If you’ve perused What Hi-Fi?’s home cinema section, you’ll know we’re fairly big fans of Dolby Atmos – when it's done right.
To catch the uninitiated up, this is a form of surround sound that includes additional height channels to create a more three-dimensional sonic presentation. Dolby itself describes Atmos as offering a “dome of sound” experience, and that’s a pretty accurate summary of what it's like when it’s delivered properly.
What do you mean by "properly", you ask? Jump over to our best Dolby Atmos movie scenes to test your home cinema surround sound system guide and you’ll get a detailed breakdown of the best uses of the technology.
The short version is that Atmos is at its best when the director uses the 360 sphere available to them to do things such as replicate the sound of jet planes screaming overhead during a dogfight, or the terrifying footsteps of a monster creeping in the dark above its intended victim.
Trust me, once you experience it, you’ll be rushing to our best surround-sound systems and best Dolby Atmos soundbars guides to get a speaker set-up capable of replicating the experience in your home.
And while we mainly talk about Atmos for films at What Hi-Fi?, myself and the AV team can also confirm it’s great for sports, which is why we were delighted to hear Comcast will be broadcasting the Super Bowl with the tech for the first time this year.
This means that when Super Bowl LIX kicks off and the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans at 11.30pm GMT / 6.30pm ET / 3.30pm PT / 10.30am AEDT on Monday, Xfinity TV customers will be able to hear it in Atmos.
Cards on the table, I’m not a huge NFL fan. So much so that my only connection to it is the fact that our staff writer Lewis Empson (a Swifty), is excited one of his favourite pop stars will be there. But others, including our Deputy Editor, Andy Madden, are cautiously excited. Why cautiously? Because, like movies, Atmos sports can be very hit-and-miss in their Atmos implementation.
There are three big reasons for this.
The first stems from the fact that, like films, having an Atmos signal doesn’t guarantee the audio will be good.
Done badly, Atmos can even distract rather than aid the experience. This has been the case in certain sports, including F1. The sport’s fundamentally quite flat, soncially speaking, with all the action happening on a level track. The streams we've seen with Atmos also didn’t include much in the way of crowd noise from the stadium, so even though it was an Atmos signal, the experience didn’t feel much more immersive than standard surround sound.
The best experiences are when the added height channels are used to make you feel as though you’re in the stadium, or on the pitch hearing what the players on screen are saying. The best examples of this tend to come from Premier League matches on Sky Sports, TNT and Amazon Prime Video, where the added sound of the crowd cheering, or jeering, adds to the immersion and helps the match take on a character you simply don’t get with regular sound.
This brings me to our second complication – the venue. Recording live events is an art, which is why bands pay such attention to where they play and how live records are made. The acoustics of an arena are all different, and capturing sound in them needs to be tailored for the best results. This remains true with sports.
The recording and broadcast need to be optimised for the stadium and, even when it is, some venues have better acoustics than others – which is why Atmos performance varies massively, even when watching the Premier League on the same streaming platform, on a match-to-match basis.
Then, third and finally, there’s your home speaker set-up. Having reviewed more Atmos soundbars and packages than I care to remember, trust me when I say they’re not all created equal.
Dolby Atmos soundbars in particular are a minefield. I’ve reviewed plenty that have the eARC connection required to recognise an Atmos signal and up-firing drivers designed to replicate the dome of sound experience by reflecting audio off the ceiling, and many offer very little by way of a sense of height.
That’s why myself and the What Hi-Fi? team spend so much time testing Dolby Atmos soundbars to ensure they deliver Atmos properly, rather than just recognising the signal.
To get a truly great Atmos experience with the Super Bowl, all of these factors will have to be dealt with. Which is why, while I’m excited to see more sports fixtures stream with the audio, I’ll wait until I actually hear it before singing its praises.
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