I’m assuming that what he’s talking about is disconnecting 4 of the 5 speakers from the receiver and then using the one remaining to capture 5 or 7 speakers in the PRIR. That would of course involve either the stationary speaker you talked about and moving your head/body at different angles to capture 7 speakers or staying stationary and moving the speaker around you like you mentioned. I don’t have any experience with either, so I’m sure it will take some time to figure out how to capture anything that sounds convincing.
Everyone's hearing is different, but honestly, as I said in a previous post, getting the center and two fronts are the most important. If you get those right, the surrounds and rears can end up having a funky reading on the diagnostic readout (after each sweep measurement set, it gives you a screen that shows your signal to noise ratio and then when you hit "OK" it goes to a new screen that shows you how well your measurement was. The manual says anything from 0 - 3 is considered good (0 being the best), and that anything above that might be a mic or placement problem. I've found though that with the center at least, if I'm not getting
at least a "1", it sounds way off when in a different room than where I can visibly see the speakers, so I always tried to get at least one capture with the center at "0" and the fronts could go up to 2 and sound fine. The surrounds and rears can be all over the map, yet still sound as you would expect them to sound, so they are much less of an issue.
In regards to Atmos though, due to it being "object based" and not really so much "channel based", I wonder if speaker placement and precise measurements would be even more important than they already are with a 5.1/7.1 setup. If that's true, then I honestly wouldn't expect the Atmos PRIR that comes with the A16 to sound remotely good. Out of the like 80+ PRIRs that were uploaded by people here, I only found three that had a center speaker that sounded "good" to me, and only one of those that actually had rears that sounded like rears. The speakers (or I guess the room) themselves though did not sound that great, and had a really anemic, or "tinny" sound to me, even though they were JVC or MSM/AIX studio setups.
Also, I found that I got the best results when I measured the fronts and the center at the same time for whatever reason. It seemed to work out better than trying to measure the center separately (although I did end up with a good, but bugged one when I measured the center alone). Since you said that you're finishing up your second tech degree, you are likely overthinking the most basic ways to do this. I'm
into tech, but I wouldn't say I'm all that proficient as far as getting down to the minutiae and ultimate tweaking (I don't care at this stage), and all I did was read the manual once, and the most relevant parts two or three times, and I also wrote down the page number of the pdf for the most relevant parts for measuring since the manual was kind of long and at times repeated itself in other paragraphs.
This makes sense and I feel like could be the easiest route to a good capture. What would you do when it came time to capturing the center channel?
Depending on the receiver of course, but personally, the easiest way to capture a 5.1 setup is to just measure all of them at the same time if the receiver has at least 6 analog inputs. Then for the last two for a 7.1, you just unplug the surround cables from the Realiser and plug them in to the rears. If (and this is a big if) my current, old (1998) receiver is the culprit behind the problems I was having with some of the measurements I tried, where I would repeatedly take a measurement of the same channel until getting a good diagnostic, the easiest way to get a good copy is to measure the fronts and center (or just do the fronts, and then the center) over and over again until it shows you got a good measurement, then just do the rest of the speakers in one or two takes.
Also, some seem to like the direct bass feature of the A8, and I'm kind of "eh, whatever" with it. While it does sound pretty good, the sub I was using was actually pretty decent as well, and what I don't like about the direct bass feature is that when you set up the A8 to use it, it makes it a global feature. That means that when you want to switch between the PRIRs (you can have 4 different ones on the A8 at any time to switch back and forth from), you are not able to actually hear how they sound with the captured sub. They all end up using the direct bass feature. This also has implications for dual user mode. I think it might be more for music listening than movies, and its importance will vary by the room and sub used (or the lack of a sub).
And how does one capture Atmos height speakers in this scenario? I am sure there is something I am not getting, because I'm hearing discussions of 5.1 and 7.1 speaker measurements and sweeps, and hardly any mention of getting any sweeps from overhead (Atmos/DTS-X) speaker positions. So what gives? Can one also use the Fronts (LCR) speaker measurements for the simulation of speakers that are supposed to be positioned overhead? Disclaimer: Forgive the question, if it sounds too ignorant. I've never seen the A-16 at work before, and the write-ups I have read on the web do not normally explain many such intricate operational details.
Unless Atmos height speakers are intrinsically controlled very differently through a receiver, it should work out the same. Just a lot more plugging and unplugging. The A8 allows you to take measurements of individual speakers until you are ready to finalize and make your PRIR.
