Significant_Rate
New member
I keep a couple of 5.1 only titles in the demo pile precisely because they wreck the assumption that more channels equals better sound, and the best of them just turned ten. Don't Breathe hit cinemas on 26 August 2016, which is the awkward part of its life story. 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray had only launched that February, Atmos existed but had barely reached physical media or streaming, so the film never got a 4K disc and on most services today it is 1080p with a 5.1 track.
None of that has hurt it. The whole premise is built on hearing, a group of burglars trapped in a blind man's house, and the sound team designed around silence rather than volume. That means your system gets tested on things a channel count cannot fix: how quiet it can stay without losing detail, whether a small sound placed in one surround actually reads as coming from there, how a room tone shift lands. A ceiling array does not help you with any of that. Directionality and dynamic range do.
Which is my long way of saying the Atmos badge on a mix tells you almost nothing about whether the mix is good. I have heard newer object based tracks that spread everything into a wash because somebody had beds and objects available and used all of them. Give me a tightly mixed 5.1 that respects the noise floor over that any day.
What 5.1 only titles are still in your rotation for testing, and has anyone found one their Atmos setup handles worse than their old 5.1 did?
None of that has hurt it. The whole premise is built on hearing, a group of burglars trapped in a blind man's house, and the sound team designed around silence rather than volume. That means your system gets tested on things a channel count cannot fix: how quiet it can stay without losing detail, whether a small sound placed in one surround actually reads as coming from there, how a room tone shift lands. A ceiling array does not help you with any of that. Directionality and dynamic range do.
Which is my long way of saying the Atmos badge on a mix tells you almost nothing about whether the mix is good. I have heard newer object based tracks that spread everything into a wash because somebody had beds and objects available and used all of them. Give me a tightly mixed 5.1 that respects the noise floor over that any day.
What 5.1 only titles are still in your rotation for testing, and has anyone found one their Atmos setup handles worse than their old 5.1 did?
