Definitive Technology's Studio 3D Mini Sound Bar System Supports Atmos, DTS:X, and AirPlay 2

[whokilledkaji]

These are tempting maybe... I have a Sonos Beam setup now, but it’s not good for people who love Blu-ray. No DTS support, which is really troublesome for me. That means I must use a Xbox for Bluray and 4K Bluray playback because it can transcode to Dolby Digital on the fly. The beam also can’t even handle my OTA TV audio. (I live in Japan and I think it’s ACS?)

I really like Def-Tech and had some bookshelf speakers in my old setup. They blew away every other speaker in the setup. They were wonderful.

 

[vipergts2207]

Yes you can. Humans have a 2.0 hearing system, and can however feel sounds coming from multiple directions. That’s because sound is affected by the shape of our ears with in a unique patern of reflexion for each direction, giving our brain the ability to identify an audio source in 360. So it’s not hardware related (number of ears) but software related (brain).
An audio source, with the appropriate processing, can trick our brain by simulating the reflection on our ears. That’s how atmos without directional speaker intend to work!

You could in theory do so, however to do so effectively, you would need to know the shape of the room, the position of the listener, and the position of the speakers in that space. Otherwise the speaker's software wouldn't know how to direct and attenuate the audio to imitate surround sound effectively. Additionally, the virtualization would only work for the one person sitting at the main listening position. Once you've attenuated the audio for the person at the main listening position, you can't do so for others sitting in different places.

 

[Pipper99]

I do love my Def Tech Mythos STS system. I won’t be moving to a soundbar.

 

[tizeye]

I do love my Def Tech Mythos STS system. I won’t be moving to a soundbar.

Feel the same way on primary HT setup in setup in living room. Soundbar is major upgrade for master bedroom vs TV speakers where space is limited anyway. It can be a great listening experience...particularly when paired with an adjustable bed.

 

[spatlese44]

This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I would put in a full home theater system but have space considerations. My question would be, how does the Airplay 2 work? If I play music does the TV turn on? I find that annoying. Also, can you use HEOS for surround speakers? What quality is the video pass through?

 

[gplusplus]

The home theater community also advocate use of oxygen-free directional cable, as well as aligning all the keyholes in your house. What do they know!

Fortunately, there are enough reviews of directional sound on the internet to know that you are reporting nonsense.

There are nut jobs in every field of interest. For example, there are Apple fans who believe Macs cannot get viruses. Everyone with a brain dismisses these people. So no, the community does not advocate stupid cable myths.

Plenty of paid positive reviews, or non-paid negative reviews do exist. Correct. Or reviews made by people who have literally no idea what they’re talking about.

There's a brief introduction here. Things get a lot more complicated when you have high end soundbar like this one with loads of internal speakers. The wizardry is in signal processing that takes account of your room's characteristics.

Is there some kind of effect? Yes. Does it emulate an actual Atmos speaker layout? Not even close. The rest is just marketing BS to try and make a sale at a particular price bracket. There’s a reason why you don’t see soundbars in actual home theater setups: they simply can’t get the job done. In a battle between marketing and physics, physics will always win.

Yes you can. Humans have a 2.0 hearing system, and can however feel sounds coming from multiple directions. That’s because sound is affected by the shape of our ears with in a unique patern of reflexion for each direction, giving our brain the ability to identify an audio source in 360. So it’s not hardware related (number of ears) but software related (brain).
An audio source, with the appropriate processing, can trick our brain by simulating the reflection on our ears. That’s how atmos without directional speaker intend to work!

All of this sounds nice in theory. Sure, that’s how they’re intended to work, but they fail to achieve your theory.

In reality, the modeling and processing necessary to emulate an entire volume (that is, 3D space) of sound in real-time is insurmountable. Not only would it require intense processing power on the order of a CAD workstation (or more), but we don’t even have methods of accurately modeling the sound. So even if we did somehow have hardware capable of crunching the audio numbers fast enough, we don’t even know how to do it.

The rest of the reality is that even if you do somehow figure out a good virtualization model, it will only work for one particular listening position, in one particular room, with massive holes in the frequency response, plus a fully acoustically treated room.

In theory, theory is just like practice. In practice, it’s not.

You’re not going to get a real Atmos experience out of a sound bar. Period. Until you have point-source audio coming from the ceiling, it’s simply not happening. But don’t take my word for it, read up on AVS Forums, Audioholics, Audio Science Review, and basically anywhere that isn’t specifically trying to sell you something.

 

[LV426]

But don’t take my word for it, read up on AVS Forums, Audioholics, Audio Science Review, and basically anywhere that isn’t specifically trying to sell you something.

This website isn‘t trying to sell anything.

 

[vipergts2207]

This website isn‘t trying to sell anything.

You seemingly missed one critical piece of info in that review. The unit has upward firing drivers, the necessary component for getting actual Atmos audio. Additionally, notice how fussy placement is one of the drawbacks cited and that’s with those drivers.

 

[gplusplus]

This website isn‘t trying to sell anything.

Uhh yes they are. That “review,” which is just a bunch of words paraphrasing all the information found on the company’s website, is littered with affiliate links and advertisements. What-Hifi is also a know shill site. See this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/8xhc4p

You seemingly missed one critical piece of info in that review. The unit has upward firing drivers, the necessary component for getting actual Atmos audio.

Not to be pedantic, but upward firing drivers don’t get you “actual” Atmos sound. They get you something that sounds bigger than something that doesn’t have upward firing drivers, but it still just sounds like a sound bar. The sound radiates; it doesn’t beam in magical straight lines.

To get “actual” Atmos, you need speakers in the positions for which you want the sound to come from. Marketing can’t defeat physics.

 

[vipergts2207]

Not to be pedantic, but upward firing drivers don’t get you “actual” Atmos sound. They get you something that sounds bigger than something that doesn’t have upward firing drivers, but it still just sounds like a sound bar. The sound radiates; it doesn’t beam in magical straight lines.

To get “actual” Atmos, you need speakers in the positions for which you want the sound to come from. Marketing can’t defeat physics.

No doubt that in-ceiling speakers are the single best option, but that doesn’t mean that an upward firing driver implementation is not Atmos. There aren’t exactly complicated physics involved in reflecting audio off of a flat surface a single time back down to listeners. Particularly when paired with a receiver with room correction that allows for the receiver to compensate for attenuation of the audio from reflecting off of the ceiling. Will it sound as good as in-ceiling, no but it still works as intended.

 

[armandxp]

I own a lot of definitive speakers. Some of them I've had for over 20 years! They are amazing and have great sound quality. I wouldn't expect this to be 7.1 surround or anything, but I guarantee you they sound better than most sound bars on the market today.

 

[LarryMcJ]

Sonos Beam rocks!

Actually, as a standalone sounder, it sucks. But we all have our opinions.

 

[gplusplus]

No doubt that in-ceiling speakers are the single best option, but that doesn’t mean that an upward firing driver implementation is not Atmos. There aren’t exactly complicated physics involved in reflecting audio off of a flat surface a single time back down to listeners. Particularly when paired with a receiver with room correction that allows for the receiver to compensate for attenuation of the audio from reflecting off of the ceiling. Will it sound as good as in-ceiling, no but it still works as intended.

I don’t think you realize that “works as intended” is not how you think it’s working in this case.

Sound does not travel in straight lines. It radiates in all directions and bounces everywhere. The upward firing drivers don’t just bounce straight toward the ceiling at a perfect angle and back down to the listening position at a perfect angle. In reality, it’s bouncing literally everywhere. Take any point of surface area in the entire room and that’s bouncing sound. Every time it bounces, it smears the sound because it adds further micro-delays to the bounced sound waves.

The part that “works as intended” with these sound bars is *not* actual Atmos sound. Atmos is intended to make sound positional and vectorized in 3D space. Soundbars cannot do this. Soundbars can, at best, just make the sound seem bigger. That’s it. It’s not real Atmos and it sounds like a tin can because of smearing and spectral decay. Bless your heart if you can’t tell the difference.

And seriously, who’s using a receiver with a sound bar? That’s absurd. But let’s just pretend someone was using a receiver, with or without a sound bar: no amount of room correction can make a speaker shoot audio in straight lines. Speakers radiate sound in all directions, period. If a receiver is truly involved, a pair of good speakers (stereo) without any “Atmos Enabled” bouncy speakers will sound better in every way compared to any soundbar, with or without Atmos.

That’s how far away soundbars are in terms of sound quality. Saying one soundbar is better than the other is like arguing a tie between last place in a race. Who cares? They’re clearly losers compared to quality, individual speakers.

 

[LV426]

I don’t think you realize that “works as intended” is not how you think it’s working in this case.

Sound does not travel in straight lines. It radiates in all directions and bounces everywhere. The upward firing drivers don’t just bounce straight toward the ceiling at a perfect angle and back down to the listening position at a perfect angle. In reality, it’s bouncing literally everywhere. Take any point of surface area in the entire room and that’s bouncing sound. Every time it bounces, it smears the sound because it adds further micro-delays to the bounced sound waves.

The part that “works as intended” with these sound bars is *not* actual Atmos sound. Atmos is intended to make sound positional and vectorized in 3D space. Soundbars cannot do this. Soundbars can, at best, just make the sound seem bigger. That’s it. It’s not real Atmos and it sounds like a tin can because of smearing and spectral decay. Bless your heart if you can’t tell the difference.

And seriously, who’s using a receiver with a sound bar? That’s absurd. But let’s just pretend someone was using a receiver, with or without a sound bar: no amount of room correction can make a speaker shoot audio in straight lines. Speakers radiate sound in all directions, period. If a receiver is truly involved, a pair of good speakers (stereo) without any “Atmos Enabled” bouncy speakers will sound better in every way compared to any soundbar, with or without Atmos.

That’s how far away soundbars are in terms of sound quality. Saying one soundbar is better than the other is like arguing a tie between last place in a race. Who cares? They’re clearly losers compared to quality, individual speakers.

Sound radiates in all directions and bounces everywhere from *any* kind of speaker in a room. An Atmos soundbar will modify the source Atmos-encoded signal to take account of (and use) room reflections to virtualise the sound field. Likewise, a setup with a number of discrete speakers will do its best to simulate the Atmos sound objects distributed across space by using the discrete speakers to best effect. Incidentally, a good soundbar will of itself feature a number of discrete speakers.

A 3D virtual sound field created by a soundbar may not be as convincing as a 6, 10 or 100-speaker cinema setup. But it is an engineering compromise to put decent sound in a single package. Like your home 5.1 setup is a compromise attempting to get near to the ideal of cinema Atmos (with hundreds of point sources).

Your living room or home cinema may be roomy enough to accommodate many discrete speakers, but this is not the case for large numbers of consumers.

And if you don't believe that sound can be processed to control the sound intensity at arbitrary points in space, check out this video, which features speakers in a plane, not 3D placement.

 

[vipergts2207]

I don’t think you realize that “works as intended” is not how you think it’s working in this case.

Sound does not travel in straight lines. It radiates in all directions and bounces everywhere. The upward firing drivers don’t just bounce straight toward the ceiling at a perfect angle and back down to the listening position at a perfect angle. In reality, it’s bouncing literally everywhere. Take any point of surface area in the entire room and that’s bouncing sound. Every time it bounces, it smears the sound because it adds further micro-delays to the bounced sound waves.

The part that “works as intended” with these sound bars is *not* actual Atmos sound. Atmos is intended to make sound positional and vectorized in 3D space. Soundbars cannot do this. Soundbars can, at best, just make the sound seem bigger. That’s it. It’s not real Atmos and it sounds like a tin can because of smearing and spectral decay. Bless your heart if you can’t tell the difference.

And seriously, who’s using a receiver with a sound bar? That’s absurd. But let’s just pretend someone was using a receiver, with or without a sound bar: no amount of room correction can make a speaker shoot audio in straight lines. Speakers radiate sound in all directions, period. If a receiver is truly involved, a pair of good speakers (stereo) without any “Atmos Enabled” bouncy speakers will sound better in every way compared to any soundbar, with or without Atmos.

That’s how far away soundbars are in terms of sound quality. Saying one soundbar is better than the other is like arguing a tie between last place in a race. Who cares? They’re clearly losers compared to quality, individual speakers.

When did I limit my discussion to sound bars? I'm just talking about Atmos in general, so there's no need for unnecessary condescension. My own personal setup is a 5.2.2 Klipsch Reference Premiere setup. I realize that sound doesn't travel in a straight line like a laser beam, but rather radiates in all directions. However, it doesn't do so with the same intensity in all directions. Speakers and the sound coming from them have axial properties, (and horn-loaded speakers are even more directional). That's the reason you face your speakers toward the listening area rather than just will-nilly. With Atmos speakers you want that axis to face the ceiling so that the majority of the sound wave reflects off the ceiling first, rather than off a wall or traveling directly to your ear. Every surface the sound bounces off of after the first is further attenuated, resulting in reflections with lower and lower volume.

You also seem to ignore that the sound from all your other speakers suffer from the same issue, sound reflections off undesirable surfaces. The only difference between a main and an Atmos speaker is that the first reflected sound is the one you're intended to hear with the latter, rather than the initial sound from the speaker. The same principal of undesired reflections muddying audio effects all of your speakers in a setup, not just Atmos speakers. Reflection two and after for Atmos speakers and reflection one and after for all other speakers are undesirable. Do the reflections of your mains or surrounds negate your ability to discern where the audio is appearing to come from? Critically, you seem to forget about the existence of acoustic treatments, which will diminish the effect of secondary reflections from all speakers, Atmos included.

The last point is one of the places where separates really shine (even with up-firing speakers), versus a sound bar. With a sound bar, wall reflections are a necessary evil to get some kind of effect. With separates, you can hang acoustic treatments to eliminate undesired reflections, increasing the effects of three dimensional audio.

 

[Piere]

You could in theory do so, however to do so effectively, you would need to know the shape of the room, the position of the listener, and the position of the speakers in that space. Otherwise the speaker's software wouldn't know how to direct and attenuate the audio to imitate surround sound effectively. Additionally, the virtualization would only work for the one person sitting at the main listening position. Once you've attenuated the audio for the person at the main listening position, you can't do so for others sitting in different places.

You have two ways: “physical“ atmos, were you put many speakers around the room or try to mimik them using wall and ceiling reflexion.
This solution is highly dependant on the room form factor
The other way, which if was briefly describing, is based on binaural audio and is not dependant on the room form factor, but you are right it is dependant on where the user is placed vs the speaker.
Atmos soundbars today are using either one or a combination of theses 2 solutions.

 

[Piere]

There are nut jobs in every field of interest. For example, there are Apple fans who believe Macs cannot get viruses. Everyone with a brain dismisses these people. So no, the community does not advocate stupid cable myths.

Plenty of paid positive reviews, or non-paid negative reviews do exist. Correct. Or reviews made by people who have literally no idea what they’re talking about.

Is there some kind of effect? Yes. Does it emulate an actual Atmos speaker layout? Not even close. The rest is just marketing BS to try and make a sale at a particular price bracket. There’s a reason why you don’t see soundbars in actual home theater setups: they simply can’t get the job done. In a battle between marketing and physics, physics will always win.

All of this sounds nice in theory. Sure, that’s how they’re intended to work, but they fail to achieve your theory.

In reality, the modeling and processing necessary to emulate an entire volume (that is, 3D space) of sound in real-time is insurmountable. Not only would it require intense processing power on the order of a CAD workstation (or more), but we don’t even have methods of accurately modeling the sound. So even if we did somehow have hardware capable of crunching the audio numbers fast enough, we don’t even know how to do it.

The rest of the reality is that even if you do somehow figure out a good virtualization model, it will only work for one particular listening position, in one particular room, with massive holes in the frequency response, plus a fully acoustically treated room.

In theory, theory is just like practice. In practice, it’s not.

You’re not going to get a real Atmos experience out of a sound bar. Period. Until you have point-source audio coming from the ceiling, it’s simply not happening. But don’t take my word for it, read up on AVS Forums, Audioholics, Audio Science Review, and basically anywhere that isn’t specifically trying to sell you something.

It is not a theory. Binaural audio is a reality. You don’t need to have a sound coming from the ceiling to feel it’s coming from the ceiling. For the simple reason we don’t need a third ear on the top of our head to feel sounds upper us.
You can spend all lot of time saying it doesn’t work, but the reality is here: products on the market using binaural audio exists and perform well. Maybe not up to your standards, but they do work.
And no, binaural audio is not dependant on the room form factor, it doesn’t depend on any wall reflection.

 

[gplusplus]

It is not a theory. Binaural audio is a reality. You don’t need to have a sound coming from the ceiling to feel it’s coming from the ceiling. For the simple reason we don’t need a third ear on the top of our head to feel sounds upper us.
You can spend all lot of time saying it doesn’t work, but the reality is here: products on the market using binaural audio exists and perform well. Maybe not up to your standards, but they do work.
And no, binaural audio is not dependant on the room form factor, it doesn’t depend on any wall reflection.

It depends on the room if it isn’t headphones. If it’s headphones, then it can’t position audio relative to the screen, unless it’s something along the lines of what Apple is doing with accelerometers in the AirPod Pros. But then it isn’t using surround sound formats, so the data isn’t there. Headphones also can’t give the same tactile response as speakers, which is a massive part of the experience.

You’re basically saying that a Geo Metro and Rolls Royce are the same because they both get you from point A to point B, but maybe not to my standards. Nobody in their right mind, especially those who have actually driven both of these cars, would ever even entertain such a false equivalence.

The same goes for audio.