Describe the "new HiFi sound"?

@kota1 yes I have, a good friend owns a recording and mastering studio. While that does not qualify me as any kind of an expert, I’ve heard it, and do not prefer Atmos (yet) for my regular music listening experience, personally. This all goes back to the original source, recordings, tracks (as you mentioned) and how it’s orchestrated from the get-go. And so what recrordings are optimized for this, that we like to listen to. Not much yet, is it evolving, yes. This is the underlying point I’m making for my own usage. You have your own opinion about Atmos, good for you.

I do run a full home theater at home. Tried Atmos, went back to 5.1 DD. Like it more and most of the content I watch or concerts is still Dolby 5.1 still today.

Also, with Atmos I did some additional in-room testing with a group after hours at a local magnolia store, just for fun and to see if the sales guys had ever really compared directly. Wanted to see what average mainstream Atmos systems sound like, what regular people use. We used a full Atmos setup, all ML speakers, listened to all kinds of movie tracks and concerts we all liked. Turned up the volume pretty good to make sure we were hearing everything well. It sounded okay, kinda confused in some ways. Some tracks better than others. Was not that enjoyable for concerts videos, and you can tell when the playback is not optimized for Atmos, or the simulation modes they had on was a mess. Not an optimum set up, but tried it for about three hours. In the end, we all agree what still sounded best to all of us.

We then set up two very larger Martin Logan electrostatic speakers, two subs, and started going through movies and concerts one by one. They were all shocked how good it really sounded in plain old vanilla stereo. 5 of 5 of us actually preferred the stereo playback to our own surprise. So, go figure, at least for the test samples we did. The big stereo format was more cohesive to all of us at louder volume levels - for whatever reason. Less confused sounding. Agree, is the content optimized for Atmos.  Yes, agree, in absolutely perfect circumstances, it can sound nice, but is it better. Jury is still out for some on this topic.  

Will it change more in the future for the type of listening I do/prefer, maybe, yet I still have yet to hear good Atmos for music, concerts. Maybe down the road. For music, back to 2ch class A and tube amp listening for me, for now. Best of luck with your Atmos research, keep up the good work👍

@decooney

Like I said before, you need to have a system setup at home before you can properly evaluate anything. I think you are being dismissive out of ignorance.

BTW, you can do atmos with tubes like member @brianlucey , it is not an either or decision.

I have noticed that the dumbest comments (frankenmusic?) all come from people who don’t have an atmos setup and are clinging to legacy (antique?) two channel setups that they basically spent way too much money on. How else can they voice their bitterness of buyers remorse?

As for Martin Logan, great choice for an atmos system using their Motion AI speakers for surrounds and height channels in addition to those two towers:

https://www.audioadvice.com/videos-reviews/martinlogan-motion-home-theater-speaker-options

@kota1 re-read my post, already tried it. Did not like it yet. Not yet.

Yes I’ve actually chatted with Brian Lucey some, we have had some tube amplifiers in common. For common music, still prefer really good 2-channel stereo for now. 

Best of luck to you on your passion and research with Atmos. :)

Thin and bright since baffles are too small loudspeakers are too small designers of such are aiming for a more flat extension on top while the rest is overly small. Thus requiring baffle step corrections, impedance correction, requiring massive power to squeak out any SPL causing thermal compression toss in limited dynamic range and you have the modern fatiguing sound audiophiles crave and think is the absolute sound. No wonder so many hardly use systems or are on constant upgrade paths. The gear is designed to fatigue so you can buy new gear and repeat the cycle.

@johnk 

 No wonder so many hardly use systems or are on constant upgrade paths. The gear is designed to fatigue so you can buy new gear and repeat the cycle.

+1. that is why you hear the lamest acoustic recordings at audio shows, You can't point two speakers at your head and expect not to be fatigued. That is why i upgraded to immersive audio.