Dolby Atmos: a Bleak Shadow?

[mkt]

"The lossy version of Atmos is to me a bleak shadow of the real, uncompressed source." Not that bleak to me.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dolby-atmos-bleak-shadow

 

[atlantasteve]

One person’s opinion (although a respected voice). I say better than nothing. If I want the uncompressed experience, I can always slip in a disc on my Oppo.

 

[Electric Moo]

Well if the issue is cost to mfr blurays, they don't need to do blurays. They could sell lossless downloads. I'd rather that, honestly.

 

[fredblue]

really?

oh, such exquisite drama queenery!

we do still have some physical product after all, including but not only for some higher profile releases.

i see lossy streaming Atmos as far from a backward step but a wonderful addition to physical releases of Multichannel Music, which still trickle out on disc just as they always used to come out in dribs and drabs, before Atmos for Music became a thing, there would be the occasional new Surround Music release on SACD, DVD/Blu-ray, etc.

ok, The Beatles have decided to pull the plug on Atmos Blu-ray's for now and that is unfortunate but there's a lot more music in this world beyond The Beatles, so I'm not only thankful for but happy at what we are getting.

to me, Immersive Music streaming is an utterly amazing development in our hobby

the sheer amount of new Surround music released on a nigh-on daily basis, on Apple, Tidal, etc., is quite something, largely thanks to streaming

anyone who is so anti the development can pretty much get stuffed as far as i'm concerned because like it or not this is where we're at right now and it's not as if there's no hope, there's always the possibility the quality of streaming Atmos may well improve in future

above all it's a hell of a lot better than the virtually zilch new Surround Music we were getting circa 2009, when i first signed up to QQ in the "bad old days" when Quad was long dead, DTS CD had been and gone, DualDisc had flopped and SACD and DVD-A were pretty much on life support. it was either you hunt down and fork out a serious wodge for old out of print discs or it's tough titty you make do with your Stereo stuff. we've come a long way thanks to Atmos and streaming

 

[PK]

you hunt down and fork out a serious wodge for old out of print discs or it's tough titty

Been there, done that

 

[barfle]

Well, there’s a reason the magazine is called STEREOphile.

While I’ve been accused of being stuck in the 60s myself, much of that magazine is dedicated to 2-channel reproduction, so quad and anything beyond that has typically been given the poo-pooh.

Of course, this article is primarily bemoaning the compression necessary to fit 12 channels in a 2 channel bag, and he may well have a point. Atmos is still in my future, so I’m not streaming it, (or any other music as a rule), so it’s way down on my listening source list, and I don’t have a comparison to make.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

I only have two and a half problems with Atmos:
1. The amount of poor or fake mixes.
2. The amount of hurdles you have to jump through for making or listening to Atmos music.
2½. How low the bitrate is for streaming Atmos. Ideally, lossless is preferred. Realistically, I think I could live with a lossy codec. But at 768kbps? Ew.

 

[mkt]

I don't love the format but the amazing increase in surround music availability is great. (I don't like the SACD format but it's where a lot of surround is).
EDIT When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton simply replied, “Because that's where the money is.”

 

[sjcorne]

The amount of poor or fake mixes.

This isn't an issue unique to Atmos. Perhaps you've forgotten about the dozens of poorly-executed 5.1 mixes from the SACD/DVD-A days of the early-2000s?

 

[jimfisheye]

"The lossy version of Atmos is to me a bleak shadow of the real, uncompressed source." Not that bleak to me.
https://www.stereophile.com/content/dolby-atmos-bleak-shadow

Agreed! Fidelity before more channels or it devolves into a gimmick. Surround streaming bluntly doesn't exist yet for the audiophile.

I'd add that the use of the encoding/decoding as 'copy protection gone wild' to spoof customers into buying new hardware is distasteful as well. And of course this is leading some people to buy compromised gear because they had to start over instead of just add on or modify something and ran into budget issues. And we're right back to gimmick territory.

A little bleak with that.

But then we have people starting to make some of the most ambitious audacious mixes I've ever heard in my life with the 12 channel format! This is greatness. Buyer beware and all. Avoid the scams. 7.1.4 is worth your time and effort!

 

[jamoke]

Well, I guess the lossy compressed streamed Atmos versions are better than a stick in the eye, but to me they are a tease in that I know how much better it really sounds.
I much prefer a 24 bit HiRes stereo version played thru a SurroundMaster than a lossy MP4 any day of the week.

Then again, I won't listen to music over satellite radio either. The wife listens to compressed music all the time and it makes me cringe.
To SELL you music in a compressed shell is criminal. Not for my money. YMMV

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

This isn't an issue unique to Atmos. Perhaps you've forgotten about the dozens of poorly-executed 5.1 mixes from the SACD/DVD-A days of the early-2000s?

I dunno...the impression I'm getting with Atmos is that the sheer volume of those mixes seem to be greater. I can't actually name more than 5 or 10 fake/bad mixes on SACD/DVD-A.

 

[jimfisheye]

There were a few years in the 1960s where there were a bucket full of "re-channeled stereo" fakes to wade through, right?

I suppose this is a little different this time because the first function of Atmos is tying media to hardware purchases with the decoder. Our 12 (sometimes 16) channel surround mixes are the niche secondary function. There will be a mountain of fakes aimed at the stereo earbud listeners! Just hold your nose (ears?) and look the other way.

 

[AYanguas]

I wish and hope things will evolve for the better with Dolby Atmos releases and mixers/producers behaviour.

Lindberg, from 2L label, says:

"Our 7.1.4 channel-based master"—which as noted is 24/352.8—"is then mapped to eight bed channels, and the four height channels are defined as static objects."

Sure they are focusing on high sound quality. But the Dolby Atmos advanced way of mixing (either gimmicky or not) is by using Objets all around the room, allowing the few who have more than 7.1.4 speakers to enjoy more. It's not clear to me if they mix using Objects "around the room" and then they render the final master to "fixed" 7.1.4 channels for distribution or they initially mix with that limitation.

But then we have people starting to make some of the most ambitious audacious mixes I've ever heard in my life with the 12 channel format! This is greatness. Buyer beware and all. Avoid the scams. 7.1.4 is worth your time and effort!

The most ambitious audacious mixes I've ever heard in my life, using Dolby Atmos, do not use 12 chanel format. They use Atmos Objects all around the room, and I can assure that I additionaly enjoy the "expanded" stage when the Wides from 9.1.4 are used.

Fortunately, I find many Atmos mixes in streaming that engage the Wides, so I understand that more and more mixers know what they are doing, as they progress in the learning curve.

I know that we are a very very small niche, but if Audiophiles ask for the better consumer sound quality possible, then I ask for the better Atmos mixing style possible.

 

[jimfisheye]

Um... You realize that those objects are intermediary, right?
In a perfect scenario, Dolby atmos decoder renders the objects and the result mix matches exactly 1:1 to the same speaker array and matches exactly what the mix engineer was hearing. The downmix scenarios work as well as they do and this system IS more elegant than in the past.

You're not hearing "objects". You're not hearing panning around the room any differently. And if you are... then something has gone wrong! And that's precisely the concern when we start delivering raw materials and trust the consumer facing device to finish rendering them!

So far in my experiments, Dolby Atmos is rendering multichannel mixes 1:1 precisely as expected. I genuinely don't care how they downmix - that's already a compromise. But that works pretty well too! I also genuinely don't care about any mix made while listening on headphones that is intended to expand to surround. I do consider that phony! I'm truly only interested in mixes made in surround from the ground up. The niche end of this.

I suppose we could cut right to the chase here:
The listener with the 9.1.6 array lamenting their silent wide channels when playing 7.1.4 mixes, right?
The x,y coordinates for the wide channels in the Dolby panner are
-100, 68
100, 68
Hard L/R and 68 on the Y axis hits the wides (channels 9/10 of 16) precisely.

If you want to deliver some of that content as objects in the encoded Atmos copy of the mix and shut these 9.1.6 guys up!

 

[AYanguas]

Um... You realize that those objects are intermediary, right?

I realize that the Atmos objects are the main functionality of Dolby Atmos to craft mixes that are not dependent on the number of speakers/channels available in a system.

In a perfect scenario, Dolby atmos decoder renders the objects and the result mix matches exactly 1:1 to the same speaker array and matches exactly what the mix engineer was hearing.

But you know the scenario is never perfect. We, at home, do not listen the same way what the mix engineer was hearing. Not only because of the different number of speakers, but also because of the different speaker’s quality, different speakers locations, different room sound conditioning, and different system calibration.

The downmix scenarios work as well as they do and this system IS more elegant than in the past.

Exactly. The same mix can be played in different systems, with different speakers’ number and even no height speakers.

You're not hearing "objects".

I DO hear the objects, after the mix is decoded in my AVR Atmos processor with the Objects Locations and Sizes, and rendering with the precision that my number of speakers can give me.

You're not hearing panning around the room any differently.

The panning can be heard differently if there are more or less speakers and depending on how quick or slow the panning moves. I think the moving image between two speakers can be different than an additional speaker located in between. A panning between the two rears of a 5.1 can be different than the same panning in 7.1 that uses more speakers in a king of semicircle. And always the same mix.

And if you are... then something has gone wrong! And that's precisely the concern when we start delivering raw materials and trust the consumer facing device to finish rendering them!

This was exactly the design criteria of Dolby Laboratories when they developed the Dolby Atmos system for making more realistic sound locations and pannings in movie pictures. The same mix can be played in different theaters and home scenarios with different number of speakers. Then, the mix must be rendered to the available speakers, at the final customer decoder device.

Then, when Immersive music started, they mainly used the available system that was already installed in some home theaters: Dolby Atmos. They could have developed a different multichannel system, but there was already a system available. The boost that Dolby is giving to music in Atmos, together with Apple (mainly) may be seen as a proprietary thing to monetize. Right, but we are all benefiting from it.

You also have the Auro-3D alternative. That system for home does not use objects and it is just multichannel after the master has been rendered at the studio. You could think this is good enough for the consumer, but… it is less flexible than Atmos, it requires the specific Speakers, and it has to be ‘decoded’ also at the customer side.

The other immersive system for music is Sony 360 Reality Audio, and again that MPEG- is object based, so looking for flexibility at the number of speakers available, but not with the ‘downmix’ feature of the different substreams available in a Dolby Atmos mix.

In the end, we all know that Dolby Atmos is prevailing and has the appropriate technical functionalities.

I suppose we could cut right to the chase here:
The listener with the 9.1.6 array lamenting their silent wide channels when playing 7.1.4 mixes, right?
The x,y coordinates for the wide channels in the Dolby panner are
-100, 68
100, 68
Hard L/R and 68 on the Y axis hits the wides (channels 9/10 of 16) precisely.

If you want to deliver some of that content as objects in the encoded Atmos copy of the mix and shut these 9.1.6 guys up!

It's not just that an Atmos mix activates the Wide speakers with any content.

I have found a correlation between mixes that use objects in that part of the room (around 68º) and the immersive quality of those mixes. Normally, when the mixer uses Objects in that location the overall immersive quality is good enough.

There are plenty of examples that corroborate this for me:

- Van Morrison – Moondance. Some songs have the vocals just at the Sides, not at the Fronts. The vocals immersion, although ‘frontal’ is enhanced.

- Joni Mitchell's The Asylum Albums, In some songs the whole vocals bubble is above us and surrounded us. The mix uses that Wides location top manage this.

There are many more that uses Objects in that Wides locations, and as I said, normally, the immersive quality of those mixes is above the average.

That’s why I insist that when the Atmos Objects are used cleverly, not only for gimmick ping pong, but to get a good immersive experience, the performance that can be obtained from these mixes is superior.

 

[mandrix]

I just want to hear Deep Purple "Lazy" remixed for Atmos. lol.

But to get back to the OP's post and the interview, in this case I can't fault Stereo Review, and one person's point of view.

I will of course take surround in whatever format I can get, but much prefer the full monty over low bitrate. I will continue to buy the Atmos BD's and IAA downloads as long as the music is interesting. I often take a leap of faith on unknown artists and have known some disappointments, but that's usually not because of bad mixes, only because the music has no appeal. That's true of all formats. Taken as a whole I have no regrets of my Atmos purchases. Including the AVR that's used to decode.

 

[himey]

I have more of an issue with actual compressed stereo mastering's than I do with dynamic Atmos mixes, compressed to a streaming format.
A fully dynamic stereo (or mono) mix still has only one dimension, compared to a quality immersive mix. Format compressed Atmos doesn't lose dynamics or the added dimension.

Hating lossy Atmos is throwing the baby out with the bath water in the simplest terms. Lossy immersive music is still immersive as long as the mix is good, and unlike most new stereo releases, there is no added compression in the mastering. They are still dynamic. Reduced bitrate doesn't change that.

 

[barfle]

I only have two and a half problems with Atmos:
1. The amount of poor or fake mixes.
2. The amount of hurdles you have to jump through for making or listening to Atmos music.
2½. How low the bitrate is for streaming Atmos. Ideally, lossless is preferred. Realistically, I think I could live with a lossy codec. But at 768kbps? Ew.

Yep, it’s going to take about $4,000 worth of hoop-jumping before I get to listen to Atmos in my room. I’ll do it, but it’s far from the top of my giterdun list.

 

[LB-V]

I remember getting goosebumps listening to Led Zepelin laying down in the back of my Econoline E150 van, staring through the moonroof or Linda Rondstat or Eagles. I did that about a million times. My speaker was a single 6x9 or something I'd scavenged somewhere and wired it up.

I love listening to Atmos streaming even all compressed and lossy! And I'm fine by definition if I'm not an audiophile for it. That's actually a good delineation I think.

I like Atmos Blu Ray even better!

Keep it coming on all fronts for this hobbyist.