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Dolby Atmos - is it for Audiophiles?

A friend asked me over to his house this morning to audition Dolby Atmos on his pretty good 2 channel system.

Apparently - Apple are going to convert their entire streaming library to Atmos (please don’t shoot the messenger) and another well known streaming service is going to adopt it also.

Since this is my first exposure to Dolby Atmos, I came away a little confused

From the brief audition I experienced...
  • some tracks presented very well - better clarity, separation and dynamics with larger more articulate image
  • other tracks were less impressive, especially the really old tracks
  • some classical tracks sounded quite shrill and harsh
  • and one of the more recently recorded tracks did not sound too much different from the regular stereo version - but then it was Taylor Swift - again, don’t shoot the messenger:-)
Is this really meant for two channel systems?
  • it seems it may be targeting Airpod users - as opposed to 2-channel systems that use speakers
  • from the description (i.e. diagrammatically ) it looks like surround sound for Airpods.
  • does it work with existing surround sound systems?
  • it seems it only works with Atmos enabled devices - how long before my Node 2i streamer becomes obsolete?
I must admit - when it worked well it was quite impressive, but that was not even 50% of the time, so it seems there is work to be done.
  • violins sometimes sound quite harsh
  • cellos sometimes sounded very "thin" - poor bottom end and poor timbre
  • some orchestras sounded very unnatural in the top end and less bottom end than normal

If you have first hand experience with Atmos, please share your thoughts/insights with the rest of us

Many Thanks - Steve


williewonka
fiesta75
1,378 posts
 
You nailed this one, +1👍
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Back in the day the sound track ran alongside the film, in the form of squiggles, literally the analog signal. It was the visual analog of magnetic tape, read by photo-cell instead of a tape head.

Movie sound tracks were then all analog, and to this day sound great.

But we didn’t know it, because most movies back then were watched in movie theaters with usually something like one or maybe two 15" speakers behind the screen. Crap amps too.

Hardly anyone remembers, but a big reason Star Wars was the huge hit it was, it was one of the first movies to be released with George Lucas sound quality, the results of experiments done with Tomlinson and Holman: THX.

Not ones to miss out on easy money they started adding speakers, and needed a new format for getting all those channels off the little bit of space running alongside the film. Probably a few old cinephiles will recall the wars between Dolby Digital and Sony, etc.

The public face of this was all sound quality. In reality it was all about the Benjamin’s. Always has been, always will be. The winner was the one with the best financial moves. Well, why not? Film is a visual format.

Yeah sure the Foley guys win Academy Awards, but let’s face it, they win them basically for making The Terminator sound menacing, not for anything really to do with sound quality.

Dolby might not be the furthest thing from audiophile. That is still reserved for the AVR. But man is it ever a close call.
audioguy85's avatar
audioguy85
2,009 posts
 
Its for movies....two channel is two channel and should be left that way.
au_lait
335 posts
 
Been to all the pro demos, heard in a few environments. It’s just simply not good for music. It’s a theatre effect at best and a gimmick at worst. 
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,224 posts
 
I have a simple solution, don't stream. Streaming is for Lazy people. I takes effort and risk to build up an excellent collection of music.
Dolby Atmos? Just a theater thing. Theater people will swallow anything that sounds cool. They want to argue about such worthless things as pixels, something you do not want to see. Amazon? Do I smell money changing hands, a little slap on he back? We'll force all those peons into getting new equipment with Atmos decoding? 

As Studebaker Hock, the new superhero of the current economic crisis would say, "Get the Picture?" 
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