Atmos and TrueHD 7.1 playback on 5.1 systems - Tests, Results, questions, experiences

[bracelis]

Not true. Avid Pro Tools | Ultimate will encode/decode Dolby Atmos, provided you have an interface with sufficient I/O. I'm sure there are other professional DAWs/NLEs that will do the same. Otherwise, how would Atmos even be mixed in the first place?

Does that work on Windows ?
Or Mac only ?

HomerJAU said "no way to explore Atmos raw channel info on a PC" so I'm assuming that means on Windows.

 

[bracelis]

If really the levels of the test files are the same, I think it could be due to my room reflections at the rear that make me hear louder that pink noise. I hope my Audissey microphone is in good conditions. In any case I hear the same differences in two different environments, DENON and ONKYO with different rooms and different Audissey microphones.

I routed all the channels to the L/R front speakers, so that I can listen to all the channels (including the surround and top rear channels) from the MKV using the same speakers. The rear channels are not louder than the front channels. I tested both with the receiver decoding the Atmos bitstream, and also with JRiver decoding the audio (i..e, without Atmos decoding).

 

[JediJoker]

Does that work on Windows ?
Or Mac only ?

HomerJAU said "no way to explore Atmos raw channel info on a PC" so I'm assuming that means on Windows.

Pro Tools is available for both macOS and Windows. Note that it is a professional DAW, especially in the surround-compatible Ultimate flavor, and a license is expensive. It's not intended for consumers.

 

[bracelis]

Yes, Pro Tools is available on Windows and Mac.
But the question is about Pro Tools + Atmos.

For example, this one shows Mac only:
https://www.avid.com/plugins/dolby-atmos-production-suite

 

[JediJoker]

Yes, Pro Tools is available on Windows and Mac.
But the question is about Pro Tools + Atmos.

For example, this one shows Mac only:
https://www.avid.com/plugins/dolby-atmos-production-suite

That I did not know. I wonder what dependency limits it to macOS?

 

[bracelis]

I guess we're not the first ones to ask the question:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/pos...-no-dolby-atmos-production-suite-windows.html
Anyway, I think we're already going off topic...

 

[humprof]

I don’t think you need to worry too much about this if you have a 5.1 system. From my tests we can see Dolby’s promise of backward compatibility is correct.

If a mixer has intended his/her Atmos mix to be heard in Atmos with an Atmos speaker array the only way you’ll hear this as designed is installing extra (height) speakers and listening to the Atmos mix.

Isn’t a bit like the old movie aspect ratio debate about what the director and/or cinematographer intended? You could watch a widescreen movie on a 4:3 TV screen and see the movie with a little missing off the sides, you don’t miss anything in the story, but it’s not what the movie maker intended. Solution? Upgrade to a widescreen TV. With Atmos on a 5.1 system your hearing the ‘story‘, but missing the immersion the mixer intended. If you want to hear as intended you need to upgrade.

The point is, you CAN listen to Atmos in 5.1. It is still a valid surround mix, just with original mix positioning being moved to the appropriate floor speakers. That’s way better than actually discarding the extra Atmos audio info.

I take your point, Garry, and I would agree with it. If I'm understanding Pup correctly, though, his basic point is that mixing for Atmos is different from mixing for 5.1. So the 5.1 TrueHD "core" (or, on non-Atmos-capable systems, the 5.1 "downmix") may sound perfectly fine. But it will sound fine accidentally, as it were, or maybe incidentally, but not "intentionally." That is, it won't sound the same as it would if the mixing engineer had been mixing specifically with 5.1 in mind to begin with.

Of course if you include a dedicated 5.1 mix in addition to an Atmos mix, then that's one more expense the record company has to pay for. And the reviews I've seen of Goats Head Soup suggest that "spare no expense" was not exactly the governing ethic of that release.

Anyway, sorry to parachute in to this thread so late. As someone with both a (minimally) Atmos system and a non-Atmos-capable 5.1 system, I want to say that all of you guys are performing a real service here. And the more "metaphysical" aspects of the discussion are interesting, too!

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I take your point, Garry, and I would agree with it. If I'm understanding Pup correctly, though, his basic point is that mixing for Atmos is different from mixing for 5.1. So the 5.1 TrueHD "core" (or, on non-Atmos-capable systems, the 5.1 "downmix") may sound perfectly fine. But it will sound fine accidentally, as it were, or maybe incidentally, but not "intentionally." That is, it won't sound the same as it would if the mixing engineer had been mixing specifically with 5.1 in mind to begin with.

Of course if you include a dedicated 5.1 mix in addition to an Atmos mix, then that's one more expense the record company has to pay for. And the reviews I've seen of Goats Head Soup suggest that "spare no expense" was not exactly the governing ethic of that release.

Anyway, sorry to parachute in to this thread so late. As someone with both a (minimally) Atmos system and a non-Atmos-capable 5.1 system, I want to say that all of you guys are performing a real service here. And the more "metaphysical" aspects of the discussion are interesting, too!

Exactly - thanks for giving another view point; it's all in the spirit of discussion, discovery and understanding/clarifying

 

[humprof]

I take your point, Garry, and I would agree with it. If I'm understanding Pup correctly, though, his basic point is that mixing for Atmos is different from mixing for 5.1. So the 5.1 TrueHD "core" (or, on non-Atmos-capable systems, the 5.1 "downmix") may sound perfectly fine. But it will sound fine accidentally, as it were, or maybe incidentally, but not "intentionally." That is, it won't sound the same as it would if the mixing engineer had been mixing specifically with 5.1 in mind to begin with.

Of course if you include a dedicated 5.1 mix in addition to an Atmos mix, then that's one more expense the record company has to pay for. And the reviews I've seen of Goats Head Soup suggest that "spare no expense" was not exactly the governing ethic of that release.

Anyway, sorry to parachute in to this thread so late. As someone with both a (minimal, 5.1.2) Atmos system and a non-Atmos-capable 5.1 system, I want to say that all of you guys are performing a real service here. And the more "metaphysical" aspects of the discussion are interesting, too!

 

[Stupy]

Well that was fascinating... nice to know where the signals are going! Cheers!

5.1 system played from a PC.

Seems to largely confirm everyone else's tests here... with a diagram of what I got from 9.1.6 attached.

 

[ar surround]

Yes. The onboard Atmos decoder will downmix Atmos to 5.1 as per test results.

Are you converting the Atmos to FLAC using DVDAudio Extractor? Reports mention 7.1 FLAC won’t play on the Oppos I think.

OK, I was able to convert the Abbey Road Dolby True HD 7.1 FLAC files into WAV using Audacity. The Oppo will play this stream. The reference track is Here Comes The Sun because it has a lot of discrete elements.

The resulting downmix is not right...not as discrete with misplaced and muted elements...as the 5.1 DTS MA stream when played on my system. I do not understand why this has happened because when I play the Dolby Atmos stream directly from the Bluray, the resulting 5.1 downmix through the Oppo sounds essentially the same as the 5.1 DTS MA stream.

[Edit: I'm suspecting that the Oppo is not actually "seeing" all the channels...perhaps giving me the 7.1 rears in the surround speakers and ignoring the surround channels all together?]

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the Abbey Road Atmos poll thread.)

 

[J. PUPSTER]

OK, I was able to convert the Abbey Road Dolby True HD 7.1 FLAC files into WAV using Audacity. The Oppo will play this stream. The reference track is Here Comes The Sun because it has a lot of discrete elements.

The resulting downmix is not right...not as discrete with misplaced and muted elements...as the 5.1 DTS MA stream when played on my system. I do not understand why this has happened because when I play the Dolby Atmos stream directly from the Bluray, the resulting 5.1 downmix through the Oppo sounds essentially the same as the 5.1 DTS MA stream.

[Edit: I'm suspecting that the Oppo is not actually "seeing" all the channels...perhaps giving me the 7.1 rears in the surround speakers and ignoring the surround channels all together?]

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the Abbey Road Atmos poll thread.)

Double check that you’re Exporting everything correctly in Audacity, there’s also various forms of wav files, I’m not sure that could be it, but something to consider.

 

[himey]

OK, I was able to convert the Abbey Road Dolby True HD 7.1 FLAC files into WAV using Audacity. The Oppo will play this stream. The reference track is Here Comes The Sun because it has a lot of discrete elements.

The resulting downmix is not right...not as discrete with misplaced and muted elements...as the 5.1 DTS MA stream when played on my system. I do not understand why this has happened because when I play the Dolby Atmos stream directly from the Bluray, the resulting 5.1 downmix through the Oppo sounds essentially the same as the 5.1 DTS MA stream.

[Edit: I'm suspecting that the Oppo is not actually "seeing" all the channels...perhaps giving me the 7.1 rears in the surround speakers and ignoring the surround channels all together?]

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the Abbey Road Atmos poll thread.)

Can you do the same test with the test files in the first post? Also, as Pupster mentioned, recheck Audacity settings or even better, use a different downmix option just to rule out an Audacity problem. Completely muted elements is something we need to figure out...

 

[himey]

The Oppo has an Atmos decoder on board. That’s an option to playback Atmos on a 5.1 system (in 5.1) - use a BD player with an Atmos decoder. Probably all recent BD Players in last few years will have that option.

This is a feature I didn't know of and a quick search doesn't show this is the case?

 

[J. PUPSTER]

This is a feature I didn't know of and a quick search doesn't show this is the case?

Here's what a Sound & Vision review says about the UDP-203 and same with the 205 I believe.

There’s nothing unusual in connecting and configuring the UDP-203. But fans of high-resolution audio should take note: Formats such as DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD can be accessed via HDMI or the 7.1-channel analog output (with decoding handled internally), though their attendant Atmos and DTS:X extensions are only available via HDMI. In addition, SACDs can be played back only through either the HDMI or the analog outputs, not the coaxial or optical digital outputs. (The latter can play only the CD layer of hybrid SACDs and, of course, standard CDs and plain-vanilla Dolby Digital and DTS.)

 

[J. PUPSTER]

OK, I was able to convert the Abbey Road Dolby True HD 7.1 FLAC files into WAV using Audacity. The Oppo will play this stream. The reference track is Here Comes The Sun because it has a lot of discrete elements.

The resulting downmix is not right...not as discrete with misplaced and muted elements...as the 5.1 DTS MA stream when played on my system. I do not understand why this has happened because when I play the Dolby Atmos stream directly from the Bluray, the resulting 5.1 downmix through the Oppo sounds essentially the same as the 5.1 DTS MA stream.

[Edit: I'm suspecting that the Oppo is not actually "seeing" all the channels...perhaps giving me the 7.1 rears in the surround speakers and ignoring the surround channels all together?]

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the Abbey Road Atmos poll thread.)

Gather 'round the campfire for a frightening tale of audio file exporting in the annals of the ADMUX files.

I recall doing some Up-mixing on my NUC and working in Audacity. I had several other programs open at the time like: Google Chrome, REAPER / Penteo and Acoustica 7 / Spleeter working on stem extraction. Upon Exporting the files to listen from Audacity onto another computer, I noticed the channels were not ordered correctly. Once I closed all the programs and rebooted the NUC, it then would export correctly. Through a series of elimination, I concluded that the Acoustica was interfering some how with the Audacity export. So try closing everything and running the Audacity by itself, just to be sure.
Chilling!

 

[himey]

Here's what a Sound & Vision review says about the UDP-203 and same with the 205 I believe.

There’s nothing unusual in connecting and configuring the UDP-203. But fans of high-resolution audio should take note: Formats such as DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD can be accessed via HDMI or the 7.1-channel analog output (with decoding handled internally), though their attendant Atmos and DTS:X extensions are only available via HDMI. In addition, SACDs can be played back only through either the HDMI or the analog outputs, not the coaxial or optical digital outputs. (The latter can play only the CD layer of hybrid SACDs and, of course, standard CDs and plain-vanilla Dolby Digital and DTS.)

I am sure Oppo would have added a 5.1.2 optional configuration over analog if it had a built in decoder. All blu-ray players that are Atmos compatible, bitstream to an Atmos receiver.

 

[HomerJAU]

OK, I was able to convert the Abbey Road Dolby True HD 7.1 FLAC files into WAV using Audacity.

How did you create the 7.1 FLAC? So far this thread has only tested Dolby Atmos downmixing as output from a Dolby Atmos or TrueHD decoder.

 

[HomerJAU]

I am sure Oppo would have added a 5.1.2 optional configuration over analog if it had a built in decoder. All blu-ray players that are Atmos compatible, bitstream to an Atmos receiver.

I thought there was an option to output either Bitstream or PCM? If that’s true then the player must decode although that would be limited to 7.1 as HDMI 2.0 is limited to 8 channels I believe.

EDIT: That would be an Atmos downmix on an Atmos certified BD player I would think. That is, output channels would follow results here.

 

[JediJoker]

EDIT: That would be an Atmos downmix on an Atmos certified BD player I would think. That is, output channels would follow results here.

That's my sense of it.