I put together a Dolby Atmos home theater in my living room a few years ago, and I’ve been a happy camper since doing so. Of course, there is always something I want to change, as is the case with technology in general. There’s always something better out there, and I could make clear upgrades to both my audio equipment and my TV. The only thing getting in the way of this is money, so it’ll be a while before I make any major upgrades to my setup.
However, if I could go back in time, I could’ve probably saved myself a few headaches and a few dollars by doing a little more research. I didn’t have to waste money on speakers that I didn’t end up using for very long, I didn’t have to spend extra on high-quality speaker wire, and I could’ve just known what I wanted from the start instead of piecing my setup together little by little without any clear end goal in mind. Of course, this is all part of the fun, but if I had to do it again, I’d definitely do it differently.
Dolby sound engineering
Trivia challenge
From noise reduction to immersive audio — how well do you really know the science behind Dolby sound?
HistoryTechnologyFormatsCinemaInnovation
In what year did Ray Dolby found Dolby Laboratories?
Correct! Ray Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories in 1965 in London, England. The company initially focused on professional recording studio equipment before expanding into consumer and cinema audio.
Not quite. Dolby Laboratories was founded in 1965 by Ray Dolby in London. He had previously worked at Ampex and developed his noise reduction ideas while studying at Cambridge University.
What was the primary purpose of the original Dolby A noise reduction system introduced in 1965?
Correct! Dolby A was designed to reduce the audible tape hiss that plagued professional studio recordings. It worked by encoding audio during recording and decoding it on playback, effectively masking the noise floor of magnetic tape.
Not quite. Dolby A was a noise reduction system aimed squarely at reducing tape hiss in professional studio environments. It used a compander approach — compressing audio on the way in and expanding it on the way out — to suppress background noise.
Which 1975 film was the first to be released with a Dolby-encoded stereo optical soundtrack?
Correct! Lisztomania (1975), directed by Ken Russell, was the first film released with a Dolby-encoded stereo optical soundtrack. This marked a major turning point in bringing high-quality stereo audio to cinema audiences.
Not quite. The first film with a Dolby-encoded stereo optical soundtrack was actually Lisztomania in 1975. While Star Wars (1977) and A Star Is Born (1976) were landmark Dolby films, Lisztomania holds the historical first.
Dolby Digital is also known by which technical designation used in industry documentation?
Correct! Dolby Digital is technically designated AC-3, which stands for Audio Codec 3. It was developed in the early 1990s and became the standard audio format for DVD video, digital broadcast, and cinema releases.
Not quite. Dolby Digital’s technical designation is AC-3. The AC stands for Audio Codec, and it was the third generation of Dolby’s perceptual audio coding technology, succeeding AC-1 and AC-2.
What audio object-based feature distinguishes Dolby Atmos from earlier surround sound formats like Dolby 7.1?
Correct! Dolby Atmos uses audio objects — individual sounds with positional metadata — rather than fixed channel assignments. This allows a renderer to place sounds anywhere in three-dimensional space and adapt the mix to any speaker configuration, from a home soundbar to a 64-speaker cinema.
Not quite. The key innovation in Dolby Atmos is object-based audio. Instead of assigning sounds to fixed channels, each sound element carries metadata describing its position, allowing the system to dynamically render it for whatever speaker layout is available.
Dolby Vision is a proprietary HDR format that competes directly with which open HDR standard commonly found on televisions and streaming services?
Correct! Dolby Vision competes most directly with HDR10 and its dynamic metadata extension HDR10+. While HDR10 is an open, royalty-free standard, Dolby Vision requires licensing and supports dynamic metadata for scene-by-scene brightness optimisation, often delivering superior results.
Not quite. Dolby Vision’s main competitors are HDR10 and HDR10+. HDR10 is the baseline open standard, while HDR10+ adds dynamic metadata — a feature Dolby Vision pioneered. Dolby Vision supports up to 12-bit color depth and 10,000 nits peak brightness in its specification.
What does Dolby MAT stand for, and what is its primary function in modern audio delivery?
Correct! Dolby MAT (Metadata-enhanced Audio Transport) is a lossless bitstream container that carries Dolby TrueHD audio along with Dolby Atmos object metadata over HDMI connections. It is what allows modern AV receivers and soundbars to receive full lossless Atmos signals from Blu-ray players and streaming devices.
Not quite. Dolby MAT stands for Metadata-enhanced Audio Transport. It is a lossless container format that wraps Dolby TrueHD audio and Dolby Atmos object metadata, enabling high-fidelity Atmos delivery over HDMI. Without MAT, devices can only receive a lossy Dolby Digital Plus version of an Atmos stream.
Which legendary rock concert film from 1978 is widely celebrated as a showcase for Dolby Stereo’s capabilities in cinema?
Correct! The Last Waltz (1978), Martin Scorsese’s documentary about The Band’s farewell concert, is frequently cited as a landmark demonstration of Dolby Stereo in cinemas. The film’s rich multi-track recording benefited enormously from the format’s improved dynamic range and channel separation.
Not quite. The Last Waltz (1978) is the celebrated Dolby Stereo showcase. Directed by Martin Scorsese, the film captured The Band’s final concert with exceptional audio quality that highlighted what Dolby Stereo could achieve over conventional mono and optical formats of the era.
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Know your endgame before making a purchase
I got lucky, but everyone else won’t
I first got a receiver just so I could get 5.1 surround sound. Since this is in my living room, I figured there was no need for me to go all out and put together a 7.1 setup since I don’t have the space in my living room for that anyways. I ended up getting a Denon S760H receiver, a 7.1 receiver, just because I saw a lot of people recommending it as a budget-friendly receiver. I had no intention of using those last two speaker spots, but when the Dolby Atmos whispers started creeping in, I was glad to have them. I now have a 5.1.2 setup, with those last two Atmos speakers calibrated as height speakers for my receiver.
It’s good that I had a receiver with these two extra ports because I really had no intention of doing this when I first started. If you grabbed a 5.1 receiver, you don’t have the wiggle room to add Atmos speakers. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and the last thing anybody wants to do is buy another receiver just to get something they could’ve already had in the first place. I was lucky enough to have the two extra ports, so while you might not need a 7.1 receiver to begin with, it’s probably safer to grab one.
I would invest in better Atmos speakers
Small satellite speakers work, but there are better picks
Atmos speakers can be as big or as small as you’d like them to be. There’s no need to really break the bank here since Atmos speakers are likely to be your least active speakers over the duration of a movie. This means you don’t have to spend $500 on a set of Atmos height speakers if you don’t want to, but it doesn’t mean you should get a $10 pair of satellite speakers, either. I went the latter route, and after drilling a few holes in the wall to mount them, they’re still there. They work fine, but I feel like getting some actual bookshelf speakers to put up on the wall would be a better experience.
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t know I wanted an Atmos setup until I did, so I scrambled together a cheap set of speakers that I could test the waters with. As it turns out, those waters are still being tested, and I’ve been too lazy to swap out the speakers. I sort of knew that would happen, so if I could do it again, I’d probably just get better speakers from the beginning.
Putting more thought into my initial speaker set
Don’t always go straight for the cheapest available
I didn’t buy all of my speakers at once, but I instead decided to start with a pair of bookshelf speakers for a stereo setup to save some cash. Like a lot of people, I went for the Sony Core Series bookshelf speakers. These are perfectly serviceable speakers, but what a lot of people might not realize about home theaters is that your front three speakers should all match each other. This means I was essentially locked into getting the Sony Core Series center channel speaker when I wanted to upgrade further.
The problem with this is that I didn’t want to keep investing in the Sony Core Series, so I ended up getting an entirely new set of three speakers and moved those Sony ones to my surrounds. This ended up working nicely, as any decent-sounding set of speakers can be used for your surrounds, but I’d rather have saved up a little more money in the first place and not bought them at all. I could’ve bought a cheap pair of used speakers just to try things out instead of dropping a few hundred on a budget-friendly set that’s easily outclassed by other speakers. In this case, upgrading wasn’t a hassle, but if you buy a cheap home theater in a box setup, it’s a lot more expensive to replace everything.
