Essential Install | Sponsored Section: Genesis
Overhead speakers
with a wide
dispersion pattern
are desirable for
use in a Dolby
Atmos system
dARTS Digital Theater:
The perfect speakers
for immersive audio
Once upon a time, one performance value dominated the
selection process for cinema speakers – how loud could they play?
More specifically, could they reach the near mythic criteria of 105dB
at the seating position? Neil Davidson of Genesis Technologies,
explains why things have changed.
Fast forward to today and the market is saturated with
speakers that can play to ‘Reference Level’ and beyond. It
is a great sales story and easy to explain to nervous clients
making a large investment in brands they may never have
heard of, but in a period where everyone can play loud,
we have a duty to deliver products that also sound great!
In 2014, Dolby launched the home version of the ATMOS
immersive audio format which changed the requirements
of great sound once again and forced me to totally
reconsider Genesis Technologies’ approach to cinema
sound reproduction. For our company the solution was
the dARTS Digital Theater system and in the rest of this
article I hope to explain why dARTS is the perfect speaker
system for immersive audio.
Challenges of immersive audio
The way we localise sound in a 3D field is a pretty
amazing combination of physical detection and neural
processing. Universities and research institutes around
the world continue to make new discoveries. Much of this
34 | October 2017
research however has been poured into the guidelines
for immersive audio published by Dolby. This detailed
document, which can be downloaded from the Dolby
website, contains several very interesting observations.
“The dimension of height—hearing sounds coming
from above you—is key to the Dolby Atmos experience.
Reproducing overhead sounds requires new thinking
about home theatre design.”
“Any speaker type that is capable of accurately
representing a stereo pan is suitable to reproduce objects.”
“Dolby Atmos audio is mixed using discrete, full-range
audio objects that may move around anywhere in three-
dimensional space. With this in mind, overhead speakers
should complement the frequency response, output, and
power-handling capabilities of the listener-level speakers.
Choose overhead speakers that are timbre matched as
closely as possible to the primary listener-level speakers.
Overhead speakers with a wide dispersion pattern are
desirable for use in a Dolby Atmos system. This will ensure
the closest replication of the cinematic environment, where
overhead speakers are placed high above the listeners.”