Describe the "new HiFi sound"?

@decooney 

IDK what you mean by audience sitting at the center and atmos making sense. 

Before I type a response I just want to ask if you have a system setup for atmos in your home. If we are talking what makes sense we need to be specific. There are good and bad mixes in everything. There are atmos mixes where it sounds like you are standing right at the position of the conductor. There are mixes when you are in the audience and many other types. What specific track or album are you referring to where cymbals play behind you?? Your post is written like you don't have a proper atmos setup or just very little experience.

Do you realize that most mixes start at the microphone into multiple tracks before they get compressed into just 2 channels for stereo? The don't start in stereo at all.

Listen to the way mastering engineer Michael Romanowski describes atmos music at the 1:30 mark, that is a pretty good summary. At 2:20 he talks about the difference between stereo and atmos both from the listeners perspective as well as the composers:

https://youtu.be/zWhJqsg6F30

Right, well the problem is that Atmos is based (started) primarily as a movie format. That makes sense…multichannel sound for special effects and cues. Problem is it involves mostly non audiophile equipment and or would be cost prohibitive if scaled up for most people. Ideally, it would add more of a sense of space around the sound if it were a live recording, but could only offer fake cues for studio recordings. Most of my music is from by gone days…certainly not current mainstream garbage. A properly set up stereo with a great recording can be immersive on its own…music designed for Atmos sounds like Frankenmusic! Strong Quadraphonic vibes I’m afraid. But again…midfi gear, so it’s a non starter.

@dave_b

You can list problems with stereo too. I would say that until you (or anyone for that matter) can understand what atmos is or isn’t you need to have a proper system setup in your home. Not having a system is as you say... a non starter.

Here is the president of Grammophon records describing how they can take multi-track masters and recreate the acoustics of the concert halls they were recorded in. Then they get to present the work to the artists that are on the recording in dolby atmos. This is a 3 minute video and if the artists themselves are "absolutely blown away" like violinist Daniel Hope is why would the MLP be any different at home?

"It’s not about the sound its about the experience. Once you have listened to your own pieces in Dolby Atmos there is no going back"

https://youtu.be/lxDVdvmCPd8