Questions on Atmos quality on various streaming platforms

[LB-V]

My receiver uses analogue outs with no HDMI

Hello ManWhoCan. Looking at your profile, if current, your Denon AVR does not support Atmos. I assume you are somehow taking a digital stream to your PC, decoding and / or converting the stream to analog and pushing it to the Denon. If that is the case, I think there is a good probability that you are losing something in translation so to speak. Your AVR is only capable of 5.1 and you may not be capturing the correct analog channels from your PC and losing the rears. What you can hear at very high volume on the rears might be crosstalk. I am only guessing here.

But there are no general issues with any Atmos mix I've listened to from
Apple, with low volume in any channel. There are exceptions, but it's all mix dependent, not format.

My suggestion is to check and double check the path and settings I assume you have from digital stream in to the PC, via whatever player, DAC and finally the analog channels out to the Denon. Something is amiss!

 

[ManWhoCan]

An Atmos capable receiver/prepro with at least a 5.1.2 speaker setup.

Does that mean you think the only way to play & hear atmos is to buy a load of expensive new tech.? I'm using a PC and playing native 5.1 atmos files, downloaded to my HDDs, within Windows. As Windows can decode atmos why would I want to go out and buy new gear?

@LB-V thanks for trying to help.
I have checked and rechecked everything I can think of. I am willing to believe that lossless atmos might sound good with a good mix. However I'm only trying to deal with these lossy 5.1 streamed files, & am baffled at how bad they are. 5.1 with 800kbps bit rate in a file about the size of a CD and at almost Redbook resolution (16/48) has to lose a lot of musical info., somewhere and I can hear it. I'm not streaming, I'm playing files already captured from the stream, sitting on my HDDs, so the signal to the AVR is all analogue. It has been decoded within Windows 10.

 

[LB-V]

I wish I could help you!

But, as a reference point, if you are a surround sound enthusiast and can recognize a good mix, if you stream Wille Nelson's "A Beautiful Time" and it falls anything short of a magnificent presentation, I guarantee something is not dialed in correctly with your setup!

I love the music, but the mix is top gun. I listen on a 4.1 system....using phantom center.

Keep us posted on any revelations, etc.!

 

[LB-V]

I'm using a PC and playing native 5.1 atmos files, downloaded to my HDDs, within Windows.

I think @perzon57 is simply pointing out that by definition, Atmos is as a minimum, 5.1.2 set-up. That's all. You are indeed playing 5.1, but not Atmos. I should clarify, with a 5.1 setup, you may be playing Atmos, but you are not hearing it. You must have the additional speakers and of course, "decoding" the Atmos codec to place the sounds as intended on those additional speakers.

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

...

Many streaming Atmos mixes are mixed extremely front-heavy, perhaps you haven't heard a song yet with loud surround channels mixed in. In my opinion the majority of the streaming Atmos titles are a disappointment, ...they are mass-produced & a lot of them have ambience or reverb 90% of the time & every once in a while something might jingle in the surrounds here or there.

I would try taking a song that you know for sure has well-utilized surround channels, one that is highly recommended here and then load that into AudioMuxer, MMH, Foobar, etc & then convert it to 5.1 flac. Do a listening comparison between the flac conversion and the original DolbyDigital+Atmos file. They should sound the same. If you want you could even load the flac into Audacity and visually inspect the surround channels.

 

[admsh]

I'm sure you don't mean to sound so dismissive and unfriendly. My equipment is not from the 70s, silly, but it is current with the the early years of HDMI, which I'll leave up to you to research when that was.

Not at all. I'm not aware of any Atmos setup that does not rely on HDMI connections or an Atmos capable receiver that doesn't have HDMI inputs, I intended to be factual not dismissive. I truly apologise if it seemed that way. If anything I thought maybe I don't understand your problem.

If you had 70s Quad equipment that works most here would be quite envious.

 

[omnipotent1]

I don't find streamed Atmos to be that great hence I don't even bother with it and the streamed Atmos ripped files I've seen in the wild tell a story,they're just too compressed to compete with the real thing.

 

[perzon57]

I don't find streamed Atmos to be that great hence I don't even bother with it and the streamed Atmos ripped files I've seen in the wild tell a story,they're just too compressed to compete with the real thing.

Do you have a Atmos setup?

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

Not at all. I'm not aware of any Atmos setup that does not rely on HDMI connections or an Atmos capable receiver that doesn't have HDMI inputs, I intended to be factual not dismissive. I truly apologise if it seemed that way. If anything I thought maybe I don't understand your problem.

If you had 70s Quad equipment that works most here would be quite envious.

I think some are confused here, …maybe I’m one too, I’m not sure but here’s what I think I know; ManWhoCan doesn’t have height speakers or an Atmos-capable receiver but that in no way should prevent him or anyone from hearing a 5.1 mix. You don’t need HDMI connections either. All the Atmos audio can be decoded & folded down into 5.1 or 7.1 so nothing should get lost.

Just because someone doesn’t have a receiver doing the decoding, or doesn’t have height speakers, does not mean they can’t hear the surround channels.

If an Atmos mix is good, it should sound good or at least decent even on a 5.1 system; the exception I suppose would be if the front heights or front objects are primarily the only “extra” things happening in a “good” Atmos mix, then in that case, those would fold-down into the front of the 5.1 surround panorama & wouldn’t translate well as a good 5.1 surround mix.

 

[admsh]

I think some are confused here, …maybe I’m one too, I’m not sure but here’s what I think I know; ManWhoCan doesn’t have height speakers or an Atmos-capable receiver but that in no way should prevent him or anyone from hearing a 5.1 mix. You don’t need HDMI connections either. All the Atmos audio can be decoded & folded down into 5.1 or 7.1 so nothing should get lost.

Just because someone doesn’t have a receiver doing the decoding, or doesn’t have height speakers, does not mean they can’t hear the surround channels.

If an Atmos mix is good, it should sound good or at least decent even on a 5.1 system; the exception I suppose would be if the front heights or front objects are primarily the only “extra” things happening in a “good” Atmos mix, then in that case, those would fold-down into the front of the 5.1 surround panorama & wouldn’t translate well as a good 5.1 surround mix.

Exactly and they said they can't hear much from the rear speakers if that. So my first thought is this is either a very poor conversion to surround from stereo, or just some cross connections, but not actually surround sound. Maybe I'm still not understanding this, but even with 5.1 how would you not use HDMI when playing digital files? You'd need a computer with 6 analogue outs and a receiver with 6 analogue ins, no?

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

Maybe I'm still not understanding this, but even with 5.1 how would you not use HDMI when playing digital files? You'd need a computer with 6 analogue outs and a receiver with 6 analogue ins, no?

Analog connections should work. The other options that I know of are DisplayPort or Optical, they can transmit DolbyDigital. Technically, Optical is supposed to not be able to transfer DolbyDigital+ through it but I think I’ve actually been able to do that through mine, …it did have some drop-outs occasionally though.

 

[ManWhoCan]

Exactly and they said they can't hear much from the rear speakers if that. So my first thought is this is either a very poor conversion to surround from stereo, or just some cross connections, but not actually surround sound. Maybe I'm still not understanding this, but even with 5.1 how would you not use HDMI when playing digital files? You'd need a computer with 6 analogue outs and a receiver with 6 analogue ins, no?

Some people who are used to more modern tech (HDMI) seem to be unaware of what is possible with older (preHDMI) tech. Some people seem to think the only solution is to replace older tech with newer, but there are other methods to solve problems. I have exactly the required 'computer with 6 analogue outs and a receiver with 6 analogue ins' .

 

[ManWhoCan]

I think some are confused here, …maybe I’m one too, I’m not sure but here’s what I think I know; ManWhoCan doesn’t have height speakers or an Atmos-capable receiver but that in no way should prevent him or anyone from hearing a 5.1 mix. You don’t need HDMI connections either. All the Atmos audio can be decoded & folded down into 5.1 or 7.1 so nothing should get lost.

Just because someone doesn’t have a receiver doing the decoding, or doesn’t have height speakers, does not mean they can’t hear the surround channels.

If an Atmos mix is good, it should sound good or at least decent even on a 5.1 system; the exception I suppose would be if the front heights or front objects are primarily the only “extra” things happening in a “good” Atmos mix, then in that case, those would fold-down into the front of the 5.1 surround panorama & wouldn’t translate well as a good 5.1 surround mix.

You are the only one that seems to really understand the problems I'm facing, but in the end I think the issue is not equipment, connections nor decoding it is simply that these lossy (native 5.1) atmos streams from Apple are not very good mixes in the first place, with some extremely few outstanding exceptions.

 

[sjcorne]

You are the only one that seems to really understand the problems I'm facing, but in the end I think the issue is not equipment, connections nor decoding it is simly that these lossy native 5.1 atmos streams from Apple are not very good mixes in the first place.

Which album(s) did you listen to?

 

[JanBakker]

Have you tried to convert the files to flac and play them in Foobar with wasapi? Since I'm not atmos equipped and probably never will be, that's what I do and some of those lossy mixes sound pretty good to me.

 

[ManWhoCan]

Which album(s) did you listen to?

Please there is no need for anyone to feel they need to be defensive about the lossless Atmos streams they enjoy. I am not talking about those streams at all. I'm only asking exclusively about the lossy 5.1 16/48 streams from Apple.

Here is an example track from MediaInfo:
Audio
ID : 1
Format : E-AC-3 JOC
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3 with Joint Object Coding
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos
Codec ID : ec-3
Duration : 2 min 55 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 768 kb/s
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel layout : L R C LFE Ls Rs
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 16.1 MiB (95%)
Service kind : Complete Main
Encoded date : 2022-06-02 16:37:20 UTC
Tagged date : 2022-06-10 13:45:50 UTC
Complexity index : Not present / 16
Number of dynamic objects : 15
Bed channel count : 1 channel
Bed channel configuration : LFE

I consider the sample & bit rate, number of channels, file size etc., and ask myself what info is lost to result in this?

 

[ManWhoCan]

Have you tried to convert the files to flac and play them in Foobar with wasapi? Since I'm not atmos equipped and probably never will be, that's what I do and some of those lossy mixes sound pretty good to me.

I have tried it and for me they sound worse as flac. I have also tweaked Foobar to be able to decode m4a via FFmpeg Decoder Wrapper

 

[sjcorne]

Please there is no need for anyone to feel they need to be defensive about the lossless Atmos streams they enjoy. I am not talking about those streams at all. I'm only asking exclusively about the lossy 5.1 16/48 streams from Apple.

I’m not sure why you continue to insist on being confrontational when the membership here - myself included - is only trying to being helpful and understand your situation. Some (most?) of us have had a positive experience with streamed Atmos content.

“Which album(s) did you listen to?” is not a difficult question, and there was no defensiveness or malice behind it.

 

[ManWhoCan]

I’m not sure why you continue to insist on being confrontational when the membership here - myself included - is only trying to being helpful and understand your situation. Some (most?) of us have had a positive experience with streamed Atmos content.

“Which album(s) did you listen to?” is not a difficult question, and there was no defensiveness or malice behind it.

I politely asked people not to feel defensive as I could well understand how some people might take my comments about these lossy atmos mixes to be critical of the lossless atmos they are enjoying. I hope that makse my position a little more clear?
I have nothing to say about the lossless Atmos mixes, only about these lossy ones from Apple. Nor am I trying to be anti Apple. I only have experience of their lossy atmos streams so that is exclusively what I'm discussing here. So there is no need for anyone to be defensive. Sorry you consider that to be 'confrontational' when it is intended to head off misunderstandings that might lead to people reacting in a defensive manner.

It was easy to reply to your question "Which album(s) did you listen to." I supplied a list.
So now all it might come down to is possibly a difference of opinion about what is a good mix or not when listening to those albums. IMHO 'Tears For Fears - The Hurting' and 'The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds', were exceptional in that they had decent mixes with some audible info in the rears. Generally the rest on that list are mostly inaudible in the rears. The only way I can get a decent Mch mix balance is to lower the fronts to 75%.

 

[admsh]

I politely asked people not to feel defensive as I could well understand how some people might take my comments about these lossy atmos mixes to be critical of the lossless atmos they are enjoying. I hope that makse my position a little more clear?
I have nothing to say about the lossless Atmos mixes, only about these lossy ones from Apple. Nor am I trying to be anti Apple. I only have experience of their lossy atmos streams so that is exclusively what I'm discussing here. So there is no need for anyone to be defensive. Sorry you consider that to be 'confrontational' when it is intended to head off misunderstandings that might lead to people reacting in a defensive manner.

It was easy to reply to your question "Which album(s) did you listen to." I supplied a list.
So now all it might come down to is possibly a difference of opinion about what is a good mix or not when listening to those albums. IMHO 'Tears For Fears - The Hurting' and 'The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds', were exceptional in that they had decent mixes with some audible info in the rears. Generally the rest on that list are mostly inaudible in the rears. The only way I can get a decent Mch mix balance is to lower the fronts to 75%.

Some of the music on your list is objectively mixed pretty aggressively, and whether or not the files or lossy should not make such an extreme difference on what you're hearing (you first described it as almost nothing coming from the rears).