I just don't get the importance of DTS:X or Atmos either one. Maybe i'm too old to grasp this but - ok help me out here. First they said you need 5 speakers 2 isn't enough. ok. then it was 7. then 9. then 11. now we're up to what 26? maybe i'm too practical - maybe this is a generational thing but my reaction is to ask the audio industry - why do you need 26 speakers to give me an enjoyable experience? that's not a practical solution. in fact 5 speakers is not even practical for some people. 


Okay let's just say the audio industry is just trying to sell products so they keep adding speakers as long as people keep buying them and if you want 26 speakers you got it. maybe that's cool to you maybe you like that ok I can respect that. but I do not see where the sources are keeping up with the technology.


in 1985 the "CD Player" came out - at least that's when I bought one and my friends started having them they may have been available far sooner but 1985 to me was the intro of the CD player. it was better than analog cassette. not better than vinyl but vinyl is not practical for your car or a headset. the CD player replaced the cassette tape. eventually music stores carried nothing but CD and cassette was no longer available. new music was on CD starting in 1985. 


I do not see that type of thing happening with all this Dolby DTS stuff. My cable TV service broadcasts everything in Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0. Almost every movie i've ever rented was Dolby Digital. I think i've rented maybe 4 movies in my entire life that were in DTS. It's not like all the new movies and TV shows will be in Atmos or DTS:X. You can go buy the 26 speakers but there is no material that will give you 26 channels of sound. So is it really "better"? That's the point i'm trying to make. All this TrueHD stuff just might be considered "better" someday if you could actually get your money's worth out of the investment. Even if you can name 3 or 4 movies that are in TrueHD or whatever i'll bet you anything that I can still get it on NetFlix in Dolby Digital. 


Another point i'm making here is that if you decide enough is enough and you decide to stay with say 5.1 then what good is all these new codecs? Why do you care if there's 50,000 discrete channels of sound on the disc if you only have a 5.1 setup? I've decided to stick with 3.1 so I personally do not care about 9 or 26 channels of sound it's all going to be downmixed into my fronts. I'm not missing any sound its just not coming from behind me. that's it I do not have sound behind me just in front and beside me. 


Hey - I live in the Washington DC area - I do not want to hear gunfire or explosions coming from behind me if I do i'm hitting the ground and grabbing my steel. 


Let's be practical for a minute. Ina movie soundtrack you have 2 types of sound: the voices and the critical sounds - things you must hear in order to understand the movie - and noise - all the background sounds including the earth-shattering kaboom - the photon torpedo - the dog barking the phone ringing from the side - it's cool but it's background noise and although it may be important it's not as crucial as the voices. Right? So technically the center channel is for the most part the voices - the crucial sounds - and all the rest of the speakers are the noise - the more speakers you have the more you spread out the noise. if you're an old man like me - or if you live in a condo/apartment etc - you need to keep the voices up and the noise down. In the old stereo systems i'd have to turn the volume up so I could hear what they're saying and back down so the photon torpedo is not so loud. a center channel speaker solves that problem. since I got a center channel speaker I do not have to turn it up and down. it's like the center is the voices volume and the fronts are my noise volume. all the surrounds - all those extra speakers are just more noise - meaning you have to turn the volume up that much higher to hear what they're saying - meaning you have a hard time hearing what they're saying over all the noise. that's why I do not use surrounds - too much noise - but that's just me.

I see that with DTS:X they FINALLY added some control over the voices. If they had asked me I could've told them 20 years ago they needed to add that. It's nice they finally added something actually useful. I imagine with all the noise you'll get from 20 or 30 or 50 or however many speakers they think they can get you to go out and buy you'll need something so you can hear what they're saying just in case you actually want to hear that part of the soundtrack. THAT - to me - is better. Letting me hear what I want to hear is better. More noise is not. I can get noise without buying 50 speakers I live in DC I am surrounded by noise that you cannot reproduce with any number of speakers. I'm trying to get away from noise not create more of it. 


Most people would be better off to buy 2 really good speakers than a room full of cheap ones anyway.