Looping PT+Atmos Suite into consumer Home Theater

[djh108]

Hi all,

I'm an audio engineer making the switch to an atmos-capable mix system this year, will be Using Dolby Production Suite. At the studio, my Metric Halo uln-8 3D will be the centerpiece interface. But want a home rig too and want to avoid having to rely only on headphone simulation (and in case it is relevant, I also do video editing, so the setup needs to accommodate that as well). I'm still learning about related topics so I may be missing things that "I don't know that I don't know". Thanks in advance for the advice -

The Goal

Ideally, the home rig would need to be multi-functional to make it all worth the fuss:

• Able to be used as a normal home entertainment system: TV + atmos
• My MacBook pro could be patched into the setup where TV becomes external monitor, and atmos + normal stereo monitoring could be done
• The TV will need to receive an HDR signal from premiere pro. My understanding is this can work out-of-the-box without an additional card with recent adobe updates. And Pro Tools doesn't necessarily need to be getting an HDR signal, in that case the display can just be an external monitor.
• Would like to avoid using a conventional audio interface because I don't want the TV-to-speaker routing to be dependant on the presence of my laptop. Rather, I'd like the laptop to be able to patch into some sort of AVR (or comparable solution).
• Would be great if I could have a single HDMI out from the laptop that sends audio and video.
• Bear in mind this is a secondary system, so it doesn't have to be the greatest monitoring in the world. And I'm open to a range of possibilities depending on cost/benefit.
• But my hope, and gut-feeling, is that I could get the bones of something put together that could be farily servicable, esp as a secondary system, without breaking the bank...

The Quagmires and Questions

• Using a typical consumer AVR seems to be not a great idea BC it rules out using powered monitors, those devices are mostly all amped set to power passive speakers. That said, I actually don't know how much of an issue it would be...perhaps there is some sort of gain staging that could be done to make things work out reasonably well? Or an AVR with bypassable amps? Never tried anything like this (and am embarrassingly ignorant about gain staging OTB)...
  
• Presumably, I'd need to output HDMI from the MacBook, but I also don't know how pro tools will respond to the audio engine being set to an HDMI enabled dock.
  
• I also don't know how the avid video engine may or may not play into all this.
  
• And I'm not clear about what sort of signal pro tools and the Atmos Production Suite outputs (not dove in there yet)...is it a standard, readable atmos signal?
  
• I'm also not totally clear about how the atmos encoding/decoding process works in a typical consumer AV chain. Is it possible for a smart TV to be calibrated internally, and then send a decoded signal via HDMI? Idea here would be to maybe just some sort of hdmi-to-mixer-to-powered speakers kind of chain? I'm getting an LG TV...is there an LG "App for That", lol...
  

The Basic Plan Thus Far

• I've got an LG 55" C1 TV on the way.
• Leaning toward a simple 5.1.2 setup - at least to start - using budget-y powered studio monitors (probably Kali's).
• At first glance, this AT-300 - 16 CHANNEL PRE-PRO AV Processor seems like it might work as the main hub: analog outs would work for the powered monitors, has atmos decoding and room calibration on board, and could also receive a signal from the laptop
• To get the signal from the laptop, I;m not sure. I have OWC docks and dongles already with HDMI 2.0, but may there's another better way....obviously, something that doesn't upset pro tools is the goal.

Looking forward to learning more, thank you.