Upgrading to Atmos

[kenfren]

Need a little advice here. I have 20 y.o. Rotel equipment doing double duty 2.0/5.0 (no sub). I'm happy w performance but time for the 21st century. Planning on keeping my 5.1 amp and upgrading to Rotel 1576mkii preamp w Atmos/Dirac. What to do about actually refitting? Front speakers are Meadowlark Heron and rear are Canton. How do I power or use Atmos or unforseen probs. These days I stream video or hireprops. audio 75% of the time. Thanks for the wisdom

 

[Mike Lavigne]

hello Ken,

with that new Rotel 1576 MkII you won't need to change anything for Dolby Atmos specifically. your current speakers and amp will work. of course, finding better performing speakers, and matching all of them, will result in a higher ceiling of performance.

Dolby Atmos uses dsp for object based surround, as opposed to what you have used previously, which is discrete channel surround. i would recommend reading some on line details about that so you can understand just exactly where Dolby Atmos will be relevant. personally at 5.1 speakers not sure i would want to use more dsp (digital signal processing) for my listening. discrete channels without dsp has sonic advantages. likely comes down to the room and how much dsp is helping with it.

i use a 9.3.6 surround set-up with my Dolby Atmos. with that speaker count the dsp definitely is an advantage.

 

[Addicted to hifi]

Welcome kenfren to wbf.