Dolby Atmos - Hear the whole picture

April 11, 2021

You might have seen the logo below in movie theaters, speakers, soundbars, laptops, etc. The first thing that comes to mind when you think of Dolby is the premium quality sound and the surround sound system, but Dolby is more!

Dolby is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction and encoding/compression. Dolby licenses its technology to consumer electronics manufacturers. You can read its history by clicking here.

What is Dolby Atmos?

Dolby Atmos takes surround sound to the next level with true 3D audio. In most systems where Dolby Atmos is absent, the sound travels in a horizontal plane only, but with Dolby Atmos, the sound travels all around you.

Mono Audio

Stereo Sound

Dolby Atmos

So basically, Dolby gives you a 360-degree surround sound experience. You can encode up to 118 different objects or channels during this process. As a result, you can easily detect many sounds made to come from different directions. Companies work together to encode audio for such a comprehensive listening experience.

You may have heard about Dolby '5.1' or Dolby '7.1', '5.1' basically has 6 loudspeakers working together whereas '7.1' has additional two speakers, i.e., 8 speakers arrey.

A theater with Dolby Atmos consists of 5 in-screen speakers and 48 speakers that surround you. Sound engineers encode sound so that different sound comes from different channels at that specified time.

An array of speakers in a theater with Dolby Atmos

When it comes to headphones or earphones, there are only 2 channels, but some algorithms (by mixing sounds or increasing the frequency) are created virtually in a 3D space. As a result, it creates an illusion that the sounds reach our ears from different directions.

In a nutshell, Dolby creates a virtual atmosphere where we can feel the sound at different levels. The essential element in this technology is that sound is produced depending on how well the speaker decodes the encoded sound. To be specific, if an array of speakers produces a rich surround sound, then we can say that those speakers have the ability to completely decode the encoded sound by the sound engineers.

My most favorite music artist Martin Garrix's STMPD recording studio, got Dolby Atmos Premier Studio certification, which only awards those studios that possess the maximum and most sublime technical excellence. Also, this place doubles as a cinema mixing studio called 'The Mixing Stage,' one of the nine studios in the whole world!!!