Has anyone abandoned stereo for atmos for music?
I’m very happy with my 2 channel system, listening happily for hours a day. But I created a second system with a tv for obvious reasons. Somehow I didn’t realize all the music only mixes created for atmos. The object oriented mixing takes place based on your setup, mine happens to be 5.1, but I suppose you can add many more speakers.. but the lightbulb is that this sounds completely different from stereo. Some mixes are better than others, but the creativity in how music can be presented is thrilling. Classical is adopting it for every release. And most modern artists. And retro re mixes like the talking heads catalog. Since Apple is heavily invested it doesn’t seem like a fad like mqa. It’s also free to try. I’ve heard a setup at Axpona, but surprised that it isn’t embraced here.
For those with sound quality as the priority for music will have a two channel system for music and a home theater. I do. The difference in sound quality for music given the same investment level in two channel vs multichannel is huge.
The number of ATMOS recordings are in the thousands I believe and two channel recordings in the millions. |
@dain The pushback here is quite substantial. Twenty-five years ago it was against digital. I would like to hear more about your experiences. |
I abandoned having a multimedia system for a sound bar and a stereo. Part of my decision was based on living space - I wanted to down size and appreciate an open floor plan. I'm open to listening to music and find some of demos and various interesting. Regarding ATMOS, I'm not planning on a major change to my audio equipment due to a format - but you never know. I thought CDs would replace LPs. |
@abnerjack thanks! Odd that the minutae that is discussed here with gusto that this isn’t a hot topic. My experience is this technology isn’t for movies which may be why we ignore it. It’s the freedom to reproduce the music as the artist intended. Were used to mountains of reverb to indicate space. In atmos, rather than channels, it’s objects. Each sound can be placed in relative space and the receiver decodes it for your speaker setup. Phase and bass management is spectacular, but the aha moment is all these tunes are reimagined without the constraints of two channel. It’s that night and day difference that is truly engaging. The problems of having lots of speakers is an issue, but they have less to do so easier to get great definition . More like an array, with lots of math to keep phase issues at bay. My producer friends are embracing this for the money, but also the creative opportunity. I am in on the ride, and getting my Audio pals here in Chicago to try it. It seems to deliver what we want from our systems anyway, so well worth the time compared to other audiophile junk like bitrate or mqa. |
