Dolby Atmos Music on Blu-ray

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Agreed! Even though I like the band, I can digest Kraftwerk in small doses only :). Listening to Yello / Point is less "demanding" and more fun actually.
Completely agree. I find myself going back to and listening to Yello Point in its entirety while a little Kraftwerk goes a long way. And as AYanguas noted, Point is a more aggressive mix.
 
Mine is shipped today from JPC (Germany) jpc.de (€ 29,99 with free shipment to NL)
Well thanks to all of you enablers I ordered it today from the Yello website:

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Or at least I think I did. I went through the usual cart check out & selected pay in advance. It bounced me back to the product page & said "before you go, rate your satisfaction". So I gave 'em a 10 and then never was I requested for Paypal or charge card. It did say my cart was empty... anyone else order directly from the Yello Shop?
 
Well thanks to all of you enablers I ordered it today from the Yello website:

View attachment 60317

Or at least I think I did. I went through the usual cart check out & selected pay in advance. It bounced me back to the product page & said "before you go, rate your satisfaction". So I gave 'em a 10 and then never was I requested for Paypal or charge card. It did say my cart was empty... anyone else order directly from the Yello Shop?

Their shipping rates were outrageous on the Yellow Shop (like more than the blu-ray itself) so no, I didn't use it. JPC.de's shipping was about 1/10 as much and they remove the VAT from it which lowered the price with shipping to less than the price was to begin with in Euro.
 
I've heard Yello in stereo this morning via Tidal. Not having heard the surround mix, I can't say whether Kraftwerk or Yello is the way to go for a demo disc, but Kraftwerk is superior in terms of music and historical value of their work. Kraftwerk 3D covers the entire band discography and it's one of the surround releases of the recent years I enjoyed the most. The visuals are great too. Yello isn't bad at all, and I'll probably end up getting the blu-ray, but I don't think you can compare the two bands at all :) Some of their music can remind of the late Kraftwerk production? Maybe Techno Pop or Expo?
 
Schiller - Morgenstund has arrived.... Lots of extras. LOTS of extras. Alles in Das Deutsch. Und a CD. I'll have to check out the Atmos tracks soon.
 
I listened to the Atmos portion of Schiller - Morgenstund. Sadly, it's not really my cup of tea musically speaking. To be honest I was bored even with the improved spread of Atmos as it's just kind of bland electronic music without a real beat half the time. It starts out with some nice circular sounds around the room, but eventually seems to hang out more in the front overall than Booka Shade. Maybe it will get better with a couple more listens, but I wouldn't bet on it. I watched some of the videos and the "Berlin Tehran" one was excellent. The same track in Atmos was boring. I don't know. I was disappointed.

Afterward, I put on Roger Waters - THE WALL ©2014 in Atmos at ~3AM on Christmas Day intending to just listen to a few bits to see how it sounded and HOLY CRAP BATMAN! Now THAT sounded AWESOME in Atmos. I ended up watching the entire thing (5:20 AM here with a snow storm dumping a mess outside). I would have preferred they offered a branched full uninterrupted concert with the film footage separate, but even so, it was a great concert, MUCH better than that Live In Berlin one with all the guest vocalists that crapped all over it. Some bits brought tears to my eyes just watching the reactions on people's faces that were clearly having the time of their lives at the concert. Now I wish I had scheduled leave to go see it live back then.
 
I've heard Yello in stereo this morning via Tidal. Not having heard the surround mix, I can't say whether Kraftwerk or Yello is the way to go for a demo disc, but Kraftwerk is superior in terms of music and historical value of their work. Kraftwerk 3D covers the entire band discography and it's one of the surround releases of the recent years I enjoyed the most. The visuals are great too. Yello isn't bad at all, and I'll probably end up getting the blu-ray, but I don't think you can compare the two bands at all :) Some of their music can remind of the late Kraftwerk production? Maybe Techno Pop or Expo?
Listening to Yello on Tidal this morning to see if I want to invest in the BD. So far, it ain't grabbin' me...
 
I think it's probably safe to say that the John Williams - Live in Vienna - Dolby Atmos 2-disc (1 CD + 1 Blu-Ray) set sounds pretty great. The Blu-Ray includes Dolby Atmos (with subset TrueHD 7.1), DTS-HD MA 2.0 (Stereo) and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes on it. I found the presentation almost seemed to vary by seating location in the hall in Vienna depending on the mix and settings I used. For instance, using Neural X with the 2.0 mix sounded like I was right up front near the pit. Atmos sounded mid-back with very noticeable ambience and the room sounded much larger than my mere 12'x24' room should. Engaging Neural X with the TrueHD 7.1 base layer resulted in oddly similar to Atmos imaging. Using Neural X with the DTS-HD MA 5.1 track resulted in a massive image that kind of sounded like the roof jumped by 50 feet or more higher in the air.

Dolby Atmos probably sounded a bit more natural, but I couldn't help but be impressed by that Neural X image off the 5.1 track. It wasn't quite so big with Neural X off the TrueHD 7.1 base track, IMO so I'm not sure if they miked the 5.1 mix separately from the Atmos/7.1 mix or what, but they seemed somewhat different in size/image/space. I concentrated the mode changes on one track (Star Wars Imperial March off the AUDIO ONLY section). All three mixes had plenty of bass and high quality recording, although my ear/sinuses have been a bit wonky the past week or thereabouts (with a recurring 56Hz vibration in my right ear on/off at times almost like that "world hum" thing I've seen described, but I think it's most likely wax against the ear drum or something) so I wouldn't entirely trust my absolute sense of sound quality right now, but it still sounded pretty darn good. I gotta love Star Wars and Indiana Jones themes played live.

The Blu-Ray contains both a full live concert with video footage and 6 more tracks than the CD or Audio Only section of the Blu-Ray (19 songs versus 13). The audio only tracks don't have any applause/audience in them and are in a different order so I wonder if they were possibly recorded separately from the main show? I'm not sure I agree with all the specific tracks they chose from some of the movies (I mean Jaws without the main shark attack theme?), but still it's a great set.

Is it just me or does John Williams look a bit like the late Richard Attenborough now? Well, the theme to Jurassic Park in on there as well... ;)

91IqXqD5DRL._SL1500_.jpg


Richard Attenborough (He played John Hammond in Jurassic Park):

Richard-Attenborough-Getty.jpg
 
Oh yeah.....OHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAHH!! Beautiful! MORE Beautiful!

I just listened to Yello's POINT album in Dolby Atmos like 3 times and used the track Way Down to try out Dolby Digital EX 6.1 + Surround Modes and PCM 24-bit 2.0 stereo from 2.0 to 17.1 with the surround modes.

yello-pont-dolby-edition.jpg


A few technical points, first. This album, unlike most previous "immersion" albums I've tried has more bass in the Dolby Atmos (and DD EX) tracks than the PCM stereo tracks. Booka Shade's Dear Future Self album, for example had far more kick drum in the stereo mix so I was a bit surprised to find that the stereo mix almost sounded like they forgot to move the LFE track to the 2.0 mix or something. Having said that, Wow! The mere 2.0 stereo mix when expanded to Neural X had more surround effects in it than many newer (admittedly worse examples of) Atmos movies. The stereo track has a lot of width and some surround phase notes, but nowhere near as much as some Q-Sound and similar stereo albums I have, but turn on Neural X and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was in Atmos mode (at least until you hear the actual Atmos track). As usual DSU is somewhere in-between.

Next, I kicked in the Dolby Digital 6.1 EX track (I don't know about on a BD player if it can even select the DD EX track as it's a fallback "core" seeing I don't usually use an actual BD player here; I ripped to MKV and use KODI to select the audio tracks and it's happy to let me play the core EX 6.1 track, which isn't 6.1 discrete, but has steering logic to use the rear speakers as one big mono channel). Wow! Once again, it kicks it a step up. All that Neural X goodness from 2.0 becomes discrete sounds all over the place and now, if you didn't think you were in Atmos, you'd certainly think so blindfolded. But it's not Atmos...not yet. Admittedly, the switch to Atmos from 6.1 Neural X isn't as shocking as from plain Stereo to Atmos, but now everything is discrete and you know it's placed exactly where it's meant to be (Neural X usually guesses well, though, a credit to DTS's upmixer for sure).

So how's the Atmos? In a word? AWESOME! I think I enjoyed this album MORE than Booka Shade's two albums I have in Atmos (Galvany Street and Dear Future Self), probably because the music is closer to what I actually like to listen to when not trying to find anything, just anything music-wise in Dolby Atmos. Yello is hard to describe because they're all over the place. Some tracks are very techno-orientated and others are more bluesy (Big Boys Blues) or pop-rock sounding (Way Down) while others (Hello Waba Duba!) are just bizarre. The album is about 50 minutes long so it didn't take as long to get through it, leaving me going back to try some songs in other seats/rows in the room (with all my home theater's bizarre lighting tricks going from my movie prop displays and other mood lights).

It usually takes me a few listens to like an album, but I was grooving right along to Basic Avenue (bring back the BASS!) and Out of Sight. In fact, I think the first half of the album was really great. A few of the latter songs (Hot Pan, Siren Singing and even the short, but odd Zephyr Calling) weren't quite as interesting musically, but the great thing about Atmos is, even when the songs aren't drawing you in, the music moving around the room keeps your brain occupied and this album moves sounds around the room like a snowflake in a blizzard! It's every bit as interesting surround-wise, IMO as Dear Future Self. There's sounds behind you constantly, floating around you and across the ceiling. It was quite as well balanced for the back rows, however, as it uses more fill and other effects at times than having "copies" of the stuff going on up front, which is to say in a 24' long room, Dear Future Self probably sounded better mixed for the back row (as the front isn't as loud back there and the back is louder), but from the front and even the middle, it's excellent.

Waba Duba is supposedly the first single track from the album with a wacky music video out there to go with it, but it's really not that great a song, IMO. The Vanishing of Peter Strong has a great background fill, but oddly it's more of a narrative story-telling track (I did something similar on my own album from 2012 so I can't complain). Way Down is where the fun really begins and it's a nice relatively short 3:19 track so that's where I concentrated on the different tracks and surround modes. I think Auro-3D (well it's upmixer Auromatic presented itself as an outlier mode in that I was surprised to find that there was surround beyond just a "hall effect" in the surround speakers even with the 2.0 mix, but it was more subdued than DSU and Neural X, but far more ambient than plain stereo. Overall, I'd stick with Atmos on an Atmos system.

So how was Atmos? I read comments by at least one person that the album is "anemic" sounding. I didn't get that impression at all. I did have to raise the volume level to -4.5 compared to -8 for Dear Future Self to get a similar volume level, but that's still 4.5dB below Dolby reference. Big Boy's Blues seemed to be at a lower overall level compared to the other tracks except for the vocals, but I think it was meant to be that way, which lead me to crank it to -4.5 at which point I realized the whole album sounded much better at that setting so I can imagine if Tidal's DialNorm setting is 14dB down in volume (I think that's what someone said), it might be an issue getting some systems up to the proper volume. But I can tell you there's nothing "missing" from the signal. It's not as constantly bass heavy as Dear Future Self, for instance, but it's not a "house mix" type album. It has room shaking bass in several places, but has more pop/rock level bass on average rather than trance or hip-hop. I didn't find it the least bit "anemic" sounding in the slightest. Dieter Meier's voice is VERY low in the bass register (as far as human voices go) and I thought he sounded great. I don't know if I'd call that singing in the traditional sense (kind of a deeper version of what you might expect from say the Pet Shop Boys in "singing" terms), but it works.

Overall, I thought the sound quality was excellent. The use of Atmos was fantastic and brought my 12'x24' room to life front-to-back in a way most Atmos movies fail to do in the rear of the room (for some odd reason, most (not all) movies don't use rear surround speakers anywhere near as much as the side surrounds and overheads). I could plainly hear sounds in the back of the room nearly 14 feet behind me. The room just feels larger with music that uses the rear surrounds discretely almost as much as the mains. If anything, I think some of these Atmos music albums tend to use the rear speakers more than the side surround speakers (as a single location anyway; when mixed sounds move along the entire length of the room on the side walls or in-between). A few tracks had sounds that circled the room to give you a sense of size and how even the sound's timbre is.

Anyway, it's hard to describe the actual music. Either you like Yello or you don't, I suppose. I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. I may have to go buy some more Yello albums I missed over the years to check out. But those of you on the fence about buying this album, all I can say is get off the fence and go for it.
 
Oh yeah.....OHHHHHHHH YEAAAAAHH!! Beautiful! MORE Beautiful!

I just listened to Yello's POINT album in Dolby Atmos like 3 times and used the track Way Down to try out Dolby Digital EX 6.1 + Surround Modes and PCM 24-bit 2.0 stereo from 2.0 to 17.1 with the surround modes.

yello-pont-dolby-edition.jpg


A few technical points, first. This album, unlike most previous "immersion" albums I've tried has more bass in the Dolby Atmos (and DD EX) tracks than the PCM stereo tracks. Booka Shade's Dear Future Self album, for example had far more kick drum in the stereo mix so I was a bit surprised to find that the stereo mix almost sounded like they forgot to move the LFE track to the 2.0 mix or something. Having said that, Wow! The mere 2.0 stereo mix when expanded to Neural X had more surround effects in it than many newer (admittedly worse examples of) Atmos movies. The stereo track has a lot of width and some surround phase notes, but nowhere near as much as some Q-Sound and similar stereo albums I have, but turn on Neural X and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was in Atmos mode (at least until you hear the actual Atmos track). As usual DSU is somewhere in-between.

Next, I kicked in the Dolby Digital 6.1 EX track (I don't know about on a BD player if it can even select the DD EX track as it's a fallback "core" seeing I don't usually use an actual BD player here; I ripped to MKV and use KODI to select the audio tracks and it's happy to let me play the core EX 6.1 track, which isn't 6.1 discrete, but has steering logic to use the rear speakers as one big mono channel). Wow! Once again, it kicks it a step up. All that Neural X goodness from 2.0 becomes discrete sounds all over the place and now, if you didn't think you were in Atmos, you'd certainly think so blindfolded. But it's not Atmos...not yet. Admittedly, the switch to Atmos from 6.1 Neural X isn't as shocking as from plain Stereo to Atmos, but now everything is discrete and you know it's placed exactly where it's meant to be (Neural X usually guesses well, though, a credit to DTS's upmixer for sure).

So how's the Atmos? In a word? AWESOME! I think I enjoyed this album MORE than Booka Shade's two albums I have in Atmos (Galvany Street and Dear Future Self), probably because the music is closer to what I actually like to listen to when not trying to find anything, just anything music-wise in Dolby Atmos. Yello is hard to describe because they're all over the place. Some tracks are very techno-orientated and others are more bluesy (Big Boys Blues) or pop-rock sounding (Way Down) while others (Hello Waba Duba!) are just bizarre. The album is about 50 minutes long so it didn't take as long to get through it, leaving me going back to try some songs in other seats/rows in the room (with all my home theater's bizarre lighting tricks going from my movie prop displays and other mood lights).

It usually takes me a few listens to like an album, but I was grooving right along to Basic Avenue (bring back the BASS!) and Out of Sight. In fact, I think the first half of the album was really great. A few of the latter songs (Hot Pan, Siren Singing and even the short, but odd Zephyr Calling) weren't quite as interesting musically, but the great thing about Atmos is, even when the songs aren't drawing you in, the music moving around the room keeps your brain occupied and this album moves sounds around the room like a snowflake in a blizzard! It's every bit as interesting surround-wise, IMO as Dear Future Self. There's sounds behind you constantly, floating around you and across the ceiling. It was quite as well balanced for the back rows, however, as it uses more fill and other effects at times than having "copies" of the stuff going on up front, which is to say in a 24' long room, Dear Future Self probably sounded better mixed for the back row (as the front isn't as loud back there and the back is louder), but from the front and even the middle, it's excellent.

Waba Duba is supposedly the first single track from the album with a wacky music video out there to go with it, but it's really not that great a song, IMO. The Vanishing of Peter Strong has a great background fill, but oddly it's more of a narrative story-telling track (I did something similar on my own album from 2012 so I can't complain). Way Down is where the fun really begins and it's a nice relatively short 3:19 track so that's where I concentrated on the different tracks and surround modes. I think Auro-3D (well it's upmixer Auromatic presented itself as an outlier mode in that I was surprised to find that there was surround beyond just a "hall effect" in the surround speakers even with the 2.0 mix, but it was more subdued than DSU and Neural X, but far more ambient than plain stereo. Overall, I'd stick with Atmos on an Atmos system.

So how was Atmos? I read comments by at least one person that the album is "anemic" sounding. I didn't get that impression at all. I did have to raise the volume level to -4.5 compared to -8 for Dear Future Self to get a similar volume level, but that's still 4.5dB below Dolby reference. Big Boy's Blues seemed to be at a lower overall level compared to the other tracks except for the vocals, but I think it was meant to be that way, which lead me to crank it to -4.5 at which point I realized the whole album sounded much better at that setting so I can imagine if Tidal's DialNorm setting is 14dB down in volume (I think that's what someone said), it might be an issue getting some systems up to the proper volume. But I can tell you there's nothing "missing" from the signal. It's not as constantly bass heavy as Dear Future Self, for instance, but it's not a "house mix" type album. It has room shaking bass in several places, but has more pop/rock level bass on average rather than trance or hip-hop. I didn't find it the least bit "anemic" sounding in the slightest. Dieter Meier's voice is VERY low in the bass register (as far as human voices go) and I thought he sounded great. I don't know if I'd call that singing in the traditional sense (kind of a deeper version of what you might expect from say the Pet Shop Boys in "singing" terms), but it works.

Overall, I thought the sound quality was excellent. The use of Atmos was fantastic and brought my 12'x24' room to life front-to-back in a way most Atmos movies fail to do in the rear of the room (for some odd reason, most (not all) movies don't use rear surround speakers anywhere near as much as the side surrounds and overheads). I could plainly hear sounds in the back of the room nearly 14 feet behind me. The room just feels larger with music that uses the rear surrounds discretely almost as much as the mains. If anything, I think some of these Atmos music albums tend to use the rear speakers more than the side surround speakers (as a single location anyway; when mixed sounds move along the entire length of the room on the side walls or in-between). A few tracks had sounds that circled the room to give you a sense of size and how even the sound's timbre is.

Anyway, it's hard to describe the actual music. Either you like Yello or you don't, I suppose. I ended up liking it a lot more than I expected. I may have to go buy some more Yello albums I missed over the years to check out. But those of you on the fence about buying this album, all I can say is get off the fence and go for it.
I agree wholeheartedly with this review.

I was going to to express my own complete review of this fantastic Dolby Atmos release but Magnum X has hit every note that I was going to say.

I know that Kraftwerk is the bee's knees' but this release is right up there. Mine arrived just before Xmas and I have played it endlessly since.
It is a Dolby Atmos demonstration release.

I banged on about Galvany Street when it first came out, as I am a total Atmos fanboy..
This knocks that release for six.

If you are a fan of Dolby Atmos, then I can only recommend to you, this utterly brilliant release.

Been very busy over the last 3 months changing my garden around to accommodate my son and wife.
Needed an extra living room so have built a new shed, disposed of the old one, replaced the garden fencing. and finally today, finished a fully insulated garden room.

All from a novice perspective.

Will add pics on lockdown thread......eventually.

Soooooo much to catch up on.


A Very Happy New Year to one and all.
 
I've got Hans Zimmer: Live in Prague in Atmos on the way (should be here Saturday). Still waiting on Kraftwerk 3D in Atmos as well....
 
I'm pretty sure some strange things are afoot at the Circle K when it comes to Yello's Point album in terms of the Dolby Atmos tracks versus the LPCM Stereo tracks. Some tracks have "missing" bass (or is it added bass on the Atmos version?) on the LPCM tracks (e.g. Way Down) while at least one track (I haven't compared them all directly yet) has inverted phase, at least for the vocals (Big Boy's Blues). The latter has the vocals out-of-phase (outside the speakers) while the Atmos (and Core Dolby Digital) track has the vocals in the center regardless of whether the Atmos track is rendered in stereo, an upmixer or straight Dolby Atmos. Other tracks (e.b. Waba Duba, Way Down, etc.) have the vocals in the center on both sets of tracks.

Since I don't own the separate CD version, I don't know if that holds true of the CD version of Big Boy's Blues also (i.e. done on purpose) or whether there was a mastering error along the way for the 2.0 PCM track on the Blu-Ray version. The thought occurred to me just now that I could demo the track on iTunes....

Yes, it's out-of-phase there as well so I assume the 2-channel version is supposed to have out-of-phase vocals and yet if you mix the Atmos version down to stereo, it's in-phase (lack of consistency there). It actually sounds pretty good either way. The more I listen to this album, the more I like it and the more I'm sure I need to go back and listen to Yello's previous albums given at least one person has said they are better yet because frankly, this is the best new album I've heard in some time to my taste in music (e.g. disappointed in both David Gilmour and Roger Waters' last solo albums and even more so with Tori Amos' last album as well and I liked pretty much all her previous work). Admittedly, I'm not up on most of today's rock groups. I have little patience to listen to random music (radio) anymore and I hate commercials so much I ditched cable a few years ago as well.

Edit:

I just tried this album out on my Carver system and there was a massive difference between the stereo tracks and the downmixed Atmos to stereo tracks in terms of imaging. I actually got surround effects 2/3 out in front of my speakers into the room with the Atmos version downmixed to stereo with Sonic Holography enabled on the Carver preamp. It was almost shocking, really. It sounded like the surround speakers were turned on (except when they are, it's even further back and more discrete), but given it was achieving this with just stereo output was kind of incredible. I've heard sounds to 90 degrees to my sides before with Sonic Holography, but it was all off to the sides. These sounds were in the middle of the room in front of the speakers and that's something I didn't think was possible without surround speakers. Now I want to try more Atmos -> Stereo + Sonic Holography music tests.... :D
 
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