Dolby Atmos Upmixing For All Games And Movies Comes To Xbox One

The new Dolby Atmos upmixing feature is now available on Xbox One via the Alpha insider ring. Windows 10 PC may get it at a later date.

[Immorals]

Now, if only I could afford an atmos setup..

[rainslacker]

Meh, I've never liked simulated surround from lower settings versions of surround. Anyone that has an Atmos receiver can already do this anyways, as I don't know of any mid-range or up receiver, which is the only places you'll find Atmos, that can't do this already. They'll also upconvert to any number of other surround formats, which are likely to be more typical in people's homes. Atmos is quite the investment, for what amounts a pretty minimal gain. About the only advantage for the average person is better sound quality if you have good speakers, but it's not going to be any better than the source itself.

[lxeasy]

I speak for everyone when I say... you couldn't be more wrong.

[rainslacker]

Yes, direct sourced Atmos is awesome. But upmixing, or converting which is the better term to use, to Atmos isn't going to do much for the sound channel quality. It's no different than making a dolby signal off a stereo signal. It's nothing new, and anyone with the way to decode an Atmos signal completely, is going to have this already built into their receiver or sound bar.

[FanboysKiller]

I'm fine with headset if it supports dolby atmos.

[Kribwalker]

I’ve got an Atmos Reciever, gotta get some new speakers when i upgrade my TV to an OLED this fall

[thexmanone]

can not go wrong with oled, i have had my lg c6 oled for 3 years, i would never get anything else but a oled.

[Kribwalker]

i bought a high end panasonic 2.5 years ago, pictures still amazing, but OLED price has dropped and i sacrificed size for quality (bought the 58” panasonic instead of a lower 65” planning to upgrade later to OLED) so i’ll just do the rotation of TVs and my kid will get the upgrade too

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

I want to upgrade to atmos, I've just been waiting for the price to drop a little more and I've been saving in the mean time.

[rainslacker]

So, since people wanted to disagree with me above because I assume they either didn't know what I was saying, or they just need to default to it being the best thing ever, don't you already have this feature available on your receiver?

How is this any different than what's already included in the receiver?

I'm quite curious, because if one has Atmos the receiver can already do this, and they tend to do a better job than a device does, plus it doesn't sound lag when done like this. About the only advantage would be if your receiver doesn't auto switch, but I don't know of any modern receiver that doesn't already do that.

I want an OLED TV though.:) Been waiting for the prices to come down on the ones with better features, although I think maybe before the holidays. Picture quality alone will make it hard to ever go back.

[Kribwalker]

I don’t have atmos speakers yet so i haven’t looked into it, but it could be like the xbox hardware doing a better job of upscaling to 4k then your TV would (with the xbox ones when it launched that was the case). But soon when i get atmos speakers i’ll test it out and let you know

[rainslacker]

4K isn't really the issue. I don't even pass through my HDMI TV signal through my receiver due to it being an older one before HDCP2.2 was finalized, and it doesn't support HDR pass through because the powers that be decided to screw the early adopters over. But I digress.

I'm not trying to discredit Atmos, because it isn't a bad format. The speakers themselves aren't really important so long as they're good ones. The overhead channels are important if you use directional firing ones which bounce the sound off the ceiling, but other than that, there is really nothing special about Atmos speakers and it's akin to THX, where it's more a standard of how to play the sound through the speakers. In other words, review quality speakers, but don't feel you have to spend more for Atmos branded speakers.

That said, it's more the conversion quality of the Atmos signal itself. If you use any kind of muxing that's available in the receiver...commonly to have it artificially create a different type of signal to mimic surround, I don't really see the need for this in the system itself, as the receiver itself can do it, and probably uses the same algorithms since they're available through the standard itself.

It did occur to me today though, that people with Atmos headphones may benefit from this feature, because the headphones don't do this conversion that I'm aware of. But generally speaking, a receiver built to handle sound is going to be better than any software solution through the playing device.

I'll probably upgrade my receiver to an Atmos supported one when I get my new TV. I have some repairs on the new house we brought and I'm going to set up a nice entertainment room like i used to have, and the only speakers I need to get are the side channels as they were in wall at my old house so stayed there, and the high speakers, as I want some good ones. but I'm going to set up all my speakers to handle the various formats available, so I'll have a total of 13 channels, with two subs, although not all of them will be able to be used all at the same time. I do miss my full 7.1 surround since moving though. It really adds a lot.

[neocores8055]

Tbh even the simulated using atmos is really really good. I have it on my pc and was blown away at how many 7.1 setup sounded it was amazing . Made me play alot of my older PS4 games to hear all the different sound you could not hear before like uncharted 4 was crazy

[mkis007]

any idea when dolby vision support for uhd bluray discs is coming? I know they got netlfix support already...