The movie you’re playing - whether it’s physical, downloaded, or streamed - has to be encoded with Dolby Atmos (via Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus).

The tricky thing about Dolby Atmos is that, for it to work, every ingredient in your home theater setup has to support Atmos. Not only is it the format used by Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming services, but it’s also the only version of Atmos that is compatible with HDMI ARC (as opposed to HDMI eARC - more on this later). Dolby Atmos over Dolby Digital Plus will be the way most people experience Atmos. It’s currently supported by a wide range of devices, including laptops, tablets, smartphones, and streaming boxes like Apple TV and Roku. How do you re-create the air-ripping launch of 11,000-hp dragsters? Dolby Atmosĭolby Digital Plus is a lossy, lower-bandwidth format that has been optimized for use with streaming services and features like B-D Live.The best Dolby Atmos movies, from Ready Player One to the new Jumanji movie.How to install Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers.The combination of Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD is the best possible surround sound you can get at home. Atmos via TrueHD is also supported by some media player apps, like Plex, that run on the Nvidia Shield TV family of streaming devices. It’s transmitted over an HDMI cable, from a Blu-ray player to an AV receiver, TV, or a soundbar that can pass through the video portion of the signal to your TV. At the moment, Dolby Atmos can only do this with two types of surround sound signals:ĭolby TrueHD is a lossless, very high-bandwidth format that is currently only available on Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray discs. That information piggybacks on top of existing surround sound signals. So if Dolby Atmos is just metadata, what am I listening to?Īs we said, Dolby Atmos isn’t sound, it’s information about sound. It’s impressive when you hear it, but it has different requirements than Dolby Atmos for movies and TV shows, so check out our full Dolby Atmos Music explainer to see if your current gear supports it.

Sonosĭolby Atmos Music does for music what Dolby Atmos does for movies and there are now plenty of ways to experience it, from Dolby Atmos-capable soundbars and speakers, like the Sonos Arc and Sonos Era 300, to the wired and wireless headphones you use with your smartphone. And what about Dolby Atmos Music? The Sonos Era 300 is a Dolby Atmos Music speaker. The result is a very convincing 3D placement of sounds for a much more immersive movie experience. With Dolby Atmos, the helicopter is treated as its own discrete object, and a Dolby Atmos receiver can use that information to separate the helicopter sound from the background sounds and move it independently from one speaker to another.

How Dolby Atmos works and what it is Hanif Jackson / Digital Trends

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