I set out to discover. This is good, considering not everybody has the ability or desire to add overhead speakers (and dolby enabled speakers really suck in my experience), and object based audio definitely sounds much more precise than a simple 7.1 mix utilizing panning/phase manipulation. Atmos requires height channels, while DTS:X does not. In addition to height/overhead channels, front wides, rear wides, rear centers, and everything in between is supported outside of placing height channels above the surrounds. Dolby doesn’t come right out and say their system supports many different speaker layouts, but it clearly does, considering it can be scaled from 8 channels to 34 in the home. Atmos does not support the Voice of God channel (a single overhead speaker) nor does it support Side Heights or Front Top Center. One benefit of this is that it should be compatible with the Auro 3D 10.1 layout, which Atmos is not. In theory, you should be set up your system however you want (within the limits of your AVR’s configurations) and it should work regardless, Unlike Atmos’ prescribed layouts. One of the things that’s supposed to set DTS:X apart from Atmos is their claim that it can support any channel layout.
Atmos Cinema layout example found in the Dolby Atmos White Paper DTS:X supports a maximum of 30.2 channels in the cinema, and 11.2 in the home. My guess is the majority of HT enthusiasts will be pushing both budget and space constraints with a 7.1 channel or 9.1 channel system, let alone a 34 channel system, but, it’s always nice to have the option (assuming AVRs and processors support that many channels). In the cinema, Atmos offers support for up to 64 individual channels, and up to 34 in a home theater. In theory it shouldn’t matter if you are using 5.1.2, 5.1.4, 7.1.4 or 24.1.10, you should get the same relative imaging across the sound field. The idea behind this is that regardless of the theater or home theaters setup the processor can accurately present the location of a sound regardless of both the number of channels and the configuration of those channels. An Atmos or DTS:X processor then uses this metadata to position the sound across the available channels. The metadata for the objects and their position in three dimensional space tag along either DTS HD/MA or Dolby TrueHD/Dolby Digital Plus.
Both DTS:X and Dolby Atmos are relatively new audio formats that utilize objects instead of classical channel layouts.
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