Great observations on this really strange Apple Atmos outlier mix.
Curious if anyone has an example of what you hear from the ceiling that downmixes for us floor-level folks.
A lockdown upgrade to my project-studio mixer & $70 HDMI to analog converter has proved interesting as I've started streaming AM iMac to AVR in 5.1.
Enables isolating & monitoring individual channels or pairs from a 5.1 stream (Atmos downmix) in real time.
Interesting to mute the speakers to listen in headphones to rears, center & lfe to reveal how the mixer blended the elements.
Especially in this case, where one feels compelled check his equipment & setup for malfunction.
Center - One might swear this is 4.0, but with enough gain boost, there is a center signal.
So faint it's barely above the noise floor, in the range of -50 dB below the fronts.
Inaudible for all practical purposes, well outside the range of manual adjustment to the average AVR to improve balance.
So what the heck was the point?
Listening with phones reveals isolated lead vocal, not dry, but "wet" with reverb, as if hearing the recording studio headphone send to the vocal booth.
Rear/surround pair range -20->30 dB down with little content beyond ambience under backing vocals & keys, rendering the mix front-heavy beyond expected norms.
Examples:
- Hang Fire ~ hammering piano, "doo doo"vocs, seemingly mono?
- Slave (new extended mix) ~ Sub- audible ambience first 0:27, "do it, do it" vocs, tasty Billy Preston Hammond organ track & sprinklings of electric piano spicing up the extended outro...
LFE non-existent or un-detectable, no great loss with as the fronts are rockin' strongly.
Can only speculate this was a gift to us, so we all can think "heck, I could have done better than that?"