Dolby Atmos -anybody tried it? Any Good?

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Hi all,

Thinking of upgrading my home cinema setup - just curious if anybody here has experienced dolby atmos? Is it worth the extra expense. My current system is Onkyo HT-R390, about 4 years or so old, with the kit speakers it came with.

Any advice on AV receivers/Speaker kit reccomendations. Budget somewhere around £2500, but would like to spend less if possible, but don't want to compromise too much either. Lol.

Your thoughts/experiences please.

Mark

 

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Due to it being a rental property I would say a deffo no - I am aware this is not perfect, but there are upward firing speakers I assume?

Mark

 

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There are but i think a lot of people feel its a dilution of what Atmos is supposed to be - its using the same idea as 'virtual surround sound.'

Perhaps find a good dealer that could give you a demo and see if you think the upwards firing atoms is worth it over just a very good 5.1 / 7.1 setup.

The Denon amps are looking very nice this year with Atmos / DTS X and proper Audssey setup

Funny you should mention Denon - I was considering the 5200 model, or even stretching to the 7200. Thanks for your input. Have you got a Denon?

Mark

 

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Ooh err - a lot of negative, but still viable points/oppinions. Makes me wonder whether all the fuss and expense is going to be worth it. Have heard others say that atmoss is the dogs danglies - but as others have said on here - depends whether you have the righr room etc,

I am more confused now. Lol. Thought this was going to be easy - wrong again it seems.

Any more opinions either way?

Thanks to all who have chimed in so far.

Mark

 

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Hey lucid,

Thanks for the very informative posts - a great help. I have now decided to wait on the receiver, and have taken on board the suggestion to upgrade my speaker package with my current HT-R390. Any suggestions of a good speaker package I should be looking at? I can mount speakers on the wall- no problem.

I will also get some semi decent at least speaker cable to hook it all up with.

Many thanks to your input and everybody else too for that matter.

Mark

 

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Hi Mark,

I'll start with the sub since that's the trickiest on to deal with as an upgrade to your particular receiver. The HTR-390 kit uses a passive sub, so to all intents and purposes it's just another speaker in a box. The receiver has speaker outputs for the sub rather than the more conventional line level connector on an RCA/phono socket used with active subs that have their own amplification on-board. If you plan to use the Onkyo receiver as a stop-gap then any sub you might choose must have speaker level inputs as well as a line input. That would be a problem if you were looking at the typical <£800 sub/sat package. Fortunately you're looking long term and your speaker budget is sufficient to get what you need now. If I were in your shoes then I'd look at a BK subwoofer.

BK is one of those brands sold directly by the manufacturer. Cutting out the usual distribution and retail chains reduces the sales costs hugely. That wouldn't be worth much though if the products weren't that good. Fortunately BK has a great reputation. It was the manufacturing sub-contractor for REL subs.

BK's entry-level sub is the Gemini 2. I'd happily pitch that against MJ Acoustics' equivalent sized product the Pro50 MKIII. MJ sells via retailers. The Pro50 MKIII retails for £450. IMO the Gemini matches the features and performance but at £200 less. It's the same story with the higher-spec BKs too. The XLS200 uses a better driver and has more power for greater control. It also digs deeper producing strong bass lower down the frequency scale. The XLS400 goes deeper again. Both of the XLS products use Peerless drivers. That's top-spec gear. The Gemini 2 and the P12-300SB (Platinum line) use unspecified drivers but they're still excellent.

Main speakers: I am a big fan of Monitor Audio. Their products do most things right. If there's a criticism then it's that the speakers can be a touch boomy compared against KEF, but other than that they tick a lot of boxes. If you can act quick then you'll be able to scoop some serious bargains too. There's a range change happening right now. The new Bronze range is out so the older Broze BX range is beaing cleared at some hefty discounts. IMO the BX5 and BX6 floorstanders are a no brainer. Add the BX Centre and BXFX switchable di-pole/bi-pole surrounds to complete the package.


Speaker wire: There's no need to go mad. A basic 100% copper 79 strand with a cross sectional area of 2.5mm will cover all your needs. There was some stuff I saw from TLC Direct under their "Bell Wire & Speaker Cables > 79 Strand Twin Fig 8 Speaker Cable" section that would run in at around £60 delivered for 100m.

Thanks for such a detailed response. I have been researching this on the net, and one suggestion as a work around to connect the sub is to connect the two spare speaker connections on my Onkyo for the front b speakers to the line inputs on the sub - not ideal but should work apparently until I replace my receiver later on. Will this work ok?

Mark

 

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Eek!!!! No! Only if you want to wreck the subwoofer. Don't do it!!

Jeez that was close - good job I checked. Is there any work around available?

 

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To be fair, you didn't really check. It was more by good luck alone that you just happened to mention your plan.

Work-arounds..... this is when we start to try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. These things never end well. Bearing in mind how I just saved your sub from going up in smoke then I hope you'll take this piece of advice and just run with it.... Messing about with a work-around is a waste of time and money. Yes, it can be done, but it involves many compromises and is rather short-sighted.

If I was you I'd sell the complete HTR-390 kit and buy a proper AV receiver with a subwoofer out. After all, you won't easily be able to shift the Onkyo speakers on their own, so they're going to sit gathering dust until you have a complete kit to sell.

Rather than dropping £50 of dead money in to some workaround boxes why not advertise the 390 kit for around £150 and pick up a used AVR of similar spec for around £100. The TX-SR333 would do just fine. There's one on AVForums classifieds right now. If you want to really give those new Q Acoustic speakers a good workout then there's a Yamaha RX-V1800 for sale at £200.

Points taken. However I was not just going to connect the sub without double checking first, purely because I had my doubts about it being flawed logic.

Thanks for the info about the units for sale - will look into them.

Thanks again.

Mark

 

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I have just installed a Denon X4200W with the cheap upfiring Onkyo atmos speakers into my 5.1 setup and it has blown me away.

One thing that has not been mentioned is the new Dolby Upmixer, this makes a massive difference to the surround sound experience especially if you feed it a 5.1 dolby digital feed from sky etc. This to me is worth the upgrade alone!

I will be upgrading the Atmos speakers at a later date...

Thanks for the post - interesting, how do you find the 4200 - I was considering this to keep costs down a bit - but the specs suggest it will perform ok. Would love to hear your views.

Mark

 

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Hey Ramdrive - thanks a lot for the info and very informative post - think you have sold me on a 4200 Lol. I may just get the Onkyp speakers for Atmoss at the moment. Are you using 2 or 4 atmoss speakers? Thought I would start with two at the back, but apparently 4 is much better.

Thanks again

Mark

 

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I am running 5.1.2 (two front Atmos speakers) start with 2 at the front.

I have just now replaced my Onkyo SKH-410 with Pioneer SP-T22A-LR atmos enabled speakers, and gained a vast improvement in immersion even on DSU material.

The pioneer's are a massive improvement over the Onkyo for only £70 more.

I ordered the pioneer's from Amazon USA and they arrived in the UK within 5 days.

Thanks for the tips - will look in to the pioneers for my setup, when I get the 4200 Denon.

Cheers

Mark