DOLBY ATMOS
Dolby Atmos is an audio tech which some have claimed is the biggest upgrade to surround sound in 20 years. It’s trickled down to the home from its beginnings in cinema screens, and literally adds a whole new dimension to living room sound by adding height channels to audio. Well, that’s one thing it does.
Dolby Atmos isn’t, in itself, sound — it’s a system of turning that audio into objects. Up to 128 individual elements in a scene are separated out into their own discrete tracks, each of which is given its own metadata which communicates to a Dolby Atmos–compatible receiver the way it should be handled. That metadata might include height channel or other positional information, or designate the track as a voice or background, but it doesn’t make explicit demands; it’s merely a way of communicating to compatible equipment.
It’s the end–user kit that does the real heavy lifting. A piece of Dolby Atmos hardware will typically know what it’s working with, be that a stereo setup or a full 7.2.4–channel speaker array, and will determine how to send the sound to the correct speakers based on that metadata.
