Dolby Atmos demo for journalists in Hollywood

A group of about 30 journalists, including Pando Daily’s Michael Carney, has been treated to an early demo of Dolby Atmos at the recently re-named Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, which has been fitted out with 164 loudspeakers, 44 of which are suspended overhead in two 50 foot trusses.

Michael’s initial impressions?:

The company played a variety of demos, but the most impressive was from “Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.” During the “sandstorm scene” myself and the 30 or so other media members were first engulfed by the sound of individual grains of sand and then viscerally experienced a car crash happening in front of us, flying up overhead, and landing behind us.

Atmos allows sound mixers to manipulate up to 128 independent sound objects in 3D space at any time. As Michael puts it:

“a scene or track with 128 objects can be rendered across 10 speakers, 30, or 150, depending on the number available in each facility. In all cases the spatial orientation of the sound imagined of by the artist will be delivered”.

He also goes on to point out that Atmos is entirely backward-compatible. Content can be mastered once, them played in spaces optimised for Atmos, 7.1, 5.1 or stereo.