

This was rectified with the new audio formats that are Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. This means that while we were getting a 360 degrees immersion soundstage there was a lack of information above us.Īnd this was happening because these audio formats lacked any support for channels that could be positioned anywhere above ear level. Now what is very important to understand is that with these 2 setups all speakers are positioned at the height of the viewers ear. A 7.1 setup is similar with the exception that it is adding 2 more speakers, one on the left and one on the right side of the viewer. As you can see in the graphic below a 5.1 channels setup consists of 1 center dialogue speaker, 2 front speakers and 2 back surround speakers along with a sub woofer for the low frequency sounds. Let’s explain a bit what these numbers mean. These 2 formats were offering 5.1 and 7.1 mixes for movies and a lot of times you could find multiple audio tracks to choose from. With Blu-ray the best in audio formats were Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master audio. And the question we hear now has changed to “How to make a correct Dolby Atmos speaker placement”. And with the different rooms each user had things were not as clear cut as we would like.īut now as the new 4K UHD format is mainstream we have new audio formats also to make things even more complex. This question was already difficult because of the different speakers setups that existed up to now with the most common ones being 5.1 and 7.1 channels setups (we will explain in a bit what these numbers mean). In our Dolby Atmos speaker placement guide we are going to shed some light and make things a bit more clear on all these.Ī very frequent question we were hearing was “How do I position my speakers to have the best sound?”. And to make matters even worse every room, home theater and media area is unique making their acoustics different adding more difficulty to an already complex situation. And although in both of them there are different technologies nowadays, it was always the sound that was the most tricky part and this happens because there are a lot of components that need to work together in order to get the sound as it was intended by the film makers.

In any home entertainment setup the two most important elements are obviously the picture and sound.
