Xbox One Gets Dolby Upmixing Features, Might Come To Windows 10

Dolby Atmos gives the sound a three-dimensional effect turning a movie into immersive surround experience for end user. The technology is part of various audio and home theatre systems and now Xbox One the popular gaming console by Microsoft will get the same but with a different touch.

To play a Dolby Atmos sound the media file has to feature the technology but now through upmixing feature by default all audios will turn into surround sound 3D audio with the help of Dolby’s own algorithm. This means movies and games will not have to separately work on making their audio compatible with Dolby Atmos, Dolby’s own algorithm will upmix a standard sound into high quality 3D audio.

Wccftech approached Steven Wilssens (Principal Program Manager Lead at Microsoft for Audio) on when Windows 10 can have the feature, he shared the following statement with the press:

Currently, we will not be doing the same for PC. The Windows 10 PC implementation only sends Dolby Atmos MAT encoded streams to the receiver when there is Spatial Sound to be rendered. That would be when someone is watching a Dolby Atmos movie, playing a spatial sound enabled game, or an app using the spatial sound APIs directly. When we are not sending Dolby MAT, your receiver will upmixing the audio to height channels with its own algorithm. The downside is that the behaviour is not consistent between Xbox One and PC, the upside is/was that both devices had behaviour that is optimized for the different devices and their usage. However, we might add a switch on PC that allows for the same behaviour with PC as on Xbox in a future Windows 10 and/or Dolby Access update.

Xbox One users can now toggle between activating and deactivating the upmixing through simple controls, for Windows 10 the feature will not be soon activated. Wilssens signposted the feature might add a switch on PC, but he did not confirm when however giving a choice to users to enjoy between turning on Dolby Atmos or listening an original soundtrack is a worthwhile option.

Source: Wccftech