MTRX with theatrical Atmos

[Steven1145]

Hi all,
I'll be heading out in a few days to assist some friends setting up their Theatrical Atmos studio, and have a few questions regarding the MTRX setup for this sort of thing. The studio has an MTRX with a SPQ card.

- Bi-amping: really strange that the manual only mentions "with creative use of groups" as a manner of configuring bi-amping within the MTRX.
I'm guessing that I need to create a multi group for the speakers, without definitely assigning L, C or R, but rather a group within which I'll create a L Low, L High, etc. But then how does one route the RMU to these properly?? Through custom Folddowns? Seems really strange that bi-amp crossover was never thought through... That also seems to exclude a single EQ page for EQ-ing a Screen channel speaker.
- Surround speaker arrays: in this lovely world of "anyone can do 7.1.2 Atmos at home", it seems that basic considerations like Surround speaker arrays for cinema work has flown out the window. Does this mean that once again, I have to rely on Folddowns to route a Ls signal to a Left surround speaker array when I sending 5.1 audio as source to the MTRX? How does one then do a global EQ or Level for that array?

Any help appreciated.

Steven

[Farhoof]

Aren't the array's handled by the RMU just like bed inputs?
I'm building surround arrays as we speak in my home setup so I'm curious about your findings. No MTRX though, I haven't decided about the interfaces and monitor control.

[Steven1145]

Well a Theatrical Atmos room will probably be used many times for simpler 5.1 theatrical mixes, and in that case the surrounds are also arrays, and shouldn't require going through the RMU.
I want the studio to be simple to use in day to day use, which implies having a 5.1 or 7.1 configuration ready to go at the touch of a button, without having to switch on the RMU and use it solely for monitoring purposes.
In my Studio C at Yellow Cab I'm running a QSC Core110, which allows for very complete setups in pretty much any way you want provided you have the time to set it up for that. So I'm a bit surprised at the MTRX's lack of flexibility (for now, maybe I'll learn some great tricks on how to handle all that).

[Farhoof]

The 'Group Format' seems to cater specifically to surround arrays, together with the fold down options (fold up in this case).
See https://youtu.be/QPL2Y-ioHYA (5.1 to 7.1 but essentially the same).

I don't have experience with Dadman or MTRX so no clue how simple this is in day to day use. We use a Trinnov MC which has the down/upmix buttons placed on the home screen so we push just one button to switch between 'split to array' and 'straight'.

Please let us know how it works out.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by Farhoof

The 'Group Format' seems to cater specifically to surround arrays, together with the fold down options (fold up in this case).
See https://youtu.be/QPL2Y-ioHYA (5.1 to 7.1 but essentially the same).

I don't have experience with Dadman or MTRX so no clue how simple this is in day to day use. We use a Trinnov MC which has the down/upmix buttons placed on the home screen so we push just one button to switch between 'split to array' and 'straight'.

Please let us know how it works out.

I can't figure out what the group format is achieving in that video. Wouldn't you get the same results with fewer buttons by just defining a single speaker output format, like a 32 channel Atmos array, followed by having a variety of fold-down "up-mix" options to distribute 5.1, 7.1, etc to the 32 channels?

In some ways, the fold downs in my D-Mon are easier to use, but DADman can be pretty impressively deep. It is just a bit of a mind-bend to implement what is needed sometimes.

[Steven1145]

Yes I'm not sure the way things are done in that video are entirely correct.
Anyway I'm probably going to use the DSP present in the Crown amps that the studio has to do crossovers, keeping the MTRX EQ for just EQ-ing the screen channels without having to do some mind contortion to get things working.

And it seems that fold-downs are the workaround for a lot of missing features here.

[Farhoof]

Originally Posted by LDS

I can't figure out what the group format is achieving in that video. Wouldn't you get the same results with fewer buttons by just defining a single speaker output format, like a 32 channel Atmos array, followed by having a variety of fold-down "up-mix" options to distribute 5.1, 7.1, etc to the 32 channels?

In some ways, the fold downs in my D-Mon are easier to use, but DADman can be pretty impressively deep. It is just a bit of a mind-bend to implement what is needed sometimes.

Yeah I think in this case the group format wasn't needed as 7.1 is already a preset. It seems it's only needed for larger than 9.1.6 setups or other custom formats. Distribution to arrays is done by the folddown/up it seems.
Maybe a Dadman-man can chime in.

Originally Posted by Steven1145

Yes I'm not sure the way things are done in that video are entirely correct.
Anyway I'm probably going to use the DSP present in the Crown amps that the studio has to do crossovers, keeping the MTRX EQ for just EQ-ing the screen channels without having to do some mind contortion to get things working.

And it seems that fold-downs are the workaround for a lot of missing features here.

Moving crossovers to the amps will save you a lot of headache. If it's the Crown XTi series you can keep it simple by using the HiQnet Band Manager via USB and not the Audio Architect.

[Steven1145]

Thanks for the tip! It's DCi amps though, quite a few seeing that the studio has 40 something speakers. I'll see if Band Manager handles those.

EDIT: just checked and it's only for XTI amps. That's OK as I'm used to both the Yamaha DME manager and the QSC Designer, so should find my way with Audio Architect.