MULTIPLE ZONES WITH DOLBY ATMOS CONTENT, CAN IT BE DONE?
- Published , by Tom Devine
Your home theater is perfect. You followed all the CEDIA guides. You dedicated 25 channels of audio to one room. Dolby Atmos is delivering unmatched sound quality and fullness that can’t be replicated. It’s the dream of every cinephile. Whether you are swinging from skyscrapers with Spider-Man or getting the sh*t scared out of you from IT, Dolby Atmos and DTX-HD can deliver an audio experience that you are unable to get anywhere else. But I don’t need to sell you on the merits of a home theater.
What I want to do is ask integrators how they send Dolby Atmos audio to a home theater and distribute the same content throughout a multi-zoned system?
Currently, integrators are forced to default the source to play 2 channel, even though the home theater is set up for Dolby Atmos, for everything to play nicely with the rest of the audio-video zones. What a waste of a great home theater audio set-up!
Another popular workaround is completely isolating the home theater, keeping it separated from the rest of the system. This way, the other zones work great, but the client is unable to easily swap content and sources to the home theater. What a missed opportunity to deliver what your customer wants -- something that’s easy to use in every room of their home.
The last way to achieve this is down-mixing. An integrator will set all sources to 5.1 audio. This way, you get some different channels. While it’s not the 32 independent channels of Dolby Atmos sound, it’s better than 2 channel. Then, the integrator will place a down-mixer or decoder to each zone that is set-up for 2 channel. Now, the customer can have 5.1 audio in their home theater while watching the exact same content in the kitchen and hearing 2 channel audio.
Unfortunately, all of these workarounds have you sacrificing something, but with AVPro Edge pushing technology to the future, we now offer full Dolby Atmos down-mixing.
This means you can use the 3rd scenario, except you don’t have to change the sources to 5.1. With AVPro Edge’s down-mixing technology, you can play the same content throughout all of your zones, with full 32 channels of Dolby Atmos sound running through your home theater and 2 channel playing on the patio.
AVPro Edge offers a few ways to down-mix Dolby Atmos and DTS-HD:
AC-AVDM-AUHD
Standalone down mixer, perfect for any new or retrofit multi-zoned audio video environment
AC-MX88-AUHD-HDBT-AVDM
Downmix directly inside your matrix switcher, the backbone to every audio video distribution system
AC-MX1616-AUHD-HDBT-AVDM
Just like the previous switch but this one comes with 16 inputs and 16 outputs for large distribution systems.
If you ever have any problems figuring out how you are going to install a home theater, make sure you reach out to an AVPro Edge representative for free information and consulting.
