Business

First Dolby Atmos Immersive Theatrical System Installed in Aircraft Cabin

DPI Labs and SkyCinema Aviation announced the world’s first installation of the Dolby Atmos immersive audio system, installed aboard a private VVIP Boeing aircraft. The Dolby Atmos theatre area of the Boeing aircraft includes 57 speakers situated around the cabin and above the viewers.

Dolby Atmos is a ground breaking immersive audio experience for theatrical and consumer sound systems.

Unlike Dolby 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound that only use 5.1 and 7.1 ‘channels’ of audio respectively, Dolby Atmos for commercial theatres allows up to 128 channels of audio to 64 independent speakers. 10 of these channels are dedicated to a traditional audio “bed” of 7.1.2 speaker channels, and the remaining 118 channels can be assigned audio ‘objects’. Content creators and audio mixers at film studios assign and move audio ‘objects’ within the soundtrack to any given X-Y-Z coordinate within the theatre space creating a truly compelling listener cinema-based experience. Consumer-based Dolby Atmos allows for immersive audio reproduction using a smaller number of speakers for non-theatrical applications.

Dolby Atmos was first introduced to cinemas in 2012. Since its debut there are almost 500 feature films available with Dolby Atmos and most streaming services provide additional Dolby Atmos content. One of the most recent theatre releases was Top Gun: Maverick which feature stunning visuals and Dolby Atmos audio.

The main theatre area on the Boeing aircraft includes DPI Labs’ 65” OLED UHD ultra-thin 4K display, and their SmartLink™ Cabin Management System, paired with a Dolby Atmos processor, a joint-engineering effort between DPI Labs and SkyCinema Aviation.

The 65” 4K OLED display is the largest and thinnest display available for aircraft today and was introduced by DPI in 2020. Other areas of the aircraft have both Dolby 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound.

“Dolby Atmos allows for a truly immersive audio experience,” stated Dolby’s Mike Archer, Vice President, Worldwide Cinema Sales & Partner Management. “Dolby is proud to have worked with SkyCinema Aviation and DPI Labs to bring this to the aviation market with our first Dolby Atmos cinema audio processor flying at 40,000 feet.”

DPI labs specialises in rapidly migrating the latest consumer electronics technologies into the aviation market which has many limitations and very stringent test criteria. Typically, the availability of the latest popular commercial and consumer electronics available to passengers within an aircraft cabin trails years behind home and commercial markets by up to 10 years.

“Working with DPI Labs, we were able to effectively deliver a professional commercial theatre product to the end customer for this aircraft with no lag due to technology migration into the physically-restrictive and test-rigorous aircraft electronics market.” said Jay McGrath, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SkyCinema Aviation. “This opens the door for all other VVIP aircraft installations both new and retrofit.”

“What we love about this system is that it’s perfect for VVIP retrofit installations,” explained Jay McGrath. “We’re able to deliver a truly professional, immersive cinematic experience to the end customer at less than 15% of the cost of a full cabin audio replacement.”