Atmos Digital Download Discussion

[pat bateman]

All three major labels sell downloads through platforms such as HDTracks and Qobuz using a similar business model, so the legality is clearly not an issue. Yes, labels are protective of their IP and there are digital distribution agreements to navigate - but my advice is to pay attention to this space over the coming years, what you see may surprise you.

To cut right through it, I think the label reluctance to fully embrace downloadable lossless Atmos comes down to good old fashioned piracy concerns. IAA is DRM free - as it should be and a prerequisite personally for me to purchase any digital media. The Pineapple Thief has a loyal fan base that will buy their stuff, but if Pink Floyd for instance put their catalog up for lossless Atmos downloading, 1. they couldn't gate-keep the Atmos mix by forcing you to buy a $150+ limited box set (Steven Wilson - looking at you too) and 2. obviously it would be pirated to hell, and the group of people who are technically savvy enough play back via Kodi or whatever are also technically savvy enough to "find" it.

With traditional 2 channel streaming, the music industry has obviously figured out that people will pay a reasonable amount to have access to any song ever commercially released in 10 seconds, in lieu of pirating. I think the labels are just afraid of losing that control again.

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

To cut right through it, I think the label reluctance to fully embrace downloadable lossless Atmos comes down to good old fashioned piracy concerns. IAA is DRM free - as it should be and a prerequisite personally for me to purchase any digital media. The Pineapple Thief has a loyal fan base that will buy their stuff, but if Pink Floyd for instance put their catalog up for lossless Atmos downloading, 1. they couldn't gate-keep the Atmos mix by forcing you to buy a $150+ limited box set (Steven Wilson - looking at you too) and 2. obviously it would be pirated to hell, and the group of people who are technically savvy enough play back via Kodi or whatever are also technically savvy enough to "find" it.

With traditional 2 channel streaming, the music industry has obviously figured out that people will pay a reasonable amount to have access to any song ever commercially released in 10 seconds, in lieu of pirating. I think the labels are just afraid of losing that control again.

I mean, when it comes to media; it doesn't matter if something is a digital download, on an optical disc, streaming as a broadcast, or even on an analog medium like an LP or an old 8-track, ....there will always be piracy, with or without DRM protections but there will also always be people who want to buy, own & listen to the best possible version of their favorite music.

I personally think the reason for lack of available downloads is a more simple one; demand. There seems to be more people demanding for physical releases compared to downloads, which IMO is unfortunate because ultimately that is a battle that will not be won for physical media lovers. I realize that some people like to have something tactile that they can touch and put on a shelf, but isn't it the fact that we can own a lossless version of the music we love, at the core of what makes physical releases superior? We can have that with lossless downloads and it's much cheaper and much, much easier for the labels to implement compared to authoring & pressing discs and then shipping them all over the world.

I am thankful that companies like IAA and others are providing a service that I think is what the future of lossless multichannel audio will look like & IMO it will eventually replace the Blu-ray-Audio and SACD market.

 

[sjcorne]

I personally think the reason for lack of available downloads is a more simple one; demand.

Perhaps, but I think lack of awareness is the bigger issue. A lot of artists and people on the label/industry side seem to think streaming is the only release outlet for Atmos music. A few years ago, I interviewed a very in-demand mixer doing tons of catalog work for UMG and he didn't even know you could put Atmos on a Blu-Ray!

 

[kfbkfb]

Any possibility of buying the DD 5.1 compatibility downmix of Atmos (for streaming only) content (it would be a way to get a taste of the new surround mix)?

I was thinking of making DVD-Rs w/DD 5.1 in order to maximize "playability", DVD-Rs play on most DVD players and all send the DD 5.1 bitstream to the coax output.


Kirk Bayne

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

Any possibility of buying the DD 5.1 compatibility downmix of Atmos (for streaming only) content (it would be a way to get a taste of the new surround mix)?

I was thinking of making DVD-Rs w/DD 5.1 in order to maximize "playability", DVD-Rs play on most DVD players and all send the DD 5.1 bitstream to the coax output.


Kirk Bayne

I think you probably answered your own question with the part there in parenthesis "(...streaming only)".

As far as buying a separate Atmos 5.1 "downmix", it shouldn't be needed because if you don't have an Atmos setup with height speakers, you should still be able to play the surround mix as a 5.1 Dolby Digital+ mix, ...the Atmos metadata will just be ignored and the "bed" will be played.

I assume 99.9% of people just use AppleMusic to stream what they want to hear but before that existed, we had to buy what we wanted to hear through The iTunes store. It is still around & you can still pay for and download music through there, ...but I've never heard of anyone successfully buying an Atmos song or album there, ...only Atmos-encoded content included with movies or TV shows.

If you or anyone is curious and willing to spend at least $1, ...find a "Dolby Atmos Version" of an album & try it out through the iTunes store.

(For this particular album, the songs are each $0.99, & the whole album is $7.92)
https://music.apple.com/us/album/greatest-hits-vol-3-dolby-atmos-version/1627420301

 

[marpow]

Hot Topic it seems.
My experience:
I have downloaded MCH, Stereo and Atmos from various sites all mentioned in this thread.
They have come as different, bit rates and Khz in FLAC, they have come as DSD and within the last couple years Atmos in a MKV file, which just happens to be my preference.
I have a dedicated PC, that I remote access from another PC at my listening position. Why?, no clutter with cables across room.
My player of all music is JRiver software, currently at MC32.
For all FLAC and DSF files I am USB out of PC>MCH DAC>RCA's out> to AVR 7.1 section in rear. I do not have a 7.1 speaker config. I do have a 5.1 speaker config with 3 subs.
For MKV files (Atmos) I am still using JRiver as my player but HDMI out to AVR which handles the Dolby Atmos signal. My speakers for Atmos are 5 on the floor and 4 in the celling, with 3 subs.
JRiver is also able to show the MKV file chapter video (HDMI) if that is what I desire.

I have never had a problem and highly enjoy purchasing available music to download regardless of format.
Some sites are better than others with there download process, but in the end all are equal.
I do it as it is very convenient and I really like the music available by the various company's that offer music to purchase via download.

 

[kfbkfb]

I like to own the music I listen to (I still buy CDs [and of course Quadios] and I also buy some MP3 albums and singles from Amazon), offering a taste of the Dolby Atmos mix in the form of a DD 5.1 mix (that's automatically created as part of the Atmos process) that could be bought DRM free is appealing to me (I don't have an Atmos setup).

I don't save copies of my music purchases on my PC (except MP3s), I have several optical disc players for the various formats so making a DVD-R containing a large number of my purchased DD 5.1 mixes would be convenient.


Kirk Bayne

 

[barfle]

I like to own the music I listen to (I still buy CDs [and of course Quadios] and I also buy some MP3 albums and singles from Amazon), offering a taste of the Dolby Atmos mix in the form of a DD 5.1 mix (that's automatically created as part of the Atmos process) that could be bought DRM free is appealing to me (I don't have an Atmos setup).

I don't save copies of my music purchases on my PC (except MP3s), I have several optical disc players for the various formats so making a DVD-R containing a large number of my purchased DD 5.1 mixes would be convenient.


Kirk Bayne

I have a program (Roxio) that can burn “Music DVD” format. That is a stereo format that can hold around four hours of CD quality and over 40 hours of compressed audio on a two-layer DVD.

It also makes CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs. It’s under $100 as I recall, so maybe that can build what you’re after. I believe they have a limited free trial version, but I’ve owned my copy for long enough that I’ve forgotten the details.

 

[dabl]

Perhaps, but I think lack of awareness is the bigger issue. A lot of artists and people on the label/industry side seem to think streaming is the only release outlet for Atmos music. A few years ago, I interviewed a very in-demand mixer doing tons of catalog work for UMG and he didn't even know you could put Atmos on a Blu-Ray!

Agree this is a big factor. Taking this and running with it a little, I've found that recording engineers who work a lot are sometimes out of touch with what's happening with end user consumption. They're just too busy working all day making music to get into what's happening on the listening end. Somewhat related I think is, I've found many musicians who work a lot typically have the most minimal kind of music playback systems at home.

Add in that that the mechanics of downloads are completely foreign to many people, that word conjures 'computers' which is the last thing they want.

Just thinking out loud here but in the crazy idea department it's almost like the idea of downloads needs to be 'sold' to (some) people with a turn key solution, ie IAA hires a developer to create an app that connects to the service and handles the downloads with a nicely done interface. I'm thinking an Apple TV 4k and/or Nvidia Shield TV for current target hardware. Storage could be local with chained drives but more importantly could also be in the cloud. This would be a relatively small market.

I suppose the other end might look something like what Kaleidescape does, arranging for and securing the rights to sell movies in a lossless digital format including ones just out of theaters and not yet on disc for much higher end market, which would be far smaller in the music only world.

Anyway, all much easier said than done of course

For most of this audience I don't think many of us need or necessarily want any of that, just thinking about the world outside our little island here.

I do think if license holders and service providers can find a way to get a reasonable return on investment offering lossless surround streaming to the relatively small audience that would want that, that would absolutely be best for them but probably not for the artists or even the audience in some cases.

I think just like lossless streaming in stereo took some time to get there, it will probably happen in the surround arena as well, eventually.

To be clear, this is coming from a guy with a 150 TB server and plenty of room to grow.

 

[hi-res_edition]

To be clear, this is coming from a guy with a 150 TB server and plenty of room to grow.

What the heck server do you have that is 150TB? That is massive. What Raid level are you running too... ? How many HDD's?

 

[dabl]

What the heck server do you have that is 150TB? That is massive. What Raid level are you running too... ? How many HDD's?

Heh, Unraid, highly recommended. The beauty is you can start with pretty much any PC motherboard and case to host any mix of drives. I started with a big old tower case and a bunch of old IDE drives many years ago and eventually graduated to using a SuperMicro SuperChassis model I got on ebay for about $200. It's a 3U so 'only' 16 slots but with drives at 22 TB these days I don't see that being a problem. I could have gone 4U but didn't see the need.

I know there's a thread here from awhile back with people talking about the servers they use and I mentioned Unraid.

 

[barfle]

Heh, Unraid, highly recommended. The beauty is you can start with pretty much any PC motherboard and case to host any mix of drives. I started with a big old tower case and a bunch of old IDE drives many years ago and eventually graduated to using a SuperMicro SuperChassis model I got on ebay for about $200. It's a 3U so 'only' 16 slots but with drives at 22 TB these days I don't see that being a problem. I could have gone 4U but didn't see the need.

I know there's a thread here from awhile back with people talking about the servers they use and I mentioned Unraid.

I have a drobo 5N which is serving me well at this time. It takes a mixture of HD drives and makes whatever sort of RAID it can out of them, but they pretty much shut their doors about a year ago, so if it craps out, that cute little box is toast.

Occasionally, I buy a big muthah drive to replace something smaler in it, and I now have a stack of perfectly usable .5 TB drives gathering dust.

I know I need to move on from my beloved drobo, and I’ll look into Unraid.