CinemaCon opened this week in Las Vegas and brought with it the release of two new Surround Sound creation packages for film mixing. CINEAUDIO with AstoundSurround is a software solution allowing theaters to play back 11.1 or more on existing 5.1 systems with no additional hardware. Dolby’s new ATMOS on the other hand is a scalable system that is object rather than channel based. It involves sophisticated panning executed during the mix that is encoded, then decoded on site. The video below explains it all.

Also in the game, but not exhibiting at CinemaCon is SRS Labs’ who just released MDA (Multi Dimensional Audio). MDA promises to represent sound sources as objects in space just as they are in the real world, without regard to the number of channels or speaker locations.

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CINEAUDIO With AstoundSurround

“In the theater, the CINEAUDIO cinema processor unit integrated with AstoundSurround® for Cinema software takes the multi-channel audio printmaster with discrete channel inputs (e.g. 7.1, 11.1 or more) in real-time and renders the same multi- channel audio experience in any existing 5.1 multi-channel audio equipped room, maintaining all panning information (including elevated audio channel information).” READ MORE

Dolby ATMOS

For the first time, Dolby Atmos introduces a hybrid approach to mixing and directs sound as dynamic objects that envelop the listener, in combination with channels for playback. Dolby Atmos enables adaptive rendering to ensure that the playback experience is as close as possible to the creator’s original vision in any given environment, irrespective of the specific speaker configuration in the playback environment.