Good evening everyone:
Tonight I was at Dolby Labs in San Francisco for a private demo of their new proprietary Atmos System, and all I can say is this: it is AWESOME.
Basically what it does it take 5.1 or 7.1 to the next level and translate it to a fully immersed experience, tailored to individual theaters and even individual sections within theaters. No matter where you sit, you will get the best experience.
Presenters were Kevin Perry, John Luse and Scott Wood (Avid). The way this works technically, is that you mix everything in Pro Tools, but Pro Tools is closely integrated with Atmos. In Pro Tools / Atmos you create separate 'object' tracks which can then be automated in a 3D environment.
You have a graphical display of the theater plus where individaul 'objects' (sound FX) are going to.
Advantages for the theater experience:
1. No loss of audio fidelity when sounds are traveling from front to rear / sideways / overhead
2. Full range response from all directions
I asked a lot of questions, and I am still digesting tonight 's event after a long day, but this is totally cool.
First feature film this was used on is Brave (Pixar), but we saw remixed scenes from a major feature film and a feature animation, and a 20 sec demo by Erik Adaahl (the fellow who did the sound design for Transformers). Totally sick.
