128 Channel surround sound!

The ceiling speakers would be fantastic for a scene, say like, in the Captains cabin in Master & Commander. You could hear the waves hit the ship at the sides, creaks all over and footsteps on decks above. Superb.

Someone would get it in a home setup somehow, sooner or later. AV receiver manufacturers love a new selling point.
 
robfosters said:
The ceiling speakers would be fantastic for a scene, say like, in the Captains cabin in Master & Commander. You could hear the waves hit the ship at the sides, creaks all over and footsteps on decks above. Superb.
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I agree, it think this could be rather good! Definitely keen to try it when it comes out over here.

robfosters said:
Someone would get it in a home setup somehow, sooner or later. AV receiver manufacturers love a new selling point.
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One of the main points of this (mentioned in the promo video) is that it is to keep people coming to cinemas, so i doubt any domestic implemention will be available any time soon.
 
Never mind the intention to keep it in cinemas, it would basically be impossible to implement that at home. I'm not sure what the market penetration of home cinema gear is, but I'm guessing it's pretty low, partly due to apathy, partly due to the wife factor and partly due to cost. Increasing the number of speakers is only going to increase the strength of those "against" factors. A handful of people with a dedicated room and essentially limitless funds could do it, sure, but how many of those guys are there?
 
Vonhelmet said:
Never mind the intention to keep it in cinemas, it would basically be impossible to implement that at home. I'm not sure what the market penetration of home cinema gear is, but I'm guessing it's pretty low, partly due to apathy, partly due to the wife factor and partly due to cost. Increasing the number of speakers is only going to increase the strength of those "against" factors. A handful of people with a dedicated room and essentially limitless funds could do it, sure, but how many of those guys are there?
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Well speaker manufacturers still see it profitable to produce their flagship speakers, and how many top end speakers do you see that aren't in dedicated speaker rooms? So that would suggest the high end speaker market is still very viable, and those are the exact kind of people who would build a setup like this.

All that is needed is speaker brackets to mount a speaker to the ceiling, the extra channels to be encoded in the audio track and for AV Receivers to support decoding and output of the extra channels. I suspect exactly the same thing was said about surround sound when it was first introduced.
 
it would be nice if the main dialogue was more audible to, nowadays all you can hear is bloody music and explosions, with very little of whats being said.
 
pete248 said:
Well speaker manufacturers still see it profitable to produce their flagship speakers, and how many top end speakers do you see that aren't in dedicated speaker rooms? So that would suggest the high end speaker market is still very viable, and those are the exact kind of people who would build a setup like this.

All that is needed is speaker brackets to mount a speaker to the ceiling, the extra channels to be encoded in the audio track and for AV Receivers to support decoding and output of the extra channels. I suspect exactly the same thing was said about surround sound when it was first introduced.
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Up to 5.1 there are lots of takers. Beyond that, not so many. Are we really going to get to 128 channels in the home? I very much doubt it.
 
Vonhelmet said:
Up to 5.1 there are lots of takers. Beyond that, not so many. Are we really going to get to 128 channels in the home? I very much doubt it.
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My understanding of it is that most people couldn't even set it up properly if they tried, so adding more channels to the home is often pointless. Either way, cinema's are struggling to stay relevant, I'd guess this has a 50/50 chance of being snake oil.
 
robfosters said:
The ceiling speakers would be fantastic for a scene, say like, in the Captains cabin in Master & Commander. You could hear the waves hit the ship at the sides, creaks all over and footsteps on decks above. Superb.

Someone would get it in a home setup somehow, sooner or later. AV receiver manufacturers love a new selling point.
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i was wondering this. get rid of all your standard speakers and just have the ceiling full of them. how would it sound? i find ceiling speakers sound different to standard floorstanders etc.

i think any more speakers and im up for divorce ;)
 
My guess is that it could be done in the home with say 6-7 of those "soundbar" speakers. Note, by soundbar, I do mean the ones that use lots of drivers, not the cheap and nasty stuff using drivers that failed QC for installation in Hondas.
Control of that lot would be an intriguing challenge, but it should be possible.
 
The main problem with cinemas is other people. If they create a technology that filters out the sound of other people eating/talking, then that would be awesome :)
 
pete248 said:
Of course not, but you could easily scale that down to 2 left/right "above" channels that are above the listener.
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I cant see that happening to be honest - to have "above" / below speakers to work you have to have much more space in the room than typical homes allow

in the US it MIGHT work, but I very much doubt over here :)

Mr_Sukebe said:
My guess is that it could be done in the home with say 6-7 of those "soundbar" speakers. Note, by soundbar, I do mean the ones that use lots of drivers, not the cheap and nasty stuff using drivers that failed QC for installation in Hondas.
Control of that lot would be an intriguing challenge, but it should be possible.
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Of course it does depend highly on the quality of the drivers /speakers, as you suggest, but Im not convinced at alll that there would be enough space in most living rooms (unless the sound bars were absolutely ginormous, which would probably make them un-sellable lol)
 
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Sounds like more cinema gimmicks to me. Firstly as I understand it the human ear doesn't perceive height particularly efficiently and it's mostly a combination of visual with audio stimulus which determines how we ascertain 'height' to sound.

Large scale loudspeaker installations like this are also incredibly expensive. Their worth is reduced further when considering their use would be limited to a few particular scenes within a film. Huge numbers of speakers have been used for film since the virtually the beginning of the medium - have a look at Disney's Fantasound for example, that used 54 speakers. It never took off because of cost.

Research has also been carried out into the most efficient number of speakers to portray a surround experience and it's still widely regarded that LCR Ls Rs is more than enough. Even 7.1 is slightly OTT.

Whilst I agree it has an appeal and an initial wow factor I can't see it paying off and being adopted long term. Even the promo video concentrates on an automated mixer rather than anything really useful :)
 
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