More channels = more problems

[jimfisheye]

Heh. If they really thought they were only selling a faux "surround" format to people with boomboxes and clock radios (now referred to as "soundbars" and "Echos")... OK.

I mean, that's exactly what it looks like to me too. Awful lot of wasted effort with what would have been an actual surround format just for boomboxes and clock radios. Listeners with such devices couldn't care less.

I thought the original premise was more along the lines of theater installs and selling tickets for audio focused events. And then a more advanced surround format for home theater for the likes of us.

This marketing driven stuff is weird to see play out. There's clearly money being lost. They are turning away potential music sales by refusing to release it. But apparently because there's some target number not being hit, they'll just throw the whole thing away instead of just selling what they have as it will. I don't know how all the math works out. I just see the part with effort and creativity being pissed away and I don't like it.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Awful lot of wasted effort with what would have been an actual surround format just for boomboxes and clock radios. Listeners with such devices couldn't care less.

They care. But they are being duped. They are the same type of people who bought a Bose tabletop system 20 years ago and believe is as good as it gets. They believe it because Bose told them it was good.

 

[ar surround]

Also, the problem seems to be the continuing phenomenon of high tech always going hog wild. Every time I get a new device I encounter problems, either because I really don't know what I'm doing or there is some sort of technical glitch with a patch still in development. My wife has zero tolerance for any of it and screams at the device until I try to help her.

Please allow me to further vent. I'm writing this on a new Mac desktop. This technological wonder has a 3.6 GHz Intel Processor, 16 GB RAM, and a 500 GB full SSD. It is lightning fast on startup, processing, browsing, etc. But then my wife starts doing something more complex on her Mac, such as running iMovie, and our internet slows almost to a stop.

I restart my Mac and the internet speed returns back to normal, even though my wife is still plugging along with iMovie (or whatever program.) The typical idiot workaround of unplugging the machine, waiting, and re-plugging hasn't made a difference. So I reboot three times a day. Why? I never had this problem with my old slow beast.

Perhaps my new Mac is like Nomad in Star Trek...It processes information faster than my archaic 5 Mbps internet can feed it thereby muddling up the whole shebang. Ugh. Modern technology.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I’m sure Atmos is cool once one gets it all dialed in - if that’s possible for everyone’s Atmos amp. I hope things work out.

But, there are a lot of people who would like to get into surround and all of this sounds expensive. Why can’t they simplify this stuff instead of giving unnecessary headaches. I see a lot of perfectly fine used Amps for 5.1 or Quad, for not that much at all.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Perhaps my new Mac is like Nomad in Star Trek...It processes information faster than my archaic 5 Mbps internet can feed it thereby muddling up the whole shebang. Ugh. Modern technology

Wowsers I don't know if your 5 Mbps is the problem, but it sure sounds like a problem. Quite a few friends of mine have Google Gigglebit connections that they swear by. I just have Spectrum cable at a routinely tested 135 Mbps. That is good enough for 2 instances of Netflix & anything else going on here with 2 cell phones, 2 PC's, 1 iPad. Upload is only 20 Mbps but that's only a nuisance when I upload really big files to Dropbox.

But anyway, what are your ISP alternatives in your area? Anything faster to choose from?

 

[DuncanS]

Wowsers I don't know if your 5 Mbps is the problem, but it sure sounds like a problem. Quite a few friends of mine have Google Gigglebit connections that they swear by. I just have Spectrum cable at a routinely tested 135 Mbps. That is good enough for 2 instances of Netflix & anything else going on here with 2 cell phones, 2 PC's, 1 iPad. Upload is only 20 Mbps but that's only a nuisance when I upload really big files to Dropbox.

But anyway, what are your ISP alternatives in your area? Anything faster to choose from?

Where I live the carrier pigeon can reach 50Mb/s download, and if the wind is in the right direction 10Mb/s upload, others in the town aren't so lucky!

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

This just gets better!

I decided to try and be helpful, so when Tidal support told me the problem was that my receiver wasn't supported for atmos, I replied and pointed out that yes, it absolutely was, and also pointed out how I got it to work.

Someone else replied back, not understanding that I had gotten it to work and was trying to help them, and offered me the following:

Unfortunately, while your device may be supported for Dolby Atmos itself, it's not supported for TIDAL Dolby Atmos.

The devices supported for Dolby Atmos on TIDAL are very different than the devices supported for Dolby Atmos on its own.

You can review the devices supported for TIDAL here:

Dolby Atmos Music on TIDAL

No Marantz devices are supported for it at this time.

We have though let our Product Team know there is a request to see Marantz devices integrated.

We apologize for any initial confusion, your device is simply not supported.




I.....I.....er.....I.....I'm not sure what to say to that.

At this point, all my "problems" are fixed, so I have no real reason to continue arguing with support.....but I really want to! They should know how their stuff works and stop giving half-assed guesses as fact that turn out to be completely wrong!

 

[salsdali]

I set up my fairly complex 7.2.4 bi-amped atmos setup yet I have never sent a "tweet" or sms message or whatever they're called on my phone because I simply do not know how to.

I also cannot even figure out how to turn the dome light on in my 2016 car because there are four buttons instead of just one and apparantly they all control something different that I cannot fathom.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

This just gets better!

I decided to try and be helpful, so when Tidal support told me the problem was that my receiver wasn't supported for atmos, I replied and pointed out that yes, it absolutely was, and also pointed out how I got it to work.

Someone else replied back, not understanding that I had gotten it to work and was trying to help them, and offered me the following:

Unfortunately, while your device may be supported for Dolby Atmos itself, it's not supported for TIDAL Dolby Atmos.

The devices supported for Dolby Atmos on TIDAL are very different than the devices supported for Dolby Atmos on its own.

You can review the devices supported for TIDAL here:

Dolby Atmos Music on TIDAL

No Marantz devices are supported for it at this time.

We have though let our Product Team know there is a request to see Marantz devices integrated.

We apologize for any initial confusion, your device is simply not supported.




I.....I.....er.....I.....I'm not sure what to say to that.

At this point, all my "problems" are fixed, so I have no real reason to continue arguing with support.....but I really want to! They should know how their stuff works and stop giving half-assed guesses as fact that turn out to be completely wrong!

Yeah, that’s typical about so called Tech support. They’re more interested in keeping their jobs and sounding self-righteous to the end user, who only wants some help.

I don’t know. I normally reply to tech support with what the right answer was to fix something, so they’ll hopefully pass it on. They don’t sound very interested in learning something new or helping anyone.

 

[salsdali]

Yeah, that’s typical about so called Tech support. They’re more interested in keeping their jobs and sounding self-righteous to the end user, who only wants some help.

I don’t know. I normally reply to tech support with what the right answer was to fix something, so they’ll hopefully pass it on. They don’t sound very interested in learning something new or helping anyone.

amazon support will literally tell you whatever you want to hear just so you won't give them a "negative" rating. I think overseas support for companies is so cheap that even one neg rating and the company would rather just replace that employee then risk another negative rating.

It's a sad state of affairs

 

[ar surround]

Yeah, that’s typical about so called Tech support. They’re more interested in keeping their jobs and sounding self-righteous to the end user, who only wants some help.

I don’t know. I normally reply to tech support with what the right answer was to fix something, so they’ll hopefully pass it on. They don’t sound very interested in learning something new or helping anyone.

There are some companies out there with tech support people who know their stuff inside out, upside down etc. I think that Oppo was (is?) one of them. Almost all the companies in my model choo-choo train hobby have top tier tech support. There are a few who always will make things right, no matter what. It’s refreshing.

 

[van1]

Another update here.

As I stated, after a bit of trial and error, I got atmos working in tidal from my fire cube. But what is so frustrating to me, is that when I was having problems, I got misinformation and completely wrong answers from 2 support sources!

I had a very long chat with amazon support. That guy was completely clueless - kept copying and pasting anything he could find with the word atmos in it, to try and convince me that there was nothing wrong, I was just trying to do unsupported things - just wanted me to go away basically. He kept arguing that netflix doesn't support atmos, so no apps do, even though I was talking about tidal, and it specifically supports atmos. Unfortunately, this chat was before I found that tidal's page specifically states fire cubes support it. At some point, the amazon support guy insisted the only thing he could find that would support atmos on a fire cube is streaming Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan using amazon prime. I streamed that - no atmos, only dolby digital. He then said, oh, it only supports 5.1.2 or 7.1.2 - you said you have 5.1.4, right? I tried to explain that's not how atmos work - it will adapt to whatever speaker setup you use. He actually got a bit rude with me - telling me it's my fault that I won't configure my speakers properly. I humored him, set it to 5.1.2, and, surprise surprise, still no atmos. He escalated the case at that point - still no reply.

Meanwhile, when I found tidal's page specifically states a fire cube is supported for atmos, I figured, lets ask them. I submitted a ticket with all the details.

While waiting for a reply, I played around more - found information about uninstalling/reinstalling the app, disconnecting reconnecting the hdmi, and that tidal is problematic at recognizing and holding the settings anyways. Eventually what I found is, although my receiver was set to dolby, and automatically went into dolby digital or dolby digital + mode for the fire cube depending on what it was setting - it wasn't automatically going into atmos mode. But when I manually changed the surround mode to the dolby mode that supports atmos, bam, tidal sent atmos signal, receiver received it, and it works great.

Then I got a response from Tidal's support telling me the problem is that my receiver doesn't support atmos.

Really?

What a shame - atmos is doomed. I mean, the process is basically this:

Research different speaker configurations and buy a bunch of expensive equipment after research - I get that multiple layouts means versitility - but you look at the documentation showing the various speaker configurations, and damn, that's gotta be overwhelming. Maybe they'll sell a bunch of atmos speaker bars. But, I don't care what you send to it.....a speaker bar is a speaker bar, atmos or no atmos - you ain't getting anything I'd ever consider surround from a speaker bar.

Spend a bunch of money on a receiver and speakers - run wire everywhere - make holes - mount speakers.

Once everything is setup - figure out how to properly configure equipment.
blu ray players need to be in the correct mode to bitstream the dolby atmos signal.
streaming boxes need to be in the right audio mode.
The receiver might not automatically detect it's an atmos signal and put itself in atmos mode, you have to set that manually.
Using a PS4 as a blu ray player? Sure....you set the audio settings in the main menu to dolby bitstream mode - but there's a whole separate settings menu by pressing the options button while playing a blu ray - you have to set the audio to bitstream from there. What do you mean you didn't think to look for more audio settings after setting the audio settings in the main setting menu?
Then, if you can't figure all that out - you go to support - mind you, support for equipment and service you paid a bunch of money for - and you get misinformation and wrong answers from clueless workers that haven't been trained at all on these technologies, and have no reliable resources to turn to to get you a correct answer.


Meanwhile - my Yello bluray was out for delivery - listened for the doorbell all day - no doorbell. Stupid mail man left a slip in the mailbox that since a signature is required and "no one was here to sign for it", I have to pick it up tomorrow. Arrggh....I fucking hate our mailman, he pulls this shit all the time. There is always someone home. We have a doorbell. Yet, he'd rather be lazy and drop a slip of paper in the mailbox and lie that no one is home, then actually walk up 3 steps to push a button.

Good help is so hard to find. Unfortunately the future is rather bleak for Atmos.

If it's any consolation, I'm sure this thread will get a tonne of hits from people on the net in the same situation. You may need a bigger pm box though.

I had issues getting sound out of blu rays when I added a replacement oppo to my Sony system and Tv (finally got it working through trial and error), so it's very frustrating how complicated technology makes things

 

[Old Quad Guy]

amazon support will literally tell you whatever you want to hear just so you won't give them a "negative" rating. I think overseas support for companies is so cheap that even one neg rating and the company would rather just replace that employee then risk another negative rating.

It's a sad state of affairs

I didn’t mean to sound overly harsh on tech support in general. Since Tidal is a subscription service, it’s in their best interest to figure things out and make it work.

I’m sure it’s easy as tech support to get cynical after awhile, because some people maybe didn’t read their manual before calling. That’s why I don’t take part in telephone surveys just right after talking to someone. I don’t feel comfortable judging anything at first glance.

 

[humprof]

This just gets better!

I decided to try and be helpful, so when Tidal support told me the problem was that my receiver wasn't supported for atmos, I replied and pointed out that yes, it absolutely was, and also pointed out how I got it to work.

Someone else replied back, not understanding that I had gotten it to work and was trying to help them, and offered me the following:

Unfortunately, while your device may be supported for Dolby Atmos itself, it's not supported for TIDAL Dolby Atmos.

The devices supported for Dolby Atmos on TIDAL are very different than the devices supported for Dolby Atmos on its own.

You can review the devices supported for TIDAL here:

Dolby Atmos Music on TIDAL

No Marantz devices are supported for it at this time.

We have though let our Product Team know there is a request to see Marantz devices integrated.

We apologize for any initial confusion, your device is simply not supported.




I.....I.....er.....I.....I'm not sure what to say to that.

At this point, all my "problems" are fixed, so I have no real reason to continue arguing with support.....but I really want to! They should know how their stuff works and stop giving half-assed guesses as fact that turn out to be completely wrong!

I went through much the same ordeal as you, AoQ, on both the Amazon side and the Tidal side. Eventually I decided it just wasn't worth getting exercised. Half the time the person answering you isn't even a person; it's a bot. The other half it's some poorly-trained sod halfway around the world who, like every offshored "customer support" person everywhere, is working out of their kitchen and getting paid by the piece to spit out variations on canned answers according to a flowchart they'll be penalized for deviating from. You just can't speak to anyone who actually has the incentive or the wherewithal to understand, let alone respond to, the specifics of your problem. The business model doesn't envision providing actual customer service, only a simulacrum of customer service.

 

[furui_suterioo]

I'm guessing the answer is probably No, but I will ask anyway, apologies in advance:

If I buy both Atmos and Tidal subscriptions on windows 10 w/m-ch card, will it truly downmix to 5.1/4.0, or even play in surround at all?

 

[Miker1102]

Computers can do a lot of playback, but like all things in our modern era of technology, it isn't perfect. My biggest gripe of computers these days is it feels like every windows update comes with yet another change to the functionality and menus for sound settings, and they're never good! But a computer with an hdmi output is a rather simple way to get digital multichannel to a receiver.....but then you have the whole issue of whether or not your receiver will like the signal the computer is sending out. My rather old at this point hdmi video card seems to play nice with my Denon receivers, but a recently picked up mini PC with built in HDMI output won't handshake with my denon receivers if a TV is on. Turn off the TV, and it sees the signal - which is fine if you're blind and install jaws on the computer I suppose. Denon's official answer is they don't support computers connecting to their receivers, had a lengthy polite conversation with their support. They tell end users to connect the computer directly to the TV to use the TV as a DA converter basically.....perfectly fine for the stereo minded. And then when you get past that battle, I never did find a working dvd-a option for PC. There were 2 popular DVD playback softwares back in the day that supposedly worked. I spent hours with both of them, never got either of them working, never saw them working, so while some people claimed they work, I never saw a shred of evidence that they do. The best option I've found for dvd-a playback on PC is foobar - but that just makes the audio content available, it doesn't actually navigate and test the disc. So, when I want to test a conversion, my only options are to burn a disc, or throw it on a usb and connect that to the Oppo.

Technology is great.....if you can figure it out. And it seems to only get more complicated.

I have always used my pc as a do it all until I discovered SACD and then I really got frustrated that I could not easily play them. So over the last year I now have a record player, computer, and a Blu-ray player running into my AVR. I think this is my own obsessive nature over sound and not technology itself. But yes, I do believe that the DTS remixes of Jethro Tull thru the DAC in that Blu-ray player is one of the most fantastic things I have heard. Why did someone not kidnap me, lock me in a dark room and force me to listen to the Steve's (guy from Porcupine tree) remixes. Wilson's Yes stuff is some of the most wonderful music I have ever heard. When my betty crocker, housecoat wearing, gunsmoke watching wife is jamming out to Starship trooper in surround sound something has shifted in the universe.

 

[Miker1102]

From the beginning, the consumer version of this format has targeted the sound bar crowd. And in general, the genera of releases and the sound quality will be targeted to that group as well. Its not even going to matter if it works properly or not, as long as Joe consumer sees an Atmos light turn on when he streams his lo-fi music and movies and can brag to his friends about how wonderful it is, all will be well with the Hi-Fi world. There may be a few artists and companies who take it seriously, but they will by far be the minority.

I have an excellent sound bar from Sony that I used for a long time before I went into the 5.1 proper. It really did its job and for someone in a small apartment your are getting excellent m and rich sound. I almost want to give it to somebody who appreciates sound

 

[Sal1950]

yet I have never sent a "tweet" or sms message or whatever they're called on my phone because I simply do not know how to.

Me either, and I don't want to. LOL

 

[HomerJAU]

From the beginning, the consumer version of this format has targeted the sound bar crowd

I disagree. Maybe by ‘consumer version’ You mean ‘streaming version for music’. Spotify/Tidal need to sort their s**t out.

Atmos is here to stay. It’s on many new blu-ray movie releases (And a growing list of BDAs). Atmos is also on many Netflix releases.

Atmos is standard with all new AVRs.

 

[Sal1950]

Atmos is here to stay.

From Your Lips To Gods Ears