When I bought my new house back in March, one of the things I wanted to accomplish was getting a good home theater setup in the main room. But with today's open designs, there were some hurdles I needed to overcome.
For rear speakers going wireless or using ceiling speakers were seemingly the only practical way of doing it without major work. So I started my search. Quickly found that wireless speakers that were worth having were not so good in many cases. Not because of the speakers themselves, but connecting them to an AVR was a little problematic.
So I ran across a thread on AVSForums about the Samsung KW-950 ATMOS soundbar system. A little pricey as soundbars go, but the reviews seemed pretty positive in general. So I ordered it from a source I could get an easy return if it didn't work out. Here's a link to Samsung's product page : HW-K950 Soundbar with Dolby Atmos Home Theater - HW-K950/ZA | Samsung US
I got it in, installed it at first with the bar just laying on the credenza, got the latest updates for it and fired it up. Tested with a 4K disc with an ATMOS soundtrack and was very impressed with the quality of sound and the volume. So I mounted it under the TV. Performance with non-ATMOS sources was very good, but with ATMOS soundtracks it comes alive!
Now where to get more ATMOS encoded material? Turns out there is quite a few titles available on disc, a few with streaming services, all either rented or bought. Netflix even has one movie (Okja) that is encoded with ATMOS. But overall there is a paucity of source material IMO.
After digging around a bit, I found that the Xbox One (S or X), had an app called Dolby Atmos Experience that will re-jigger sound to an unconverted ATMOS sound. Picked up an Xbox One S yesterday and got that all setup with the Dolby app and ran some testing.
Sources with ATMOS encoding were just amazing. Sources with at least 5.1 unconverted to ATMOS were a mixed bag. Many were superb, most were just a little less so. The major downside is that the Xbox One is a weak sister with streaming apps IMO. The big 3 are there and a slew of others, but most cable channel specific ones seem to be missing.
For rear speakers going wireless or using ceiling speakers were seemingly the only practical way of doing it without major work. So I started my search. Quickly found that wireless speakers that were worth having were not so good in many cases. Not because of the speakers themselves, but connecting them to an AVR was a little problematic.
So I ran across a thread on AVSForums about the Samsung KW-950 ATMOS soundbar system. A little pricey as soundbars go, but the reviews seemed pretty positive in general. So I ordered it from a source I could get an easy return if it didn't work out. Here's a link to Samsung's product page : HW-K950 Soundbar with Dolby Atmos Home Theater - HW-K950/ZA | Samsung US
I got it in, installed it at first with the bar just laying on the credenza, got the latest updates for it and fired it up. Tested with a 4K disc with an ATMOS soundtrack and was very impressed with the quality of sound and the volume. So I mounted it under the TV. Performance with non-ATMOS sources was very good, but with ATMOS soundtracks it comes alive!
Now where to get more ATMOS encoded material? Turns out there is quite a few titles available on disc, a few with streaming services, all either rented or bought. Netflix even has one movie (Okja) that is encoded with ATMOS. But overall there is a paucity of source material IMO.
After digging around a bit, I found that the Xbox One (S or X), had an app called Dolby Atmos Experience that will re-jigger sound to an unconverted ATMOS sound. Picked up an Xbox One S yesterday and got that all setup with the Dolby app and ran some testing.
Sources with ATMOS encoding were just amazing. Sources with at least 5.1 unconverted to ATMOS were a mixed bag. Many were superb, most were just a little less so. The major downside is that the Xbox One is a weak sister with streaming apps IMO. The big 3 are there and a slew of others, but most cable channel specific ones seem to be missing.
