Brilliant Dolby Explained Clearly

Last month I added the final piece to my Atmos home theater puzzle. I have speakers. I have a receiver. I have to test it, right? This video looks quite acceptable. This was the first result. Official Dolby account. Dolby Atmos can manipulate individual sounds in 3D space to place them all around you. Okay, I hear some surround sound. But is n't this thing supposed to show Atmos? Is this even Dolby Atmos? This Atmos is everywhere now. TVs, iPads, headphones. 50 million people tested their devices with this video. But if official Dolby video isn't Atmos, how much other fake Atmos is out there?

What does real Dolby Atmos sound like? I spent the last few months searching, testing, literally tearing my apartment apart, and spending far more money on this video than it was worth. And I found out that 99% of the Atmos that people hear is fake. This is a decades-long audio format war. It's a war that is often more about marketing than real quality. And this has led to the fact that films now have to be watched with subtitles. So let me untangle this Dolby Atmos confusion for you. Almost every streaming service today advertises Atmos for its content, for movies and TV series. He is everywhere. And it's not just blockbusters, there are also sitcoms and documentaries. I mean, do they even need Atmos? This is my old receiver without Atmos support. This is

surround sound, a technology that's about 75 years old. And this, of course, is new. They look the same, but what's going on inside is radically different. So what makes Atmos so special, and why do we keep seeing it everywhere? So, this old 5.1 receiver takes six different audio streams from a movie or other content and sends each of those six signals to the corresponding speaker in my living room. This is, let's call it, regular surround sound. It has been around for 75 years, since the 50s. It all started with a crazy movie theater called Cinerama, where the movie was projected onto three ultra-wide screens, a bit like a modern-day ScreenX.

The difference is that film was intentionally made for Cinerama. It had three rolls of film, one for each screen, and an additional roll with seven magnetic tracks of audio, each for a separate speaker in the hall. So, Cinerama actually invented surround sound back in 1952, and this is a perfect example of what's going on in this old receiver. Six different tracks, one for each speaker, and you get the same surround sound experience at home as you would in a movie theater. Actually, this is where those numbers 5.1, 7.1 that you may have seen come from. So, 2.1 means you have stereo speakers, left and right, plus a subwoofer. This subwoofer is the same " dot one". And 5.1, as in this receiver, means you have five surround speakers plus a subwoofer. And

then you can do 7.1, which adds rear speakers. And in fact, you can go all the way to something like 17.1. I'm not kidding, 17.1 audio systems actually exist. Some people just go crazy over things like that. But there are two terrible problems with these installations. The first problem is that most movies are not mixed for 17 speakers. For most of the last century, films were reduced to using six channels, sometimes eight. So there were more speakers in the movie theaters, you see a lot of them there, but they weren't getting different signals. They simply distribute the six or eight channels of audio mix that the film brought. So why would anyone

spend money on 17 speakers for the living room? I mean, you only have six signals anyway. But I'll come back to this later. The second problem is that the films were edited with the placement of the speakers in the cinema in mind. So, in an ideal system, the surround sound speakers should be at an angle of 110-120° from the acoustic "golden mean" of the living room. What is he doing? He is looking for an acoustic " golden mean". But home theaters, and especially living rooms, come in all these different sizes. So in my living room, for acoustics, the best place for the speaker is right here, right next to

the couch, but, uh, my wife wasn't too happy about that. So this one ended up here, in the back. So, if your couch isn't positioned perfectly, you'll get a worse version of the audio mix. Again, because the signal is already hardcoded for each speaker. Well, that's what Atmos was partly trying to solve. And Atmos, on paper, is actually just incredibly cool. You're in a room, and sound is coming from everywhere around you. It's like 3D sound. Dolby Atmos brings something completely new to the way we experience movies. Ceiling speakers, full 360° surround sound. This is the most natural and realistic cinematic

experience in history. The idea behind this Atmos-compatible receiver is that it doesn't work with fixed tracks or fixed speaker placement. Atmos abandons fixed tracks. So, the signal is now a virtual 3D space that works with any number of speakers. There can be five, seven, or seventeen of them, because the signal is not tied to a specific speaker or channel. The receiver adapts it to any living room in the world. After all, the Atmos signal is like a three-dimensional sound space. During film mixing, the sound engineer places sounds in this 3D space and physically moves objects further away or closer to the subject. So it's not a fixed signal for each speaker like it was before. The information sent to the speakers is a real

scene containing up to 128 dynamic objects. That's how, theoretically, a ship can fly not just from left to right, but in any direction. Or the raindrops feel right above your head. So when you set up, you use this device that looks like a stereo microphone. You place it in the most acoustically favorable spot, and it analyzes the system, the acoustics, the distance to the speakers and their placement, and then based on that, it matches the sounds of the 3D space with the speakers you actually have. The system adapts to any living room: even those rooms with 17 speakers now really work, because they reproduce the sound panorama more accurately. Thanks to Atmos, headphones, such as AirPods, can simulate a 3D space, because the sound is in

this space, and the headphones "fix" it so that even when you turn your head, the sound continues to sound from the front. With a traditional 5.1 signal, this would be impossible or at least very difficult. But wait, wait, wait. Does n't transmitting limitless audio capabilities require a huge amount of data? How much is this audio signal compressed? What about those soundbars with Dolby Atmos? How do they simulate surround sound if it's actually one speaker? And it was at this point that I realized that my initial budget for this video was, um, completely unrealistic. Because if I wanted to experience true 3D sound in my living room, truly immersive audio, then I was doing two things completely wrong. First of all

, my old speakers didn't fit at all. You know, a couple of them broke, so I had to replace them by buying them on eBay. They, they were constantly giving off sound overload. So I scored with them. It's probably time for an update. So, today I'm diving down the rabbit hole of high-end speakers. Some of these audiophile speakers cost thousands of dollars. And not only can I not afford them, I feel like they are not laptop-level purchases. These are purchases from the category of " go to a store where they'll at least pour you some wine." By the way, I don't know if you're one of them, but this month we reached about 100,000 views on the dubbed version of our videos. And ever since channels like Marc Robert started dubbing, I wanted to do the same so that our videos could

be seen by a global audience. But I couldn't because dubbing videos is very expensive, and we're not that big a channel yet. It just sounds like auto-dubbing: the words are there, but the delivery is gone. So we use a platform called Fish Audio because it allows us to control the performance, not just translate the words. You insert emotional cues directly into sentences: sarcasm, emphasis, or pause-just as you would direct a voice actor. And their new model, the S 2.1 Pro, doesn't just translate into another language-it still sounds like me. So, this is my attempt to teach this professional audio voice. I'll upload a bunch of

snippets from our videos, but I wanted to do one with this microphone, speaking directly into it. Maybe this will help capture my more natural tone of speech. I also found some quotes to read, quotes from favorite movies, that I thought would be fun to add. You can't stand the truth. I'm tired, boss. Tired of being alone. The Ring cannot be destroyed, Gimli, son of Gloin, by any art we possess here. Oh, that's cool. You need to confirm that this is your voice. I hope it's actually recording now, because I spoke for 5 minutes, and it seems like the cable was inserted incorrectly. Oh, something always happens with these settings, you know?

This is a real voice test. So, now that my voice is reproduced, I can do whatever I want with it. And what we do is we dub our videos. So I can just paste the translated text. You can also edit this voice. So you can, for example, control it and say: put an accent here. Or you can add emotion to this snippet. And this, of course, takes my voice and turns it into any language. Here I have the German version. Habe ich das letzte Puzzle Teil zu meinem Atmos Heimkino hinzugefügt. And, to be honest, my German accent isn't that bad. Fish audio works with 83 languages on a single model, and there is MCP integration if you

are creating a voice agent rather than just dubbing video. And the best part is that S 2.1 Pro is now free through their API. There are no hard restrictions on use until the end of November. So the link is in the description, pinned comment, or in this QR code. But anyway, back to finding new speakers that I can't afford. I mean, what I really wanted was real Atmos. But true Atmos is a bit of a complicated issue. Firstly, because of my budget speakers, which were n't enough, and secondly, because most of the audio we have access to is actually horribly compressed. All of these 128 3D objects are compressed

into a file that is only slightly larger than an MP3 file. Dolby's entire business, the very reason Dolby exists, is because Hollywood needed to compress audio. But why? In the old days of cinema, the sound in movies was clean because it was analog. That Cinerama I was telling you about had six magnetic tracks on the side of the film and true surround sound back in the 50s. Other films used optical tracks-a true waveform on film that worked with a regular light bulb shining through a projector. So why did Hollywood want to compress this analog sound?

Both methods had problems. You know, magnetic tracks were insanely expensive. Only big budgets could afford it. Again, Cinerama, which effectively invented surround sound in the 50s, died due to the high cost of filming in that format. Only 10 films were made in this format. And the optical tracks still get scratched. They have this humming and hissing sound that was heard throughout the entire movie. This is strictly business, Mr. Carson. Yes, Miss Williams, it's purely business. That is, until this guy showed up. Now you can thank Ray Milton Dolby for surround sound on your couch, but you can also thank him for the fact that you now need subtitles

to watch movies on that same couch. Well, unless you spend half your salary on speakers. So, what's new, friends? Hmm, I finally settled on this set of speakers. I sent them to this rundown place and that guy made fun of me when I came out with it. But somehow I managed to pack them in a bag, bring them back here to Costa Rica, and I guess let's.let's set them up. I'm sure audiophiles will complain that there's a lot wrong with them, that they're not expensive enough, and that my room's acoustics are crap, but it's all I can afford right now, so here goes. So Dolby's first big breakthrough was getting rid of that hiss, and then finding a way to make surround sound accessible to everyone.

The first film to feature Dolby technology, A Clockwork Orange, was, shall we say, a bit niche. But finally everyone was able to experience Dolby with Star Wars, everyone was able to experience what surround sound for cinema was like. "Star Wars" had four-channel sound: left, right, center, and surround. And while there were a few Dolby Surround movies before Star Wars, it was they that made Dolby a well-known brand. But the trick, the big innovation, was not the surround sound itself, but how they managed to squeeze it into those 35mm tracks without using expensive magnetic tapes. Dolby did something incredibly clever with this audio. Although this technology was called Dolby Stereo, they invented a way to put this four-channel

surround mix, four different streams of information, into just two optical tracks. And at the same time maintain backward compatibility with projectors without Dolby. But compression always means sacrificing something. In this case, Dolby combined four tracks into two, using an extremely clever trick that had its own problems. And these problems set us on this terrible path for home audio. So, let me explain what they were trying to do. Imagine a sound wave as a simple wave. Come on, let's make one up. Sunshine (sunlight). So, the sound wave of my bad singing looks something like this. And you'll notice that in the audio, if we zoom in as close as possible, there are these

peaks here and these valleys here. Now that I'm playing that sound for you again, excuse me. sunshine (sunshine) Your speaker will push air out when there is a peak and pull it in when there is a trough. Now I can do one thing - invert this curve. So I created a duplicate file here. I'll move on to choosing clip effects, invert. So what I just did-I inverted the depressions. That is, the valleys have now become peaks, and the peaks have become valleys. If I play this sound inverted as well , you'll hear the same thing. It doesn't matter. sunlight Now if I add this inverted curve here, right? Notice that the top one has peaks and the bottom one has troughs in the same place because they are inverted. And if I play these two tracks together,

this is what you'll hear. Nothing. You won't hear anything. This is silence. Peaks on one track are canceled out by troughs on the other. So you get complete zero silence. By the way, this is how They create an inverted wave to cancel out ambient sound right in your ear. By the way, we're making a whole video about this. So subscribe if you haven't already But these are headphones. What happens when audio is inverted in the real world, say with stereo speakers, left and right? If you have the same track on the left and right speakers, you will get a cumulative effect. The waves in the air coming from both speakers will have higher peaks and deeper troughs.

Sunlight. you will hear a louder sound because their energy is coming together, like two people jumping on a trampoline in sync. Now this means the audio is in phase. But if I invert one of the tracks, for example, in the right speaker, and try to play them-the left speaker will play the inversion of the left, and that will cause something very strange. So, again, this is an inverted track. I'll direct it to your actual left and right speakers. You will hear this. I'll put that in the video itself. This will sound very strange. sunlight Do you hear that? It sounds somehow empty, like an echo. If you watch this without headphones, even though the sounds should cancel each other out, you'll still hear them because the sound is bouncing off

your walls and surfaces. If you use headphones, your brain will be very confused because it will perceive these two sounds independently from each ear. But that's exactly what Dolby used to give you surround sound through a trick called matrix encoding. Remember, a 35mm film like Star Wars had two tracks. You had left and right channels. That's all, isn't it? So how do you get? The Dolby decoder scanned the audio that was in both channels, that is, in phase, and extracted only that sound . This is the audio-your center channel- that was routed to the speaker behind the screen. And within those same left and right audio tracks was another hidden track-a surround sound track. But how to hide it so that it doesn't mix with

other channels? Using the same sound phase trick we just learned about. So, all you need to do is invert the phase in one of the channels. Then the surround channel sound is drowned out by the other channel, just like in the case of my bad singing. So, again, the decoder tracked the sound that was out of phase on the tracks, inverted one of the channels, and sent that sound to the rear speakers. And all other sounds that were not played in the center or rear were sent to the left or right channels. Here's how you can get two-channel surround sound, allowing a non-Dolby system to play any track in that movie with regular sound, because the left and right channels are just regular mixed channels. It's pretty crazy, and it's just incredibly

smart. When Dolby uploaded that test video to YouTube, YouTube didn't support surround sound. So they only had stereo, but I still got surround sound in my tests because there was a hidden track in the audio, used using a very similar trick. YouTube now supports the 5.1 format. This video was mixed in 5.1, in case you hadn't noticed. There are a few surprises in the surround sound channels. Make sure you have activated this feature. But remember, it's still only 5.1. I won't be able to provide you with Atmos via YouTube. Although matrix encoding is quite clever, it has problems, as the surround sound channel could easily leak into the

left and right channels, creating strange sound artifacts. And again, this was printed on film, so it could scratch, and the quality would degrade as the film was shown in the theater. But thanks to the success of this clever little solution, Dolby spent the next 15 years creating its next big breakthrough, which became a real nightmare for audiophiles. The film "Batman Returns" was released in Dolby Digital. But remember, remember that backward compatibility was extremely important here. So they couldn't change, they couldn't use those optical paths. Instead, they used the space between the perforations of the film. See that little Dolby symbol in the middle of this QR code-like thing?

Technically, it wasn't a QR code, because they had n't really been invented yet. It was more like a dense block of digital data. Something like a zip archive divided into fragments on this tape. Because this was a digital medium, you got six fully separate audio channels for the first time. But with one significant drawback. These Dolby Digital mixes were digital files, not waves, and not just digital, but highly compressed digital files. Most experts agree that to record everything, every detail of a sound wave, you need at least 1400 kilobits per second for two channels. This is the minimum for lossless audio.

This is the quality of a CD, where the sound wave is sampled 44,000 times per second, and peaks and valleys are recorded from -32,000 to +32,000, which requires 16 bits of information. This is dynamic range. So, CDs had 1411 kilobits per second on two channels. A modern MP3 file is about 160 kilobits per second on two channels. And here Dolby is trying to compress six channels of audio to 320 kilobits per second for the cinema. The movie theater was supposed to be a premium, ultimate movie-watching experience. In practice, during production, the sound was recorded in a lossless format. So, there was a master file. But when the film was distributed, this sound

was already printed on film in the compressed Dolby format. And that's exactly what all the viewers felt. And yet, somehow, most directors ignored it. For years, Hollywood movies had compressed, low-quality audio at 320 kbps. And that's how the films were shown all over the world. But there were also those who resisted. An alliance of men and elves stood against the armies of Mordor. And on the slopes of Mount Doom they fought for the freedom of Middle-earth. As a child of the 80s, I'm old enough to have vivid memories of seeing that DTS logo in my movie theater. I had no idea what that meant. The main advantage of DTS was high sound quality.

The fact that Dolby took up all the space on 35mm film actually gave DTS an advantage. There was no more room for audio tracks, so DTS had to use separate discs. That's why the logo has a CD at the beginning: DTS came on a separate disc, which added work for the projectionist in the theater. DTS only applied a sync track next to the image to the 35mm negative, and the audio was on their CDs and was not limited to 320 kbps like Dolby. Although it wasn't without loss of quality, as some might think. They still compressed the six audio channels to 882 kilobits per second using clever codecs and low- pass filters, but that was still twice the Dolby bitrate. But the latest competitor in this niche was Sony's SDDS format. SDDS was the first

to introduce 7.1 sound, and was popular for a while because of this, but disappeared in the 2000s. But to complete this nostalgic journey, there is something else. So THX, despite the epicness of that opening sound, wasn't really an audio standard. It was more of a certification that a movie theater could obtain for its audio system and acoustics. It was a real war for space on the film negative. Dolby, the true pioneer in this war, owned all the space, but by choosing the path of compatibility, they sacrificed quality for compression. Audiophiles and filmmakers loved DTS. It had the best bitrate of all these formats, but for DTS movie theaters it was inconvenient. It was difficult to manage all these discs: the film consisted of several discs, so

they had to be switched, even during the screening of trailers before the screening. But when home theaters and videos became popular in the 90s, this war moved to living rooms. This is a DVD. The sound became infinitely clearer. It looks and sounds like you're in a movie theater, but you can experience it at home. And in that old living room war when DVDs became popular, Dolby completely crushed DTS. The thing is, there wasn't much space on DVDs, only about 8.5 gigabytes on the larger discs. Therefore, Dolby tracks still had to be compressed to around 320-400 kbps. So, of course, 400 kilobits per second is not that much. You know, I'd like to believe that with these new

speakers I'd be able to hear the difference between a compressed audio track and an uncompressed one, but we'll test that now. So this is a constant criticism and challenge to Dolby's reputation- how much everything is compressed. Six channels of audio at just 400 kilobits per second. So how did Dolby finally manage to completely crush them when movies moved into the living room? DVDs with DTS had 1.5 megabits per second for audio, almost four times as much. Movies like Gladiator, Jurassic Park, and The Whirlwind were released in DTS format, but DTS still lost the war in the DVD era. Part of this was because some DVD players couldn't play the DTS track, they didn't have a license for it. Therefore, companies often had to add another Dolby track

or a stereo track as a fallback. So, audiophiles once again craved DTS, while everyone else was content with Dolby, because Dolby was everywhere. But everything changed with the advent of Blu-ray. Blu-ray delivers the best high-definition picture and sound along with advanced interactive features you've never seen before. Since Blu-ray could hold up to 50 gigabytes of data on a disc, creating a full lossless audio stream was no longer a problem. Now this could fit on a disc. So Dolby released Dolby TrueHD and DTS released DTS-HD Master Audio, both of which are lossless formats

. And Blu-ray also became a chance for DTS to break ahead, learning the lesson of Dolby in the 90s. Audiophiles have already loved DTS since the DVD era, and the brand has built a reputation for superior quality. Their DTS-HD format, which was again lossless, was also backward compatible. So older devices, home theaters, could decode the compressed track, while newer devices saw the lossless track. Thus, both worked on the basis of the same audio track. But Dolby, on the other hand, well, they messed up with Blu-ray. Because their TrueHD encoding, which was again lossless, was not backward compatible. So the studio had to record both the

old Dolby track and the new TrueHD onto the disc, wasting a lot of space. Additionally, mastering software was apparently clunky and licenses were expensive, which is why DTS became the standard for Blu-ray. And it was Blu-ray that made DTS relevant for the mass consumer. And this war continues to a large extent to this day. Well, theoretically, both of these formats are lossless formats. Audiophiles and geeks still value and chase DTS mixes because they claim they produce a more assertive, aggressive, and generally louder sound. By the way, geeks will also argue that DTS is technically better, because its maximum bitrate can reach 24

megabits per second compared to Dolby's 18. But honestly, dude, unless you're a bat, you won't notice the difference between 18 or 24 megabits of audio data. If anyone watching this, maybe I'm really interested in learning more about it. Come on. Okay, I set up the speakers. I did the calibration, but we have a different problem. So, I can't find DTS streams anywhere. Because every movie with Atmos streaming will give me compressed Atmos, not lossless Atmos. And damn it if the first thing I run on this system is compressed Atmos. Not after what I.not after everything I've been through. So, uh.we need to get a Blu-ray player. This.this video is going to bankrupt me, guys. Blu-ray is really the only way to get uncompressed audio, because a Blu-ray file today

weighs about 100 gigabytes. This is what fits on a modern 4K disc. Unlike a regular streaming movie, which weighs around 10 GB. So anything you watch on stream will be horribly compressed. Okay, let me explain how these mixes work, for the record. Sound engineers, people working on the film, prepare this master file. This is the original master mix for the film. For a long time it was six-channel sound. But now you're starting to see mixes where the original, the master mix, has that 3D space for Atmos-certified theaters and to make sure it's ready for home release.

Now, since movies are mostly not played on film, but on this huge hard drive that is sent to theaters, the audio no longer needs to be compressed. You don't have to use Dolby or DTS. What a movie theater actually gets for audio is a format called linear PCM. Linear PCM is simply a pure uncompressed audio file, one per speaker, one track per speaker. No Dolby or DTS, just the purest digital version of the audio master file. And, again, that's exactly what Exceptions here include IMAX, for example, as their speaker layout is slightly different, so the IMAX team helps create a custom mix for their theaters. And now, of course, we have Dolby Atmos theaters, where the studio can send an IAB file that converts these channels, these PCM channels, to 3D. Now, regarding

streaming: you definitely need to compress the file. Most movies labeled Atmos have it because they contain a 3D audio mix, but Atmos is delivered via the Dolby Digital Plus format, which, yes, is a compressed encoding. So, to make this all streaming friendly, the entire audio stream, these 3D objects (128 of them), are compressed to about 800 kilobits per second. This is the only reason why Atmos completely dominates the streaming space. They did a great job promoting Atmos and making it compatible with everything. DTS has only just begun to make attempts to enter the streaming market, and they are still trying to

at least maintain their brand of premium lossless compression. Now they have a compression algorithm. They.they don't even have a name for it. It's called, I think, "profile two." But all of this is sometimes confused with a brand called IMAX Enhanced. It's currently only available on Disney Plus, but you'll need a Bravia TV or other dedicated device that supports IMAX Enhanced or DTS:X. My Apple TV doesn't support it, which means the only way to hear this stream is on Blu-ray. By the way, before the trip, I tried downloading a DTS lossless file with master audio or a Dolby TrueHD file. I tried playing this on an Apple TV or through a Mac, but the receiver always shows "linear PCM". And here's what happens: Apple always processes this file. It unpacks or

decodes the signal and sends it as linear PCM, which is technically uncompressed, right? That is, it is technically also lossless. But hey, people, I want to see, I want to see that DTS icon on my receiver. And not to mention that when Apple does this, you lose the height channels. So, there is virtually no way to stream full-length movies losslessly from an Apple device. This is impossible. That's why you need Blu-ray. To reiterate, in the Blu-ray realm, both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X are transmitted in this uncompressed, lossless format. So theoretically, theoretically, the sound should be the same. Guys, I made a mistake. I went to, I went to that thing, the electronics store.

I spoke to the salesperson about the Atmos setup and the speakers I purchased. Oh, man. It seems we have another problem. Sure, I bought front speakers, I bought rear speakers, but how am I going to get 3D sound if all the speakers are at ear level? And that, guys, is by far the biggest lie about Atmos. Many people get hung up on the format, the compression, the Atmos sticker, not realizing that they may simply not have Atmos speakers. Including me. So, the whole point of Atmos is that it's 3D sound, and some of it has to come from above, from the ceiling. But if you only have speakers at ear level, you

get something similar to the old 5.1. Now it's becoming an expensive pleasure. It looks like we have three options for 3D Atmos. These are soundbars. A soundbar with Atmos, in theory, has upward-firing speakers that can simulate surround sound by bouncing it off the ceiling. It sounds like some kind of nonsense. And audiophiles on Reddit generally agree with this. It's impossible to simulate much when all the sound is coming from one panel. And yet, this is the kind of Atmos most people hear. And if the soundbar says Atmos, if the marketing says Atmos, of course you believe it. But it's not the same as true Atmos. It's like fake Atmos. F-atmos (fake Atmos). The is individual upward-facing columns. The idea is that you set up your regular 5.1 system anyway.

You place the speakers where you need them, but you also put these corner speakers aimed at the ceiling. So that if the stars align, the sound you hear bounces off the ceiling instead of coming straight from the speakers. It's elegant, and if you have a concrete ceiling, it 's the only choice you have. But this requires a perfect angle between the speaker and the sofa, which I definitely don't trust myself to do. So, the only choice left after all this is true in- ceiling speakers. By the way, remember the beginning of the video where I said that we all need subtitles now? Here's the reason, right here. Today, everything is being produced in Atmos format. All. Sitcoms and TV shows where there's no grand audio, and you still

take these massive 128-channel theatrical mixes and stuff them into what most people have- tiny TV speakers. So, your TV can, of course, decode Atmos. It's written on the box. But it doesn't have speakers to reproduce high-quality Atmos. The sound engineer has some crazy equipment, but I honestly don't know how much time they spend normalizing the sound for each of our terrible television speakers. That's why we need subtitles. So guys, after months of work, excessive effort, and huge expense, I think we finally have a true Atmos system. I invited my team to an evening movie viewing. By the way, I

found a thread on Reddit about the best movie with an Atmos mix. And here are the best scenes in Atmos overall. People are very worried about this. And they all agreed that it was " Blade Runner 2049." This is the best Atmos mix ever. So that's what we'll be looking at. But, for my own peace of mind, I compared the streaming version of Blade Runner 2049 with the Blu-ray version. And this is heaven and earth. You hear the difference in compression. Of course, Blu-ray is a lossless TrueHD format. Streaming is compressed. I wish I could show you the difference or let you hear it for yourself in this video, but I can't. So I only have my team's reactions. Okay, let's summarize. Atmos vs.

5.1-that's crazy. Just crazy. This is truly an immersion effect. You hear sounds from the ceiling. The 3D effect is real. This is true for a few films that use these features, but it's still cool. Now, regarding compressed sound versus uncompressed: it's heaven and earth, but for that, you probably need the right speakers. But we are missing one test-a comparison of DTS and Dolby. And the only honest way to check this is to watch the same movie in Dolby and DTS formats. It wasn't easy, because, you know, DTS only supports a handful of devices: Sony Bravia TVs, Nvidia Shield. Today, the market has been completely taken over by Dolby. So what movie can have a soundtrack in both Dolby Atmos and DTS:X? And why pay

for licenses for both formats? But I found it. I found a real unicorn. Okay, John. Bath time. By a strange coincidence, the 4K Blu-ray of Shaun of the Dead has an interesting feature: the English track is presented in Dolby Atmos, and the German track is presented in DTS:X. And I did. I chose one scene. I watched it several times in both formats. Honestly, I don't see a difference. Again, I'm not an audiophile, but the road to the answers was not easy: months of work, thousands of dollars. I would be interested to hear the opinion of the audiophiles in the audience, whether you feel this difference. This turned out to be more complicated than it seemed, and it shouldn't be, but it's hard to resist the temptation to label

everything as Atmos even if it's not, especially when such audio mixes ruin the experience for everyone else. There was another problem that immediately caught our eye-the huge difference in quality between the Blu-ray and streaming versions of Blade Runner , because 4K on our streaming services isn't exactly 4K. I made a whole video about this. You should watch it. Also let me know if you've ever heard true Atmos or true DTS, and what you think of them. Thank you very much for watching.