Hey everyone!
I've done a bunch of reading on Atmos for music, and I've come away even more confused than before, so I figured someone here must have cracked the problem and can help create some clarity...
In short: what do I need to be able to use streaming services that support Atmos (TIDAL, Apple Music...) to play multichannel music to my speakers?
The long version:
I am currently religiously buying 5.1 physical releases, which I then rip and store as multichannel FLAC files so I can conveniently play them from my PC (which is connected to my receiver, which is connected to my 5.1 speakers). Imagine my excitement at the idea of being able to use a streaming service to directly cast the full Atmos catalogue to my setup! Except it seems really hard to get that to work in practice, somehow?
- Can you confirm that the Atmos tracks available on TIDAL or Apple Music do contain the orginal number of channels of audio, and they could theoretically support any number of physical speakers? I fear that some services just pre-bake a stereo mix from the original Atmos, which would make it impossible to scale back up to more than 2 channels...
- Are there receivers that support simply "casting" Atmos from any of these services, and that will correctly render the audio to match my speaker configuration?
- If not (or if these receivers are prohibitively expensive), can I just use my Windows PC to bitstream the Atmos from TIDAL/Apple Music to an Atmos-enabled receiver, so the receiver can do the decoding work?
- If not, is there another external device that would be able to do this instead? Like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield? Will they correctly render Atmos on a multichannel setup?
There might be other complications and solutions I'm not thinking of... Any input and experiences will be greatly appreciated!
I've done a bunch of reading on Atmos for music, and I've come away even more confused than before, so I figured someone here must have cracked the problem and can help create some clarity...
In short: what do I need to be able to use streaming services that support Atmos (TIDAL, Apple Music...) to play multichannel music to my speakers?
The long version:
I am currently religiously buying 5.1 physical releases, which I then rip and store as multichannel FLAC files so I can conveniently play them from my PC (which is connected to my receiver, which is connected to my 5.1 speakers). Imagine my excitement at the idea of being able to use a streaming service to directly cast the full Atmos catalogue to my setup! Except it seems really hard to get that to work in practice, somehow?
- Can you confirm that the Atmos tracks available on TIDAL or Apple Music do contain the orginal number of channels of audio, and they could theoretically support any number of physical speakers? I fear that some services just pre-bake a stereo mix from the original Atmos, which would make it impossible to scale back up to more than 2 channels...
- Are there receivers that support simply "casting" Atmos from any of these services, and that will correctly render the audio to match my speaker configuration?
- If not (or if these receivers are prohibitively expensive), can I just use my Windows PC to bitstream the Atmos from TIDAL/Apple Music to an Atmos-enabled receiver, so the receiver can do the decoding work?
- If not, is there another external device that would be able to do this instead? Like Apple TV or Nvidia Shield? Will they correctly render Atmos on a multichannel setup?
There might be other complications and solutions I'm not thinking of... Any input and experiences will be greatly appreciated!