With the development of compatible A/V receivers, the battlefield quickly shifted to the living room. This meant that, theoretically, theater operators were limited only by their appetite to add extra speakers and amplification. Known in the industry as “object-based” sound technology, Atmos allowed for up to 128 distinct sound objects to be represented in a given scene, which could be routed to up to 64 different speakers.Ĭompetitors like Digital Theater Systems (DTS) soon followed suit, with the company boasting that its DTS:X technology could produce more individual audio feeds than Atmos, which was hard-capped at 64.

With Atmos, the sounds in a theater could now come from distinct locations determined by the professional audio mixers that had arranged them. For instance, if you were watching an action movie and there was an explosion on the right side of the screen, half of the speakers in the theater would all play that same sound. Theater speakers have always been able to crank out some serious decibels, but before Atmos, they weren’t all that sophisticated in terms of their underlying tech. Not only were premium movie houses proliferating, offering luxury seating and restaurant-quality food, but many venues were also upgrading their sound systems using Dolby’s revolutionary Atmos technology. You see, before the coronavirus pandemic upended life as we knew it, theaters were in the midst of a renaissance of sorts.

You may have heard something about 3D or “object-based” surround sound, which began making waves around six years ago as part of a push to modernize struggling movie theaters. But before we do, let’s take a quick look at the Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, the two surround sound ecosystems that everyone’s talking about. We’re going to take a very deep dive into exactly how it works and the technologies that brought us to today’s state of the art. Surround sound is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a category of products and technologies designed to immerse you in audio from all sides, all angles, and increasingly, from all heights too.

Dolby digital plus vs dolby atmos