Do NOT Blow Your Entire Budget on Two Channel Audio

I enjoy Dolby Atmos, but in 5.1 format (downconversion in the Marantz pre/pro from AppleTV streamer).

I think the requirement for a pair (or four) ceiling speakers will be the deal-breaker for nearly all audiophiles. The Atmos requirement for a ceiling speaker installation only works for wealthy people who have dedicated home theater rooms in their house. For that small group, listening to Dolby Atmos music in a dimly lit theater room, with the curtain for the blank screen closed, is going to be minority activity. That expensive room is going to used for movies, not music, because it’s really a single-purpose room. It’s not a relaxing place to socialize with the lights on.

Which leaves the rest of us, listening in either our living room or a dedicated music room. What percentage will install the Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers? 5% of the 2-channel audiophile market? 1%? A few audiophiles will tolerate rear speakers and the nuisance of running fat cables around the room. Fewer still will tolerate moving the couch out into the middle of the room to accommodate 7.1 surround, and the required four side and rear speakers, and the required cabling.

And now two or four ceiling speakers, requiring an expensive professional installation to cut the holes, install the speakers, and snake the wires through the walls? If you want to upgrade the ceiling speakers to timbre-match the others, you call the installer back to cut new holes?

Not to mention the discrepancy between the size of the existing 2-channel catalog vs Atmos remixes ... maybe 100,000 to one, or being generous, 10,000 to one?

@lynn_olson

I think the requirement for a pair (or four) ceiling speakers will be the deal-breaker for nearly all audiophiles.

Interesting, you might be right. I think the deal-breaker for a lot of audiophiles is they got burned on the SACD format. What survived of the "SACD" has become DSD and while you can still buy SACD/DSD players and DAC’s the content is limited and expensive. As for the height channels that market is certainly savvy enough to perceive this more as an annoyance than a real obstacle. This is the crowd that can balance a turntable on an inner tube while drinking high priced scotch at the same time.

Which leaves the rest of us, listening in either our living room or a dedicated music room.

Good point, maybe something like "height channels" would be a solution?

https://www.techhive.com/article/582560/svs-prime-elevation-speaker-review-an-incredibly-versatile-audio-solution-for-the-home-theater.html

What percentage will install the Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers?

You don’t need ceiling speakers to experience object based audio, its backward compatible. You can start with Atmos capable headphones and go from there. The point of my post was to allocate budget for an object based format. What a listener decides to allocate and how they choose to install a system is up to them. Congrats on having a 5.1 system, when that format first came out it was challenging too.

Fewer still will tolerate moving the couch out into the middle of the room to accommodate 7.1 surround, and the required four side and rear speakers, and the required cabling.

Moving the couch is free and sales of these types of systems is on the rise, see:

If you want to upgrade the ceiling speakers to timbre-match the others, you call the installer back to cut new holes?

Fortunately, speaker manufacturers have created solutions that can be hung high on the wall with little installation hassle other then running the wires, see:

https://www.accessories4less.com/make-a-store/category/atmos/speakers/atmos-speakers/1.html

Not to mention the discrepancy between the size of the existing 2-channel catalog vs Atmos remixes ... maybe 100,000 to one, or being generous, 10,000 to one?

That’s what I thought 5 years ago. Now most people who like music are already streaming. This means the content is available and you don’t have to pay an additional fee, you are already getting it, you just have to figure out how to consume it. I love how much content is available, from all genres and there is like a flood of new content being dropped every month, have you noticed?

I ditched 5.1 20 years ago and never looked back.

What a ridiculous proposal. Almost no one has the room or money to implement your idea, even if they wanted to; and that's a big IF. Besides that, you already made this pitch in another thread. You need to understand that not everyone needs or wants "immersive audio".

You lost me at “object-based audio.”