the point i'm making is that regardless of the function being on or off, the on-screen display always says "vertical surround engine".
so the only way to know if it's on or off is by pressing the button to see what it changes to.
also, maybe i'm just not testing if with suitable content, but i've not really experience any "bubble" effect with it apparently on or off. whenever i've had it play Atmos TrueHD content i've been left "meh" and felt it was no different to normal 5.1.
the layout of my room (which isn't big), the front is 1.7m away, sub is 1.8m, rears are 1.7m
couch is essentially in the middle between the TV/soundar and rears.
my levels are still set at the default of 0db, because i really don't understand how to configure these and what "base" level to use whilst testing.
rears are set to 8 and sub is set to 9.
main volume really depends on what is being watched. Live TV can be lower (and some channels are louder than others), shield pro (used for plex, youtube, netflix) again can vary depending on the content. can be 14-15 or 22-23 (but even 22-23 isn't wall shaking).
the "auto sound" also doesn't appear to be very clever at auto detecting. i play some music thru it (via plex) and it didn't auto change to the what i would deem as the appropriate setting for music (ie simple stereo), it put it to a setting that tried to simulate surround, which definetely isn't appropriate for music! pressing the "music" button on the remote correctly set it to stereo.
@Morden your thoughts would be appreciated.