When I first put together my Dolby Atmos sound system in my living room, I couldn’t wait to start watching a bunch of movies to see what the fuss was all about. It didn’t take long for me to realize that while it was a better audio experience, it wasn’t necessarily something that represents a massive upgrade over regular 5.1 or even 7.1 surround sound. I made the rookie mistake of bumping up the audio from my height speakers, and that’s what made me finally notice those speakers I went through the trouble of mounting on the wall.
For a while, I was happy with this, and I even used my receiver to upmix traditional surround sound into Atmos. However, something in me clicked, and I realized that this wasn’t how these movies were meant to be experienced. To borrow a phrase from a movie with a great Atmos soundtrack, I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could that I didn’t stop to think if I should.
Your speakers should blend together, not stand out
A hard lesson
When you set up your receiver with your Dolby Atmos speakers, you should’ve (hopefully) gone through an audio calibration where your receiver gets everything fine-tuned to your specific listening position. On my Denon receiver, I have a program called Audyssey where I had to move a microphone around to my three primary listening areas, and it calibrated the volume of each speaker as necessary. This makes all of your speakers blend instead of one being louder than the rest. Some of the best advice I’ve received with my home theater is that if you can pinpoint exactly where the sound is coming from, it’s not doing its job. This is especially the case with subwoofers. If you can tell where the bass is coming from, you need to fix that.
Speaking from experience, it’s easy for things to get lost in the shuffle, and as somebody who raves about Atmos, not being able to hear the Atmos speakers can be a little alarming. I’m here to say that everything’s working as intended, and you shouldn’t bump up the volume on those individual speakers. It might sound good, but I’m much more interested in everything sounding the way that it should than I am in hearing planes or gunshots sound a little bit louder. Overhead audio isn’t extremely common in movies, so the reality is that you shouldn’t hear your Atmos speakers activated for the duration of a movie. There’s probably just a handful of scenes that should activate them, so don’t go out of your way to make those stand out more than they should.
It’s a very easy trap to fall into, and maybe it’s worth watching a few movies this way to get it out of your system. It’s what I did, and I have no desire to go back to that. I turned off all the audio upscaling on my receiver, so if I’m watching something with plain old 5.1 surround sound, I’ll live with my Atmos speakers being dormant for the duration of the movie. Fortunately, there are so many Dolby Atmos soundtracks in my 4K Blu-ray collection that I don’t have to look very hard to find something that takes advantage of all my speakers.
Soundbars minimize this problem
Just set it and forget it
If you have a soundbar, this is largely something you don’t have to concern yourself with. There are no external speakers you need to mess with the volume on. You should just have to plug your soundbar into the TV and call it a day. In many ways, that’s an ideal setup for a lot of people. I like to tweak my settings and get everything the best that it can be, but that’s not the case for everyone. Sometimes it’s easier to plug something in and forget about it. In my experience, there’s nothing much to tweak with a soundbar, and it sounds fine out of the box.
Not every soundbar has Dolby Atmos, but from the ones that I’ve heard, I haven’t noticed many issues. Sure, it’s not real Atmos since that requires proper height speakers, but that’s not what you expect when you buy a soundbar. The thing I’d be worried about is those upfiring speakers that bounce the sound off my ceiling are tuned to be louder than the rest of the speakers just so they stand out, but that’s not the case.
At the end of the day, Dolby Atmos is worth the price of admission, but only if you’re using it the way it was set up to be used. I don’t want to tweak anything to force Atmos audio where it shouldn’t be. I don’t want to bump up the volume on specific speakers. If I have the necessary space, I also don’t want to get Atmos out of a soundbar, as it sounds far better when you take the time to set up height speakers. Of course, that means you’ll need to get an audio receiver as well, and that’s something that’s not worth it for a lot of people.
