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Atmos’ killer app? Sounds like, amusingly, headphones

I read a great article from a non-audiophile here. It raises a good point...if atmos can deliver 85% of the sound through headphones rather than speakers, then *that* is going to be massive. 

I had never thought about how if you had a good remaster, with the digital data, you could do some cool things with respect to actually having different “tracks” getting to your ears at the same time. Instead of having a mixed waveform simulating that, you can actually get individual waves. 

Granted, you will need to remaster tracks, but...I would really like to hear that on orchestral pieces. 
avlee
avlee OP
84 posts
 
One last nugget: I’m not quite sure how Atmos can generate individual waves with headphones and have them arrive at the same time, and neither does the author. I think we have to assume the headphone experience is using mashed up waves, but again, if it’s just 85% of the experience with speakers, a lot more people will appreciate that over folks who have more complex hifi setups like ours. *if* atmos mastered music can sound better, imagine Dolby Atmos mastered audio on Apple Music or Tidal. The reach could be massive. 

Not trying to evangelize anything about Atmos. I just thought this article would be a nice nugget for thought. 
auxinput
2,920 posts
 

I don’t think Atmos will render music any better than your typically hi-res 24/96 or 24/192. It all depends on how the recording itself was produced.

In addition, I don’t know that Atmos at the home user will be any better than normal old Dolby TrueHD or DTS-MA. My understanding is that the blurays are encoded with normal TrueHD data, but with the additional height channel data being done as "extended data" that special processors will be able to "decode into height channels". I don’t think the "object oriented" data of atmos is presented for the home listener. I believe it is really only used to mix/produce the movie soundtrack. Then the multi-channel result is encoded as standard TrueHD or TrueHD+height.

avlee OP
84 posts
 
I think - and admittedly, I could be wrong - but as in the article, it appears that music *remastered* for Dolby Atmos can take advantage - even in stereo - of how atmos can push different portions of the music to you via different paths. Current surround systems only use this for the “gee whiz” effects in movies. But it looks like at least one producer (for the remastered REM CD) used the timing differences to apparently send multiple streams of music from different instruments to the same “location”. 

If we think about what what this means...currently if I record and then playback two instruments at the same time, with a normal sound processor you get a convoluted waveform arriving at you, simulating the combined sound arriving at you at the same time. You don’t get separate sounds per instrument because the system a) isn’t programmed to do that and b) the music likely wasn’t mastered as such.

The REM remaster seems like it was pushing differently recorded instruments through different speakers, all arriving at the listener at the same time. So, he could clearly distinguish sounds. It’s interesting. 

It doesn’t seem like this should be impossible even for a 5.1 system...assuming the producer records instruments separately, the right software should be able to do this even for a DD5.1 setup.


avlee OP
84 posts
 
The article talks about a BluRay audio remaster of an REM CD. It has little to nothing to talk about 3D effects.

quote: “Dolby Atmos wasn't converting this song into a surround-sound frenzy of "hey, over there!" sound effect placement. This still felt like a carefully constructed stereo mix. The biggest difference was more low- and high-end frequencies could comfortably sit next to each other at each given point.”
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