Dolby Atmos, What is it?

            Dolby Atmos is a new surround sound setup which promises the viewer/listener a whole new experience compared to watching films in the standard 5.1 or 7.1 setup. Whoever may read this may already know what Atmos is and how it works or it maybe someone who knows nothing about surround sound. I will explain the basis of how surround sound works and why atmos is a great improvement to the current system.

            The typical surround sound setup is 5.1 what that means is that there are 5 sources of where audio is coming from and 1 source of where low bass frequencies come from. These sources can be as simple as 1 speaker per source like in home 5.1 setups or multiple speakers per source that are linked together. By source Im talking about left, right, center rear left and rear right, that makes up the 5 in 5.1. The .1 is the subwoofer for the low frequencies. In movie theatres there might be as many as 5 speakers for each source, which take up a lot of space.

            So what does Atmos do? Well for one it takes the 5.1 systems and turns it into a 64.1 system it better focuses where the sound is arriving. For example in a simple 5.1 you can hear something going left to right pretty good however its going from the left side of the speakers to the center than to the right side of the speakers. With atmos the sound travels from multiple speakers so you can able to pinpoint the sound traveling more accurately. Not only does it have individual channels going left to right but its also back to front. There is also More speakers on the ceilings!

            There are only a few Atmos fitted theatres around in the U.S. luckily there is one here right in Chicago which is located right off the orange line. I have not yet seen a movie in Atmos yet but I do plan on to, only a few certain movies are mixed into atmos. I would like to see how the films are mixed to accommodate these extra channels, do the sound designers go overhead and do crazy things or is it used strategically.  I plan on seeing a movie in Atmos within the next few weeks and will describe the experience so keep a look on my posts.

           

The sound of Gravity( Spolier alert)

Hey everyone, recently I saw the film Gravity Directed by Alfonso Cuaron. The story or plot of the movie is about a crew in space working on the Hubble telescope. While working on the telescope, there is debris flying throughout space, which ends up hitting them and destroying their space ship, leaving only two astronauts alive (Sandra bullock and George Clooney). These two astronauts have to find a way to stay alive and use an emergency escape pod to get back to earth.

            I really enjoyed the film; it was relatively slow paced so you have to be in the right mood to watch it. What I really enjoyed about the film was the way they handled the sound design of it while keeping in mind that there is no sound in space. One of the ways they did this was with the way the spoke in their suits. If you were to imagine how someone would sound like in a space suit I think they nailed it, it sounded a little muffled and boxy.

            To describe the next example I need to explain how we hear sound. Sound propagates by displacing molecules through a medium, which could be air, water or an object. Without a medium sound cannot be produced. In space there is no air so sound can only travel through objects. In the scene where Sandra bullock is in the space station and trying to escape in the escape pod shows this phenomenon. The space station is going up in flames and exploding and you can hear all of this because your in there with her, she continues and goes into the escape pod and you continue to hear the explosions. As soon as she detaches the pod from the space station the sound builds up into a ring and quickly goes away. The sound went away because it was no longer connected to the space station and sound needs a medium to travel through. I do doubt that the ring would occur in real life but that added to the suspense of the movie.

            Overall I really enjoyed this film, it had a nice story line to it, kind of corny lines at first but it gets better, the sound design of it was great, and there are many more examples of how the sound designer plays with how it should really sound like and how to make it sound cool to the audience. I recommend everyone to check out this film!