How to Setup Your Room for Atmos and Immersive Audio

@kota1 The more I think about it and the more I play with my panning joysticks on my ProTools S4 control mixer I'm thinking symmetrical is not the proper layout for surround channels. In my Home Theater everything is symmetrical and fairly large, I set it up with and without the Lyngdorf Room Perfect DSP it doesn't really make a difference except it seems to turn up all my surround sound speakers. My professional system is not symmetrical other than the front L, C, R speakers and it images perfectly with or without the DSP. I think our brains are fooled by symmetrical surround sounds, symmetrical is not natural nothing really happens like that and our brains can't process rear surrounds coming from equal and opposite angles. Therefore I'm keeping everything a little off of symmetrical and leaning on the object orientation of the phantom channels. I've never heard of someone going about it this way before, the speakers are close to symmetric but not exactly and I'm not using any DSP at all so the imaging is only ½ the distance of the difference of the out of symmetry factor. I think that is the key to very nice ambiences and shockingly tight imaging in the surrounds. I'll let you know where this path takes me. I'l be working on it all night I think.

Also if you know of some good Atmos test downloads that would be helpful, Thanks.

Also I saw Shen Sun today at an amazing performing arts theater here in Boise the music was beautiful and the mics they used were cheap u57s mostly (very low end work hors mics) and the orchestra soundsd wonderful because the room was so good, moral of the story if you have a good room many sins are forgiven.

@mikelavigne 

That guide was good, using those tables I decided to move my top middle atmos speakers to top rear speakers so they can double as my surround heights for Auro-3D (aiming the angle at the MLP as suggested, not firing down at the floor) and I'll leave my rear heights only for Atmos. I was using rear heights for auro 3D, not ideal. Thanks!

@donavabdear

If you use Vudu you can search for atmos and they have the dolby test tracks loaded and you can play for free.

When can you post your measurements?? I don’t know protools so no help there. You will find out quickly if your mixes hold up when you test them in your car or someone elses space.

@kota1 Thanks, one cool thing is that I have 4x Dolby Atmos systems in my house I can play it on a few of those. And I have a 7.1 system in my car that is very good I think Mark Levenson makes it. 

I don't add any EQ to my speakers in the professional rig because I want to be like Al Schmitt and get it right without tweeks as he used to position microphones without EQ for the same reason. I know some of the guys who did "fix" many of Frank Sinatras songs especially the "Duets" album even after they were told to not touch a thing, it's to hard to not make it better when you know you can. 

Listening to Apple Spatial audio atmos mixes are like anything else, some good, some not so good. I like "We Take Requests" atmos mix by Oscar Peterson, all of the Beatle atmos mixes, and Kraftwerk in atmos is really good, play it loud and it just pressurizes the entire room.