I don't have a home theater or 7.1ch headphones to listen to Dolby Atmos releases on TIDAL but I download it for a very important reason. The songs in Dolby Atmos have a higher dynamic range than the stereo release. (except for few albums) I hope I can explain it well since English is not my mother tongue You know about The Loudness War, is a trend of increasing audio levels in recorded music (Wikipedia) When creating 5.1ch versions of songs, they use the uncompressed master (unless the instrumental is already compressed) I'll show you by comparing the audio of the original release in stereo vs the dolby atmos downmix to stereo. Open the images in a new tab to see the comparison better Example 1: Bad Bunny - Callaita 24bit/44.1kHz (QOBUZ) vs Dolby Atmos 5.1ch downmix to 2.0ch (TIDAL) Example 2 TRI.BE - LOBO 16bit/44.1kHz (QOBUZ) vs Dolby Atmos 5.1ch downmix to 2.0ch (TIDAL) I put -12dB on the Stereo version to put it at the same dB amount as the song intro in the dolby atmos version to stereo As you can see, the audio is super compressed, you can see the sacrilege that the song did to it. Example 3: Selena Gomez - Baila Conmigo (feat. Rauw Alejandro) 24bit/44.1kHz (QOBUZ) vs Dolby Atmos 5.1ch downmix to 2.0ch (TIDAL) This song is an example that if the master of the instrumental is already compressed, even if it's a dolby atmos version, you won't notice the difference since they can't do anything, as I said before, this doesn't happen in all dolby atmos releases If you think it's wrong to convert 5.1ch songs to stereo then you're partly right. Since there are songs that were well mixed to be heard properly This song is a good example: Alex Ubago - Aunque no te pueda ver (feat. Matisse) You can even extract the acapella (sometimes clean) thanks to the fact that in some songs they put the lead vocal in the center channel But not all the songs on dolby atmos are well mixed, they only do it to re-release the album and make money Playboi Carti - TeenX (feat. Future) It seems that the only thing they do is to decrease the volume by half, put the song in 4 channels and increase the stereo sounds of the rear channels to give a false sense of surround I hope you have understood me, if you have any questions about what I am explaining, you can comment in both English and Spanish.
So am very thankful for this forum in allowing me to download various Atmos Music in m4a EAC3 format for testing purposes for my new Sony ATMOS soundbar HT-A7000. When I say testing I do mean that because ya, that's all Atmos Music is going to be used for in my household because man, I got to say most of it is just not worth it paying for a Tidal high-tier subscription just to get Atmos. Perhaps if it was in lossless TrueHD instead of lossy EAC3 it would sound better? I don't know. First problem is the varying volumes, even in the same album. I am constantly running the volume up & down. Next is that most of it is really low volume (Elton John Diamonds main culprit) so gotta run the volume up really high so when going when going back to Plex and you might forget to lower the volume and you're blowing your speakers out. And then finally no big selection for Atmos music that I actually want to hear (or even heard of) in Atmos. So I will be sticking with regular old mp3's so I don't have to wear my remote volume buttons out haha. Note: just in case anyone interested reads this... placing these EAC3/m4a Atmos tracks in your music folder and using Emby it can play these EAC3/m4a tracks and keep the Atmos so that's really great instead of casting with VLC Player which also works well. But if you are using Plex it doesn't keep the Atmos which really sucks. I even posted on Plex forum about this and they don't care. Haven't tried Jellyfin yet. Thanks again super sharers
, btw TrueHD is not worth for soundbars it would be more interesting if it’s playing on setup with multiple mono speakers and for playback i strongly recommend to use an Apple TV, tvOS got the full support of the codec
Where do you use Emby?, i used Emby on the Apple TV and it doesnt keep the Atmos metadata, only the standard Dolby Audio. However i realized that Plex keeps the Atmos metadata on the WebOS app but i dont like to use the TV app since the performance is bad.
I use the Emby Server on a Win7 laptop and the Emby for AndroidTV app on my Sony TV. Atmos info is transferred to my Sony soundbar via E-ARC
@UHD4K I just came across this post and I find it interesting. I am trying to understand it but I do not see the difference in dynamic range. What should I look for in the screenshots above? I think the second screenshot in example 1 is coming from a wrong song (screenshot on top is from Callaita.flac screenshot below is from song LOBO.wav) so they cannot be directly compared. Or am I missing something here? So, which two screenshots can be directly compared and what should I be looking at to be able to tell that atmos files have higher dynamic range than stereo? Are you saying that: 1. a flac recorded in stereo has lower dynamic range than a stereo file created from downmixing an atmos file or 2. a stereo file created from downmixing the atmos has lower dynamic range than the two LR front channels of an atmos file? I am not an expert but I would expect that an audio channel downmixed from several separate channels would have lower dynamic range. Ultimately, if you downmix sounds taken from an infinite number of channels into one single channel you will get just white noise. And the other way round, if you split the sounds from one channel into several separate channels then each of the channels will have higher dynamic range than the one original channel, That is just physics and an intentional wrong doing of the sound engineer. Right?
Very interesting read. Thank you all for posting your inputs. Is there any reason so many mixes are so bad? I can think of Lady Gaga for example. Her mixes are mostly garbage. Especially the silent seconds in the beginning of a lot of her hits. It destroys the experience.
