Dolby Atmos - Speaker vs. Headphone playback

[DrKlahn]

Very thoughtful response and I agree technical reasons are to blame for Dolby itself recommending headsets to hear Atmos. But isn't that just another way to say the same thing? Dolby says headphones are better at SHOWCASING a billion dollar product. Believe them.

As I said, I don't think that putting that on a web page that is likely being consumed on phone or PC is Dolby saying what you think they are. My thought is that it's to get people to not just play it on the phone or laptop speakers and coming away thinking "what's the big deal ?".

 

[jimfisheye]

Just FYI for anyone unaware that "Atmos headphones" doesn't mean some special quality of headphones that lend to binaural reproduction of spatial audio. This is another one of those combo products. It's a pair of headphones with a bluetooth receiver and Atmos decoder software built into the hardware. Most of these products will be aimed at lo-fi listening consumers or gamers and built with the cheapest components and skill known to man.

And of course decoding of Atmos and actually reproducing a surround sound mix in full quality are not synonymous! "Atmos _______" or "Atmos capable" refer to a product with a hardware Atmos decoder built in. Regardless if it has good or bad speakers or any way to reproduce sound.

This is all about access and subscriptions. Apple is going real hard along with Dolby on this too! Atmos controls are blanked out if you are not connected to approved hardware. (Fully hardware compatible is not enough. It needs to be on the approved whitelist.) Any media player app except the Dolby reference player gets height channels muted. That's not even playing encoded Atmos which is already locked out by default. That's with standard (not encoded) 12 or more channel wav audio files.

Aside. The Atmos binaural renderer cues off objects. You need to have panning objects in motion (automating the Dolby metadata panners) to make that system do anything. Otherwise the stereo folddown and binaural render are identical.

 

[austinsignal]

wow. those samples are incredible on my Airpod Max phones

 

[austinsignal]

Yes binaural and Ambisonic playback over regular headphones has been around awhile, but it hasn't been without its challenges. Results are sort of all over the board as mentioned here regarding personalized HRTFs.

Dolby Atmos is a valid attempt to fix many of the complaints. Apple also has been instrumental. And as you may have guessse its not without controversy between these two. One area of contention is the binaural renderer: Apple is insisting on using their own HRTF render. DolthAtmos ADM file

Very cool to hear about your experience! Especially with Houghten. Are you using Audiomovers Apple Binaural Renderer to evaluate the final?

For those who don't mix in Atmos, there is a controversial move being made Apple--they are applying their own binaural rendering HRTFs to all Atmos music. (supposedly because they are better and they claim to be able to personalize and literally measure every listener's unique head.) So you do not hear the Dolby Atmos binaural render through Apple Music. As an engineer using Atmos in a DAW, you listen and make decisions over headphones to the Dolby binaural monitor. This is quite astonishing. Audiomovers is the only software I know that let's you preview how it will actually sound on the Apple platform.

As of late, I've been sending mixes out with SAMPLY. They get their ADM's, BIN (for non Apple binaural playback) and mp4 for Apple Spatial. One thing - if you're listening on an Apple device but not using Apple headphones, you're hearing the Binaural render. Another update - the distance settings in the Binaural downmix settings are carried through to Apple Spatial downmixes too, which were not previously....I haven't tested this but it's my understanding.

 

[JimofMaine]

As I said, I don't think that putting that on a web page that is likely being consumed on phone or PC is Dolby saying what you think they are. My thought is that it's to get people to not just play it on the phone or laptop speakers and coming away thinking "what's the big deal ?".

My point is simply Dolby is happy to showcase their premiere technology to the world through headsets.

 

[zdjh22]

wow. those samples are incredible on my Airpod Max phone....are there any music samples anywhere?!

Not that I know of. Anyone with an A16 can produce binaural recordings pretty easily. If there are any non-copyrighted music samples you'd like let me know. I'll look through the Dolby demo videos to see if any have music, in case those are not copyrighted. Note that Atmos, all other Dolby, all DTS, auro3D, and general multichannel PCM can be converted to binaural.

 

[JimofMaine]

As of late, I've been sending mixes out with SAMPLY. They get their ADM's, BIN (for non Apple binaural playback) and mp4 for Apple Spatial. One thing - if you're listening on an Apple device but not using Apple headphones, you're hearing the Binaural render. Another update - the distance settings in the Binaural downmix settings are carried through to Apple Spatial downmixes too, which were not previously....I haven't tested this but it's my understanding.

It's not easy to pin down exactly what supports Atmos--it does seem to be fluid. (Good to keep in mind for people viewing this thread at later dates)

I do believe some type of spatialization can be applied to non-Apple headsets under certain conditions. It is all over the place as of April 2024. Turning Atmos to "On" verses "Automatic" allows certain headset to receive spatial information. Same exact settings listening over USB or hardwire are clearly fed stereo. Same holds true for connecting via MacBook bt and different results for different versions of the MacBook. Sending Atmos to a wireless streamer w headset out creates the same unknown compatibility. True with headphone DACs also. So you can see blanket statements are hard to make.

Apple Atmos branded headsets (which includes Beats) are the only headsets to receive full binaural optimizations--according Apple. Apple now creates personalized HRTFs by scanning the listeners head and creating new HRTFs...again only on Apple headsets. Head-tracking is another HRTF binaural Apple headset exclusive. So might you get a binaural signal over non-Apple headsets? You might get a spatialized stereo version or possibly a non-optimized binaural version, but as of today only Apple grants full binaural to Apple headsets.

 

[JediJoker]

It's a pair of headphones with a bluetooth receiver and Atmos decoder software built into the hardware.

Many (most?) actually use proprietary wireless transmitters to avoid the issues associated with Bluetooth transmission (interference, low bandwidth, latency, etc.).

 

[jimfisheye]

Many (most?) actually use proprietary wireless transmitters to avoid the issues associated with Bluetooth transmission (interference, low bandwidth, latency, etc.).

That would be wise! My point is only to try to remove some of the mystery. They're still standard audio headphones. The "Atmos" part is a built in decoder. These would actually have audio interface style circuitry built in. Receive the stream on the radio. Audio interface has access to the Atmos decoder codec stored in firmware. Analog output from the (internal) interface connected to a pair of small headphone amp channels and finally to the speakers.

So... MANY devices built in!
- radio receiver
- audio interface
- headphone amp
- headphones themself

Most popular products found will be lo-fi stuff like Beats or worse or some of the gamer stuff. Someone COULD build an audiophile version. Someone probably will or already has too. The main target audience is more lo-fi listeners though. Using Atmos encoding to make them have to go out and buy new headphones.

 

[edisonbaggins]

Interestingly, I’ve been evaluating Apple Air Pod Pro, used with iPhone 15, for Spatial Audio playback.
Among other topics to result, I plan to do a video comparing that to Spatial Audio playback on my home 7.2.4 system.

 

[austinsignal]

As of late, I've been sending mixes out with SAMPLY. They get their ADM's, BIN (for non Apple binaural playback) and mp4 for Apple Spatial. One thing - if you're listening on an Apple device but not using Apple headphones, you're hearing the Binaural render. Another update - the distance settings in the Binaural downmix settings are carried through to Apple Spatial downmixes too, which were not previously....I haven't tested this but it's my understanding.

Not that I know of. Anyone with an A16 can produce binaural recordings pretty easily. If there are any non-copyrighted music samples you'd like let me know. I'll look through the Dolby demo videos to see if any have music, in case those are not copyrighted. Note that Atmos, all other Dolby, all DTS, auro3D, and general multichannel PCM can be converted to binaural.

I am seriously thinking about getting an A16.

 

[austinsignal]

Interestingly, I’ve been evaluating Apple Air Pod Pro, used with iPhone 15, for Spatial Audio playback.
Among other topics to result, I plan to do a video comparing that to Spatial Audio playback on my home 7.2.4 system.

Truly not being trollish here, but not sure what the point is in comparing speakers to headphones. Different animals. However, after hearing the binaural clips from the A16 mentioned previously in this thread - THAT would be worth comparing to speakers. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any way for binaural renders from th A16 to be streamable to consumers in any scalable way.

 

[austinsignal]

That would be wise! My point is only to try to remove some of the mystery. They're still standard audio headphones. The "Atmos" part is a built in decoder. These would actually have audio interface style circuitry built in. Receive the stream on the radio. Audio interface has access to the Atmos decoder codec stored in firmware. Analog output from the (internal) interface connected to a pair of small headphone amp channels and finally to the speakers.

So... MANY devices built in!
- radio receiver
- audio interface
- headphone amp
- headphones themself

Most popular products found will be lo-fi stuff like Beats or worse or some of the gamer stuff. Someone COULD build an audiophile version. Someone probably will or already has too. The main target audience is more lo-fi listeners though. Using Atmos encoding to make them have to go out and buy new headphones.

It's not easy to pin down exactly what supports Atmos--it does seem to be fluid. (Good to keep in mind for people viewing this thread at later dates)

I do believe some type of spatialization can be applied to non-Apple headsets under certain conditions. It is all over the place as of April 2024. Turning Atmos to "On" verses "Automatic" allows certain headset to receive spatial information. Same exact settings listening over USB or hardwire are clearly fed stereo. Same holds true for connecting via MacBook bt and different results for different versions of the MacBook. Sending Atmos to a wireless streamer w headset out creates the same unknown compatibility. True with headphone DACs also. So you can see blanket statements are hard to make.

Apple Atmos branded headsets (which includes Beats) are the only headsets to receive full binaural optimizations--according Apple. Apple now creates personalized HRTFs by scanning the listeners head and creating new HRTFs...again only on Apple headsets. Head-tracking is another HRTF binaural Apple headset exclusive. So might you get a binaural signal over non-Apple headsets? You might get a spatialized stereo version or possibly a non-optimized binaural version, but as of today only Apple grants full binaural to Apple headsets.

There are 2 versions of Binaural - Apple Spatial and Dolby Binaural. Both originate from the ADM BWF master. Apple uses 5.1 downmix from ADM BWF’s to create Apple Spatial - not sure I would consider that ‘full Binaural’ - but generally I like it. Amazon and Tidal get Dolby Binaural from the same ADM BWF - is that ‘full Binaural’ …?

 

[edisonbaggins]

Truly not being trollish here, but not sure what the point is in comparing speakers to headphones. Different animals. However, after hearing the binaural clips from the A16 mentioned previously in this thread - THAT would be worth comparing to speakers. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any way for binaural renders from th A16 to be streamable to consumers in any scalable way.

Because 99% of Spatial Audio listeners are not using loud speaker arrays.
And I’ll give a bit of a spoiler: my first Air Pods test was very impressive.
I am interested in all things multichannel, whether or not most QQers are passionate about a certain topic.

 

[quadrifonico]

This thread sounds obvious but is not that much after all; I admit I never tried Atmos certified headphones lemme understand please how do they differ from a normal pair? We listen to multichannel music through normal speakers. So as far as I know or your headphones produce the illusion of spacial audio with a "filter" or they have many speakers inside of the pads like certain gaming headphones
please correct me where I'm wrong

 

[zdjh22]

I am seriously thinking about getting an A16.

Tons of caveats, but I’m really glad I went for mine last summer. I don’t think any other headphone solution really compares, except for perhaps the Sony 360 RA mixer software (but that doesn’t do Atmos AFAIK).

Be sure to check out the dedicated thread at head-fi (“Smyth Research Realiser A16”) - well over 15,000 posts!

 

[austinsignal]

Because 99% of Spatial Audio listeners are not using loud speaker arrays.
And I’ll give a bit of a spoiler: my first Air Pods test was very impressive.
I am interested in all things multichannel, whether or not most QQers are passionate about a certain topic.

Yes, they are impressive. I check mixes with them every day!

 

[edisonbaggins]

Yes, they are impressive. I check mixes with them every day!

Btw, I got the idea to investigate Air Pods, due to the vast amount of Spatial Audio content that is really not of much interest to (my impression of) the AVR/processor/amps/loudspeaker demographic.
Being part of that demographic, I am clueless about most of the artists/groups. Got me wondering who the h#*l it's all for. It must sound better than plain ol' stereo to these folks, using Air Pods, Beats, a sound bar, or whatever, or why would Apple bother with Spatial Audio -- it must draw some faithful subscribers.

 

[JimofMaine]

This thread sounds obvious but is not that much after all; I admit I never tried Atmos certified headphones lemme understand please how do they differ from a normal pair? We listen to multichannel music through normal speakers. So as far as I know or your headphones produce the illusion of spacial audio with a "filter" or they have many speakers inside of the pads like certain gaming headphones
please correct me where I'm wrong

If I understand your question, Dolby or Apple devices and headsets are really no different than regular headsets, it's the content that will be different. They put it behind a sort of paywall. ...Apple for sure.

There is plenty of binaural content out there (not on Apple) that is open source and any headset works. Just search Youtube for binaural.

 

[JimofMaine]

There are 2 versions of Binaural - Apple Spatial and Dolby Binaural. Both originate from the ADM BWF master. Apple uses 5.1 downmix from ADM BWF’s to create Apple Spatial - not sure I would consider that ‘full Binaural’ - but generally I like it. Amazon and Tidal get Dolby Binaural from the same ADM BWF - is that ‘full Binaural’ …?

Agreed. As mentioned up above, it's a controversial move on Apple's part. It creates big issues for mastering in Atmos. However, I do not think Apple is creating it's HRTF off of a 5.1 mixdown because that would sacrifice the height channels.