I don't know what you think you hear or think you know about DTS:X, but that's a tall load of horse manure you're peddling!
You know, civilized discussion requires engagement, not merely lodging a dumb insult and then sidestepping the points actually made.
Bottom dweller??? LOL. There is no better upmixer for movies than Neural X.
Perhaps. I have no knowledge about that, as movie sound IMO isn’t that important. In any event, it’s out of the scope of what I wrote: “stereo upmixer.” Generally, movies have not been in stereo for some time. If what I’ve heard translates to movies, that means it tries to put sound all over the place, so you always know you have all those speakers. I guess some people prefer that over the system disappearing?
Period. The more speakers you can utilize in a given room, the more precise the imaging will be for everyone in the room.
Maybe. We’re also talking about small rooms, and of course practicality issues.
Besides, if you’re just talking about movies, the “imaging” is pretty much what you see on the screen. As long as the sound is close, it’s generally fine. Even Atmos bouncers work pretty well in concert with visual cues.
Five people? You must not know very many people who have immersive audio systems.
That is correct. I know personally exactly one household with an immersive system: ours. Admittedly suburbanites may know more such people. But immersive is a small niche in the world, unfortunately small in my view.
Emotiva took immense amounts of time to deliver features or not ever get around to them and just release replacement products instead and they're buggy as all hell. How the fu#@ is that an "unserious" comparison?!?!?
HTP-1 was never as a tenth as bad as Emo to start, never needed a separate computer box dongle for Dirac, and the early issues that did exist were remediated.
The big and potentially disqualifying HTP-1 glitch (the doom loop issue) was resolved largely by one very smart and generous user (+testers) and subsequently endorsed by the company years ago now. IMO, in terms of issues in the non-stratospheric priced AVR/P category, Emo has been in a deep pit by themselves, Arcam/JBL Synthesis have been bad and there are still some things very stupid about them (Samsung can’t figure out OTA updates?) but are by now maybe 80% of the way there. Onkyo is still teething (serious DLBC issues). Monoprice has been pretty good. Denon/Marantz/Yamaha have been good. None have been great. OTOH, of those only HTP-1 allows DLBC
and loudness compensation
and native PEQ in the proper spot (upstream) in the processing chain. So the best feature set by far and generally reliable operation.
But you can add 4 sub with a simple Mini-DSP unit and get potentially better results than a stock DIRAC system for bass using MSO (multiple sub optimizer). It's a mere $260. But go waste thousands to just do 7.1.4 plus some extra subs...
I’ve only been using miniDSP products since the OG 2x4 model with 0.9V output. For most (non-retired) people with the means and real estate to play with this stuff, capital is not the main limiting factor. Time is. So a solution like DLBC that gets very good to great results with one set of measurements and a short about of computer fiddling time is a spectacular value add. True, some people would rather fiddle than listen to music, and nothing wrong with having that as a hobby.
As for MSO, look up Dr. Geddes’s take on it on YouTube.
Franky, it's pretty damn clear to me you know exactly JACK SHI$ about immersive audio.
Well…my first exposure to immersive was over a decade ago. I’m pretty sure I wrote some of the first reviews of immersive hardware that took it seriously, starting about a decade ago. See, e.g.
https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews...rantz-av7702-surround-sound-processor-review/.
At any rate, all of this banter is far afield of ART. Unfortunately none of the boxes discussed above offer it (hopefully yet). I have had a chance ito play with ART in 2.2 channel and hope to expand that to immersive someday hopefully soon.