In the new issue (April/May 2009) of "Sound and Vision" magazine, a new audio format is described in the "Tech Trends '09 section on page 48.

It is described as "PLllz" and adds 2 channels to the front, above (above the screen or video display) the main left and right channels.

"Peter Triberman, president of both speaker maker Atlantic Technology and electronics company Outlaw Audio, likes the idea of repurposing surround speakers for height channels. "In my opinion, the benefits of conventional 7.1 are marginal", he said. "Applying those channels to height speakers in the front has a profound effect. All of a sudden, it goes from the three front speakers to a total re-creation of the stage".

Triberman also said he liked it so much he has created an Atlantic Technology speaker specifically for height-channel use. However, Dolby says any standard surround speaker will work.

Test subjects at Dolby Labs claim this new speaker configuration was the best in the samplings they listened too. The author of the article claims that listening to the begining of Ratatouille blew him away.

So, we have a new 997 that someday will be available, and now it looks like another audio format has already been designed. Onkyo will be releasing a new receiver this spring (the first of six) that will have Dolbys new Pro Logic llz.

The president of Outlaw is aware of this and likes it. I am curious what his plans are for this new format and its implementation into Outlaw Audio products.

This is interesting, Yamaha and probably a few others have offered "ambience" channels for some time, and I believe the original SACD 5.1 configuration used the .1 channel for an extra pair of high front speakers placed above and just outside the mains insted of for LFE.
I've never heard a set-up like this , but I'd love to. ( It would provide a use for some old Polk satelite speakers that have been collecting dust).
When will outlaw ever get around to releasing the 999 ? If it doesnt beat the 997 to market I may have to buy a Krell something-or-other.

I owned a Yamaha DSP1 in 1986 that used front surround speakers mounted exactly in the same place. In fact, I still have a pair of speakers mounted in my home theater room there, although they have not been in use since I replaced that dsp 1 years ago.

It's a shame that S&V mispelled PeterT's name.

I have a few questions about this that I think need some thought before we start re-wiring our rooms. How do existing 7.1 tracks work out in a system like this? Do you need to downmix to 5.1 and then apply PLIIz processing to that 5.1 track? Or do you need a 9.1 receiver/processor that supports that 7.1 track in its entirety and uses PLIIz to expand to 9.1? If it's the former, I see a lot of existing 7.1 installations that will have little interest in adding it. If it's the latter, I don't see Outlaw being able to support it in the 997 at any point - firmware updates can't add additional output channels, even if the DSP section can handle the processing. That means we'll need to wait for a future generation. We'll also need more channels of amplification, which is sort of a pain (I've already got three power amps).

Here's an oddball tangential thought, though. The original Pro Logic processing could be achieved in the analog domain, and I think there were even some analog PLII circuits at one time. If the same is true of PLIIz, can you picture an outboard box that the left, center, and right channels go through that applies "PLIIz" processing to them and spits out left, center, right, left height, and right height channels? Heck, you could even build in a modest two-channel power amp to drive the height channels...

It sounds to me like two of the 7 channels are placed above the front speakers instead of being used as side channels. Which would only require the PLIIz and moving the speakers around.

There are a few differences:

Yamaha presence speakers are placed higher and wider than the L/R mains. PLIIz recommends the height speakers be placed directly above the L/R mains.

Yamaha uses ambience generation, adding reverb and early reflections that weren't in the original recording. PLIIz is ambience extraction, using only information from the recording itself.

Yamaha's presence speakers are typically used for their room simulation DSP modes (to give the impression of being in a larges space). Some of these modes even have the names of the actual venues that Yamaha measured in order to generate the appropriate reverb.

By comparison, PLIIz only attempts to give a sense of height (z-axis), using decorrelated and non-directional information extracted from the surround channels. Think of it as taking a ring of sound and making it more of a bubble of sound.

Depends on the manufacturer. If they release a full 9.1 receiver, then you'll be able to have height channels AND the standard 7.1 speaker layout. If they release a 7.1 receiver, then two of the surround speaker outputs will have to be used for the height channels, which means the 4 surround channels of 7.1 soundtracks will have to be downmixed to 2 surround channels. I don't know how many output traces the 997's DSP chips has. Can it play, for example, 7.1 in the main zone and 2.0 in the second zone simultaneously? If so, some clever code writing and signal re-routing may allow it to have 9.1 outputs. If not, maybe the 7.1 outputs can allow for two options: 5.1 plus surround-back or 5.1 plus height.

The good news is that PLIIz requires little to no increase in MIPs over PLIIx processing, allowing the new code to fit on current DSP chips. The bad news is that this isn't really Outlaw's decision, since the 997 (like any pre-pro) uses DSP solutions from OEM chip makers. So even if Outlaw is willing to upgrade to add PLIIz, the chip maker first has to come up with the code to do so. What if they decide that rather than flashing their current chipsets, they'd rather introduce PLIIz in their next-gen line of chips? While there was an all-analogue (and all-tube) PLII surround processor from Fosgate, PLIIx and PLIIz have only been implemented in the digital domain. So an outboard box would work, but would need to convert the analogue signal to digital in order to extract the height channels.

BTW, the height info is extracted from the surround channels (discrete or derived), not the front L/C/R channels. So you would input up to 4 surround channels (depending on soundtrack) and the box would output newer versions of those channels (with decorrelated information removed) plus the two height channels.

I'm going to have to do a little research over at Dolby's site - curious to know what the installation recommendations are for these speakers (height off floor, etc.).
Clever! Of course, all we have right now is the 990 (no first-hand experience with the 997 and no details / manual), and the 990's second zone is an independent analog pre-amp with no ties to the DSP or DAC. If the 997 follows the 990's lead in that regard, there would be no physical connection available to steer data from the DSP to that output. You're right, though - if there is any sort of connection there, the second zone could be made to offer a "PLIIz mode" that disabled the second zone and instead made it into the last two channels of a 9.1 pre-amp.
I wondered about this, too. After all, the 990 is one of a number of processors that do exactly that with the 7.1 analog input.
This may be "un-purist" of me and may be partly because I've needed to give my side surround speakers an upgrade for a few years now, but I am a little less picky about extra manipulation of my surround channel signals than I am of my fronts. An A/D/A cycle on those after the processor would be less of a concern for me, assuming it was done clealy. A four-in/six-out box could work if you gave it decent ADC and DAC chips. You might include a switch to select 5.1 or 7.1 operation (to tell it whether to expect anything on the rear surrounds), although there would still be the potential for a 7.1 setup to play back purely 5.1 tracks at times. And I'd think that if PLIIz is functionally similar to PLIIx, an older-generation DSP chip like the Cirrus 49400 could handle the processing requirements pretty comfortably (especially with extra duties removed in a scaled-back application such as this).

Right, but I'm sure you've seen gear that allows two channels to be assigned to either surround-back OR second zone duties. We don't which way the 997 will operate, since we don't have enough info on it (or its Sherwood counterpart receiver) to do anything more than take wild guesses at this time. And quite well too. A friend of mine used to re-digitize SACD/DVD-A through his 990, and the degradation was negligible to none when compared to pure analogue bypass. Modern A/D conversion is actually much more transparent than many folks think. The Audyssey outboard SEQ box is another good example. And, as you said, it becomes even less of a concern when limited only to the surround channels.

It's definitely a possibility, depending on how the hardware is built.
I found the 990's A/D/A of the 7.1 Direct input to be surprisingly transparent. When I swapped it out for an Onkyo 885 (which is a straight analog bypass), I found the two to be very closely matched.