Dolby Atmos Can Also Support Hundreds of Objects Like PS5's Tempest Audio Engine, Says Dolby

Dolby Laboratories clarified that its Dolby Atmos spatial audio technology, available on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and several smartphones, also supports hundreds of simultaneous objects like PS5's Tempest audio engine. Mark Cerny had said it was capped at 32 objects during the PS5 spec reveal.

[Sonyslave3]

Man their goes the secret audio sauce 🙄

So Sony just lied at their press conference and xb one have this so call secret suace audio this gen 🤣

[crazyCoconuts]

If what they say about bliss is right, you must be a very happy person.

[timotim]

So Cerny got it wrong and Dolby already has this capability?

I also find it funny that no one outside of first party is going to attempt to create 100s of audio objects in a scene at one time. This seems like overkill.

[GTgamer]

@timotim
"I also find it funny that no one outside of first party is going to attempt to create 100s of audio objects in a scene at one time. This seems like overkill."

How do you find that funny? 1st party games are sony's bread and butter if they wanna go all out and make their games stand out then I'm all for it. Nothing is overkill

[Unspoken]

Cerny lies and it becomes truth. What a waste of time. It looks like PS5 is now going to have the power of audio powering all of its games and rendering them on your TV.

Unless you can accurately measure your gaming space and run a a lengthy analysis from your speaker system there is no way for those TV speakers to know anything about the space it's traveling in to reach your ears and modify the sound space to create a 360 degree field for your sound. "Sigh" here we go again.

The magic sauce in the PS5 is audio and fast SSD.

[SyntheticForm]

@tim

Why is that overkill?

If you're arguing that they misallocated their resources then you should say so and expand on it, but you didn't, you just said it seems like overkill.

By that logic anything could be overkill. If this technology has the capability of creating exponentially more audio objects in a scene at one time" why reduce or minimize that standout capability?

This is nothing but a *good* thing, so why dump on it or twist it?

[timotim]

@GTgamer

We will see what happens. I remember that the touch pad on the PS4 controller was suppose to take first party games to the next level...but 3rd and first party largely ignored it for the most part. Because in the end it was "doing too much" and wasn't compatible outside of Sony's own console bubble. The end result was, most devs chose compatibility over fully utilizing said feature. Will this be the same?

Don't get me wrong...I like amazing sound just as much as the next person...its why I currently have a Dolby Atoms 5.1.2 sound bar which kicks ass in games that support it like Gears 5. But to suggest that this tech somehow changes the game is ridiculous when most won't take advantage of it.

Also what you typed said nothing about the point of Cerny getting it wrong about Dolby...sounds like he was wrong to me. Dolby came out and said they can also do 100s of objects as well but that DEVS and media creators tell them thats its unnecessary.

"That being said, we fall back on sage advice from developers of some of the first Atmos games: objects are a fantastic tool, but restraint should be shown with respect to the number of objects active at any time. Too many objects in motion can create a confusing soundscape."

Having 100s of sound objects in a scene is not whats important...having sound that puts you in the enviroment is. Sony has no exclusive on that tech.

[CaptainHenry916]

Atmos says they can but it never happen LMFAO

[memots]

Not going to lie. I was pissed when i heard they preferred this over Atmos. I was 100% buying next gen console also for HD blue-ray + Atmos.
But i don't quite understand because ATMOS does work on Ps4 currently. I think its only for games that it won't support it. Am i wrong here ?

[jukins]

@Unspoken I guess thats why they got it working on headphones first. . .cerny clearly said they "beleive eventually they can do the same for tv speakers"

[fr0sty]

Cerny said Tempest could process up to thousands of sources at once. Also, Atmos does not take HRTF into account, so while it is positional audio, it still cannot achieve the true "3D audio" effect. Also, Dolby tech is proprietary, you have to license it to use it. There's no additional charge required for devs to use Tempest.

[Axonometri]

I don't think Sony lied, most current ATMOS mixes barely make use of the technology anyway.

[AuraAbjure]

I absolutely believe this after researching digital surround sound encoding a while back.

[timotim]

No Cerny said it was incapable of doing 100s of objects. Now I'm not going to say he liked...but he certainly was corrected by them on this matter. At the very least, he didn't have correct information before trying to puff up his own tech...

[TKCMuzzer]

The main difference is Atmos requires specific equipment. You need a receiver that is Dolby Atmos capable if you want to listen in a room.
Tempest is supposed to work for everyone , with or without equipment.

[rainslacker]

Atmos supports 32 channels, most of which you'll use is probably 9 in a home theater set up, and hundreds of objects(255 if IIRC). PS5 support 32 channels and thousands of objects.

The way Dolby Atmos and the way the PS5 create sound are completely different. Atmos doesn't process the sound to decide which channel to output to. There will be a different DSP for that, which MS is talking about with their ray-traced sound. Sony's engine could likely output to Atmos if Sony supports it, which I don't think they do.

Two different things really. This is just Dolby fluffing it's feathers like it always does when something comparable comes around.

[FyBy]

Finally some person who understands situation.

[morganfell]

Atmos says they can. But they haven't. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

[Mooncake]

16 Dynamic Objects for Dolby Atmos through headphones. 20 through HDMI.

Windows Sonic for Headphones (which is free on Xbox One and PC) can handle 112 dynamic objects across 16 virtual channels.

Microsoft have had a huge audio advantage over Sony for a long time now. That looks set to change next gen, but the differences will be less noticeable than they are today.

[porkChop]

Yeah, both setups work fairly different. I think the main thing to take away is that with next gen everyone is going to get some incredible audio. Finally. It's not that game audio has been bad, but there hasn't been much noticeable progression for a while.

[Mooncake]

@Porkchop there has been noticeable progression. Dolby Atmos and Windows Sonic are great.

[porkChop]

@Mooncake

Atmos sounds great in the movies and games that utilize it. But there aren't many that do. I was talking more in general. Both consoles featuring some really advanced audio tech (tempest and ray-traced audio) means that we should get far more immersive audio across the board.

[Axonometri]

My point is still valid. No denying what you said. ATMOS is not being used to its potential yet.

[Ju]

Well, I guess one reason is, Atmos costs money, Tempest is part of the PS5 system. I can understand why Atmos is is excited. At least there is a change developers might dive into this more. Can only be good for Atmos as well. Barrier should be lower on the PS5 because you don't need to license Atmos for that.

[timotim]

I mean...if they can do the same 100s of objects that Sony said they can't do, why wouldn't they try to at least correct them? Seems to me like Cerny fluffed up a bit as well.

[Unspoken]

34 channels. Not 32. Atmos does process the sound to determine which channel to send it to. As you add more speakers it becomes more and more accurate at placing the object in the sound space.

The sound stage is ridiculously good for Dolby Atmos and it's already been here for many years. Sorry but Sony is late.

Too much Sony defense force ever since the underwhelming presentation. I could see it on everyone's face. And now these articles are spinning it into something magical to get hits.

[Muzikguy]

These are the kinds of comments I enjoy reading in the comments section

[rainslacker]

@morgan

The reason they don't is because there aren't many sources that use that many channels or objects. Movies rarely need more than 12 channels, and objects are done in creation, not on the fly. The receiver can interpret those to a speaker set up though.

Atmos actually makes more sense for games, but almost no games actually bother using it for processing sound. Even if the system supports it, the devs and pubs are not that keen on paying for the Atmos license. Not only is it really only on Xbox, and some PC's that it's supported, but game engines already offer similar functionality. The X1 can take that output and process it as an Atmos output though, which isn't a bad thing if you have an Atmos set up.

@Moon

I guess it's how one defines objects. I consider a sound object anything that requires a sound to be played, which is what Cerny was referring to when he said thousands....as that's the only logical conclusion. A single object could play many times over though, like rain drops.

As far as MS having an advantage over Sony? I don't know about that. Channels and objects processing is not the same as quality DSP. Sony is well known for their DSP hardware and software. They have studio grade professional chips and solutions for such things. I never took much issue with what MS offers through Windows(or Xbox since I never cared that much), but I wouldn't say that MS has an advantage. Plus, I'm not sure why quoting Atmos specs and MS specs but not the Sony specs means MS has an advantage.

What matters in the end is how well the solutions actually work, and while relational 3D processing is nothing new, Sony seems confident in their solution to make a big deal about it. how that turns out for the consumer though remains to be seen.

@Tim

I think Cerny may have stated something, but meant something else. one of those times where someone uses the wrong terminology. I may be wrong, and it wouldn't be common for a rehearsed conference, but it does happen. I'm fairly confident that he was accurate in saying what the PS5 could do at least.

@Unspoken

It processes it based on the user set up, but not the actual creation of the sound as a whole. At least not at the consumer level, only at the production level. While that is also what Sony's solution is doing, it's also supposedly doing that in real time, based on sound objects within the game at run time, which is significantly different, as it's processing the sound as it's supposed to be heard, then doing location based output for the bitstream. I assume that bitstream can be in any number of output standards such as DTS, PCM, maybe Atmos if Sony supports it, etc.

[Nitehawk]

Cerny was right in saying Atmos has 32 objects limit in gaming. The guy who is asking questions misunderstood and thought that Cerny was talking about Atmos tech as a whole.

[Mooncake]

Microsoft have an advantage in audio right now because Xbox and PC already support Atmos for home theater and headphones, as well as Windows Sonic for headphones. PlayStation 5 has no equivalent. Simples.

I'm not doubting Sony's credentials in audio, or throwing shade at the PS5. Just stating the PS4 isn't strong in that area (as backed up by Cerny saying the same thing).

[Mooncake]

PS4 has no equivalent*

PS5 is obviously going beyond :)

[Sonicsloth]

I believe Atmos maxes out at 118 objects - There are 128 inputs on their renderer, and 10 of them are dedicated to a 7.1.2 bed. I know that's true for theatrical and home theater Atmos, but it's possible they've implemented it differently for gaming.

I'm curious what you mean by "Atmos doesn't process sound to decide which channel to output to" - Are you saying the output won't change based on someone's room setup? Because that's the whole point of objects

[rainslacker]

@Sonic

"I'm curious what you mean by "Atmos doesn't process sound to decide which channel to output to""

No. It will process where the channel levels should be based on where the object is supposed to be within the listener space.

What I meant was that Atmos is not processing the sound data and mixing it at the processing level. Like what a media player will do to process an MP3 file. Atmos can do some post processing using sound effects, like replicating a concert hall environment. This is a function of the game engine, or whatever is creating the sound itself in the case of movies.

I realize that I probably phrased that completely wrong.

I do feel that when it comes to processing the audio, and deciding where it should be in the screen, this is probably a better thing to leave to the game engine. They're going to be designed to handle positional data more explicitely to the players avatar than Atmos will, which is based on the listeners position. Game engines also have faster codecs for encoding this stuff. Game engines can still output to the Atmos format, or any format that is plugged into it. The console itself would have to support the output for it to be sent to a receiver, or some Atmos device to do whatever it does to output to a speaker.

[Sonicsloth]

@rainslacker

Interesting. That makes sense to me in terms of the game engine needing to be dynamic. I work with Atmos within the realm of film & TV mixing every day, but I don't have any experience with game audio. I know we have access to 118 objects max, which eventually maps out to speaker setups from stereo to 7.1.2 to as many as 60+ individually assignable speakers.

I'd imagine that Dolby would need to allow a game engine to apply object positioning, divergence, etc. itself in real time as well as apply reverb in real time...That's pretty damn cool. Coming from a world where the only "real time" aspect of the processing is the objects mapping to theater's speaker arrays, that's very different. I'll definitely be trying to learn more about this as VR movies become "a thing" haha.

[brrdat]

there is nothing worse than the technologically illiterate commenting about things they don't understand. it's painfully hilarious.

[StormSnooper]

Why lied? Do you know what either of them actually has? Sony’s may be leaps and bounds ahead as it’s a recent technology. From what I’ve read, nothing currently exists like it. Maybe Dolby will have something similar to it, sure, but as of right now what Sony has talked about is unique.

[sampsonon]

keep the dream alive :)

[GTgamer]

Yikes buddy reading is fundamental.

[TKCMuzzer]

No, to experience Dolby Atmos you need specific equipment to take advantage of it. Sony are saying you will not need any special equipment to experience Tempest. Thats a big difference. Sony are saying, a pair of stereo headphones will be enough.
Atmos requires equipment and the right set up to work properly.

[Masta Kaos]

"PlayStation 5's approach is that 3D audio will be delivered to more than just Dolby Atmos licensed devices"

[chiefJohn117]

Deep down everyone knew he was lying. This isn't the only thing he lying about. But you gotta make ps5 look better some how right?
I don't wanna hear "Cerny said" from anybody again

[Christopher]

***So Sony just lied at their press conference and xb one have this so call secret suace audio this gen 🤣***

From Road to PS5 video:

"The second goal was to support hundreds of sound sources. We didn't want developers to have to pick and choose what sounds would get 3D effects and which wouldn't. We wanted every sound in the game to have dimensionality.

*fast forward a bit*

"In the course of ten or twenty minutes, we're able to sample the HRTF at over 1,000 locations. Using an HRTF when rendering audio creates unparalleled quality but it's computationally expensive. The simplest way to use an HRTF is to process a sound source to make it appear as if it's coming from one of those thousand locations.we sample. Unfortunately the processing has to be done in frequency domain rather than time domain, so there's multiple fast Fourier transforms needed for every sound source for every audio tech. That's a lot of multiples.

"This computation was the determining factor for our strategy. It meant we had to bite the bullet and design and build a custom hardware unit for 3D audio.

*fast forward a bit*

"Where we ended up is a unit with roughly the same SIMD power and bandwidth as all eight Jaguar cores in the Playstation 4 combined. If we were to use the same algorithms as PSVR, that's enough for something like 5,000 sound sources. But, of course, we want to use more complex algorithms and we don't need anything like that number. of sounds.

"It would have been wonderful if a simpler strategy, such as using Dolby Atmos peripherals could have achieved our goals. But we wanted 3D audio for all, not just those with licensed soundbars or the like. Also, we wanted many hundreds of sound sources, not just the 32 that Atmos supports."

----

I don't understand this 100%, but it seems to me Cerny was referencing the Dolby Atmos "24 or 32 channel configurations" here. I don't think he lied but definitely misspoke. And, even then, they're aiming for thousands of sound channels when Dolby Atmos specifically says they "[are] capable of processing up to 128 channels of sound, which can be routed to up to 64 individual speakers."

Either way, what Sony wants is not at all what Dolby Atmos is doing. I'm not sure how Sony can achieve what they are claiming to do, let alone truly understand audio design concepts. But, I wouldn't say lie here so much as misspoke when it's clear they are looking to go way beyond what Atmos even cited they could do in the article here.

---

***I also find it funny that no one outside of first party is going to attempt to create 100s of audio objects in a scene at one time. This seems like overkill.***

People say that about Dolby Atmos as well. I think the thing that is important here is that the PS5 is trying to cook it into the hardware rather than limit it to specific hardware that people have to buy. Again, though, I have no clue how they're going to achieve this, but it's definitely very software heavy in delivery.

[xX1NORM1Xx]

I wonder why they would lie? The 3d audio feature on its own is incredibly impressive on the psvr so why make an enemy of Dolby for no reason? I highly doubt mark cerny didn't understand Dolby Atmos the man is a genius but I genuinely can't think of a good reason to lie...

[maybelovehate]

Not sure about the hardware implementation, but the Dolby Atmos virtual implementation requires a separate license. If they can do it themselves it could cut cost

[crazyCoconuts]

and make it work on devices that aren't Atmos certified, like your TV speakers or older receiver

[rainslacker]

@Crazy

And that's basically what Sony is doing here. With a different DSP. Atmos has a pretty basic DSP, but game engines have had ways to do what Atmos does since Unreal Engine 3 first came out. It was the first game engine that could be licensed that used object based sound, and while Atmos does allow for more channels, and often uses a hardware DSP, it's no different than what the game engines use nowadays.

[FyBy]

But Dolby headphone is inferior even to PSVR binaural tech in terms of 3d sound. I bought licence for Dolby and used only few times. On the other hand what Sony started with PSVR and continue with ps5 seems like different league (and little different thing than Dolby to be honest).

[crazyCoconuts]

Curious to see where this will land. Maybe he's referring to a certain version of the API or a specific implementation (Xbox's)? Anyway, if Cerney *were* evil, he'd make an AWESOME evil genius. I'd cast him in an Austin Powers any day

[Mooncake]

No way. He'd look too much like the main character.

[crazyCoconuts]

Did some quick googling. This *might* explain it - the hardware that decodes the Atmos streams (like receivers) look like they have 32 channels they support. So *maybe* while the API that Dolby has supports hundreds of unique objects, they need to get down-mixed into the number of channels that the device supports. So they get approximated into 32 different spatial zones. Don't know but it might be an explanation for the different interpretations.

[RememberThe357]

Yo maaan, keep this rational shit outta our fanboy arguments!!!!!

[Axonometri]

The best thing in all this, is that 3d audio should be in our games, and now hopefully it will be.

[RazzerRedux]

I think you may be right. Cerny and Dolby are using different words also. Cerny said sound "sources" and Dolby is talking about "objects". Not sure what the difference is but they may be talking about different things.

[rainslacker]

A channel and an object are two different things. The object is what's placed in a channel to make it sound like it's coming from a particular place.

[Mooncake]

For all those home setups with more than 32 speakers?

[nirwanda]

This^
And on top of this the Dolby Atmos system I presuming (only guessing) will adjust volumes based on distance where Sony seem to be taking environment and sound reflection into account which will create extra positional sounds and more complexity.

[xX1NORM1Xx]

That could explain the confusion but I’m sure mark cerney and Sony understood that right? Surely they would look into already available options before deciding to create their own so why not just talk about how much more impressive and customisable their audio quality is than Dolby rather than outright lie and say it only supports 32 objects? I feel like they didn’t have enough faith in the quality of the tempest engine so they felt like they needed to make it sound more impressive to the layman which is stupid if true because the psvr audio is amazing and they have nothing to worry about if they are bringing that level of audio quality to non vr games...

[GamerRN]

They lied because everything they said was aimed directly at the competition. They tried to say CUs don't matter, they tried to say it's about clock speeds even though their chips can't sustain that high clock for long periods, only short bursts, they tried to say the big game changer is SSD speeds even though the Xbox will have enough speed for the next Gen, they tried to say everything the Xbox excels in is less important because quite frankly they know they have to down play their shortcomings.

Basically they said that about Atmos because Xbox will likely be using it and they have to make it sound bad.

[Feedog6]

Well Said!

[Loktai]

Oh boy.... where to begin.

"They lied because everything they said was aimed directly at the competition. "

That doesnt even logically follow.

"They tried to say CUs don't matter, they tried to say it's about clock speeds even though their chips can't sustain that high clock for long periods, only short bursts,"

LOL you know better than Sonys engineers right? He said outright that it would be sustained ALL THE TIME unless the workload dictated
(not temp throttling, did you watch the video or get the cliffnotes on an xbox forum ?) .

They say sustained. Not "short bursts" You dont even know how clocking works in this case.

"they tried to say the big game changer is SSD speeds even though the Xbox will have enough speed for the next Gen, they tried to say everything the Xbox excels in is less important because quite frankly they know they have to down play their shortcomings."

Yeah, let me go over this with you. Sony's SSD is twice the speed. Half the loading time, It can do more.
In addition the console supports upgrades via ANY upcoming PCIE4 SSD that meets Sony's speed requirement. Just like all the
previous playstations OFF THE SHELF SSDs can be used. Microsoft so far even if there is a way to use an outside SSD in their
proprietary slot is only supporting last-generation PCIE3 ssds. Its a whole generation behind Sonys implementation.
And you want Sony not to mention that? Its twice the speed- But ignore it because its not on the XBOX so you can say
ALL that matters is raw flops. Interesting. How did that go for Xbox One X, flying off the shelves?

"Basically they said that about Atmos because Xbox will likely be using it and they have to make it sound bad."

No, sound bad? They CAME UP with this technology just to make XBOX sound bad? They incorporated a specific
SPE into the die of the APU because they want to make Microsoft look bad? By that logic Microsoft ignored everything
else to get raw flops higher than its competition just to "make them look bad" and it has no advantage outside PR?

[UltraNova]

Oh my lord...the green force is strong with this one!

[AmUnRa]

O boy your delusional, read the comment from Loktai and counter that if you can....

[GamerRN]

You guys are delusional... Watch a video about over clocking RDNA2 gpus. They said that you don't get an incremental increase with the over clock. The yields are not directly tied to clock. You guys should do your research before labeling someone an Xbox fan. I have both systems.

[Zeref]

It's always smoke and mirrors with Mark Cerny

8tflops PS4 Pro
now "variable" 10tflops PS5
i'm even hearing that there's fishyness going on with the SSD speeds as well
and now this.

I think he gets insecure when he looks at Xbox since the Xbox One X. and I get it, it can be discouraging when you try so hard only to have someone completely outclass you.
What they accomplished with PS5 is still genuinely impressive, he should be proud of that and highlight their tech with their games rather than compare. That would have landed way better imo.

[SyntheticForm]

Cerny can only work with what he's given, and part of his job is to convince the people on the business side that the console needs this or that. They can only be pushed so far, however.

Cerny convinced Sony that they needed 8GB instead of 4GB in the PS4.

I'm pretty sure the PS5 is a remarkable machine and Cerny has done everything in his power and intellect to make the best, most efficient use of PS5's components.

[Loktai]

Yeah... the Xbox One X is outclassing Sony ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK I guess. Look at sales. Do you think the Xbox one X helped MS that much in this generation? No. And it has basically nothing to do with power.

And there is no fishiness with the SSD speeds. Where did you hear that? They arent even claiming to max out the PCIE4 bus, they have the IO and lanes to support the speed they claim. Microsoft has a half-speed SSD in comparison Just accept it.