Someone put into words a thing I have been arguing with my brother-in-law about for two seasons: for football, the Atmos mix does more for the experience than 4K and HDR put together. Sharper grass does not stop you watching a game through a window. Crowd noise arriving from above and behind you does, and it does it within about ninety seconds of kick-off.
There is a good comparison in there with motorsport, which I had not thought about properly. F1 is loud but the broadcast is not built to put you in the stands, so the height layer has much less to carry and the win stays on the picture side. Football broadcasts are built around the crowd, so the format that handles crowd best is the one that changes the room.
Two caveats before anyone runs out and buys something. First, most people getting told they have Atmos are getting it from a bar with upfiring drivers bouncing off an eight-foot ceiling, and diffuse crowd noise is precisely the content that turns to mush when it does that. Real ceiling or on-wall heights are where this argument holds up, and a well-set 5.1 with the surrounds at ear level beats a bad Atmos layout every time. Second, the thing everyone actually wants is a commentary-free mix, and that is a broadcaster decision, not a format one. Crowd-only feeds have surfaced now and then and always got quietly dropped.
Anyone here running heights specifically because of sport rather than films? I am curious whether the people who added a ceiling pair for movies ended up using them more for Saturday afternoons.
There is a good comparison in there with motorsport, which I had not thought about properly. F1 is loud but the broadcast is not built to put you in the stands, so the height layer has much less to carry and the win stays on the picture side. Football broadcasts are built around the crowd, so the format that handles crowd best is the one that changes the room.
Two caveats before anyone runs out and buys something. First, most people getting told they have Atmos are getting it from a bar with upfiring drivers bouncing off an eight-foot ceiling, and diffuse crowd noise is precisely the content that turns to mush when it does that. Real ceiling or on-wall heights are where this argument holds up, and a well-set 5.1 with the surrounds at ear level beats a bad Atmos layout every time. Second, the thing everyone actually wants is a commentary-free mix, and that is a broadcaster decision, not a format one. Crowd-only feeds have surfaced now and then and always got quietly dropped.
Anyone here running heights specifically because of sport rather than films? I am curious whether the people who added a ceiling pair for movies ended up using them more for Saturday afternoons.
