I was just reading about the pending home release for Dolby Atmos and was curious if there are any plans by Outlaw to include it in a future firmware update. I'll readily acknowledge this is not a terribly probable scenario for the 975 but I thought the question was worth asking.

If not, are y'all considering it for a future pre-pro?

Firmware updates are generally limited to fixes or improvements to features already installed on a piece of gear. Since the 975 has no current similar feature I would think it would be difficult to add it now especially since the processing power it will use may be pretty extensive. From what I have read a fully compliant bluray player will decode Atmos and the height channels can be used to provide the overhead signal to speakers.

Apparently they are. The Dolby press release from this morning lists Outlaw Audio as one of the "manufacturers who have committed to delivering future Dolby Atmos products".

http://investor.dolby.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=869623

I just read Outlaw's notice of product development and wish them success. I have misgivings about Atmos - mainly that ceiling-fired speaker performance will be highly room dependent, rather than a "drop-in" average person installation. Other planned features of Outlaw's next gen pre/pro will be great to see, though and I'll surely buy in.

There are a lot of speakers being designed to reflect from the ceiling also. Kind of an upfiring driver just for atmos effects. I will probably add 4 ceiling speakers just for the effects when I finish my HT since I already have the amp room. I also would be interested in how room correction will account for the ceiling speakers or the reflections as similar or not.

For the ceiling speakers, room correction will work as normal (many people already have surrounds placed high up on the side walls or the ceiling).

For Atmos-enabled upward-firing speakers, there will have to be a high frequency squiggle (two peaks and a notch) inserted into the target curve. This squiggle in the frequency response is part of Dolby Elevation processing and fools our human heariing into perceiving those sounds as coming from above.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=256866&d=1410403980

However, psychoacoustic notches cannot fool a microphone, so room correction systems have to come up with a way to figure out where the virtual speaker is (since it is difficult to measure a virtual image). Audyssey, for example, will be doing this using simple trigonometry, assuming typical listener and ceiling height. So if a height module is roughly at ear level 8 feet away from you, the virtual speaker will be about 11.3 feet away.

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=221778&d=1408599474

Interesting. So I'm getting up there in years and my hearing given out right around the notch in the frequency graph. Does this mean that the up-firing Atmos speakers won't work for me?

If you can localize sounds coming from above you, then the Atmos-enabled upward-firing speakers will be able to trick your hearing.

Sounds coming from above bounce off your shoulders and outer ear (pinna) to create a notch in the frequency response. This notch lets our ear-brain mechanism know the sound is above us.

This notch is built into Atmos-enabled speakers, which is what tricks us into hearing those sounds from above. The fact that they are pointed at the ceiling just re-enforces this illusion all the more.

The notch is also inserted into the target curve of the receiver's room correction, to keep it from undoing the notch (flattening out the response).

Speaking of Atmos, looks like the upcoming height modules from Atlantic Technology were greeted favorably at CEDIA: http://www.soundstageglobal.com/index.ph...akers-and-demos

Hopefully with the new Atmos equipment Outlaw is working on, they don't get duped as they did with the 978, when it got cancelled before release.