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This article is high on audiophile waffle and low on substance! Atmos-for-the-home is a fad that's being heavily pushed by music studios. It makes total sense

by nippoo 5y ago

This article is high on audiophile waffle and low on substance! Atmos-for-the-home is a fad that's being heavily pushed by music studios. It makes total sense for movies (the concept of an object-based audio standard which gets rendered to however many speakers are in your theatre saves a huge amount of hassle on mixing and QCing dozens of mixes in LCR, 5.1, 7.1... 22.2, etc) but for most people who aren't sitting in a purpose-built listening room it has very limited utility. If you've got a single "Atmos" speaker in the corner of your kitchen, should it really attempt to spatialise the audio coming from your shelf? Even if you put speakers all around your living room, unless there's a defined "centre" position it doesn't make much sense. Headphones are even worse. Do you ignore head-tracking information (in which case the binaural downmix will almost certainly be worse than a properly rendered stereo mix - just switch from stereo to Atmos on Apple Music on headphones for an example - the stereo versions almost all sound better) or use head-tracking information in real time (in which case, turn a corner while you're walking and suddenly the lead vocal is coming from the left)? Atmos/object-based mixing is a very sensible evolution in pro audio, for sure. But Atmos on an iPhone speaker is a weird bit of marketing that doesn't really make much sense...

acdha 5y ago
> This article is high on audiophile waffle and low on substance! This is standard Scoble: he’s a professional promoter who’s made a living sounding excited about how The! World! Is! Changing! Even before the sexual harassment news a couple years back he’d lost a lot of following because there are primary sources you could go directly to instead.
nitrogen 5y ago
I suspect the "Atmos" name is being used beyond the context of object-based (i.e. video game like) audio. At least on my Android phone, it just sounds like a bit of EQ and some cross-stereo mixing.
- rzzzt 5y ago
  Windows Media Player had a similar effect for playback, then branded as SRS Wow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System
Aloha 5y ago
I can hear the phase distortion induced by the processing from the Atmos stuff in the spatial audio, its.. objectively awful. (it sounds like high frequency swirling in the hiss in the track, or anything that could be in the range of hiss) I'm pretty sure I could measure it with the right tools, I'm not audiophile, and I don't believe much in the woo and snakeoil heavy claims, but for me, I agree that the sound is worse than a good stereo mix.
wonnage 5y ago
One thing I don't really understand about Atmos is, if you're listening through a stereo source (e.g headphones) everything has to be downmixed to two physical speakers. You can do fancy phase change psychoacoustics stuff but it's still coming out of those two speakers. You're taking a model with effectively unlimited sound sources and rendering it down to a stereo signal like any other non-Atmos source. So is there really a difference compared to a differently-mixed stereo track (other than sucking down a ton of Apple/Dolby marketing hype)? if an artist really wanted their music to sound 3D over stereo speakers, they can already do that during the rendering process.
- miskin 5y ago
  It is obvious advantage if you have nice surround spraker system that is not made for movies only but is good enough for listening of music. I tried this with Apple TV and 7.1 system and it works quite nice. For headphones it makes sense if they react to your head movement like some airpods do. When I first watched movie with iphone and airpods pro in spatial audio mode, I had to remove headphones to check that the sound was really comming from them and not from phone. It is actually quite good. I haven't listened to music like that yet.
  - wonnage 5y ago
    > I had to remove headphones to check that the sound was really comming from them and not from phone I had this experience as well, I kinda liked it but suspect it will be divisive. Also if you switch positions it takes about 5-10 seconds for the system to recenter itself; until then it thinks you're looking left/right.
- tester89 5y ago
  On the technical perspective no. 3D stereo was always possible, but what Atmos offers is the ability to deliver the 3D experience to any audio player. A mix for headphones won’t sound right on a home cinema, or in a car and having the actual vector data allows for it to sound right everywhere.
wrs 5y ago
I wondered the same thing about the AirPods Pro Atmos head tracking (which just came out for music, in iOS 15 I think). If you turn your head and leave it there, after about 5 seconds the soundstage will start to move toward your new orientation, and fully recenters in about 10 seconds.

by nippoo 5y ago

acdha 5y ago

> This article is high on audiophile waffle and low on substance! This is standard Scoble: he’s a professional promoter who’s made a living sounding excited about how The! World! Is! Changing! Even before the sexual harassment news a couple years back he’d lost a lot of following because there are primary sources you could go directly to instead.

nitrogen 5y ago

I suspect the "Atmos" name is being used beyond the context of object-based (i.e. video game like) audio. At least on my Android phone, it just sounds like a bit of EQ and some cross-stereo mixing.

rzzzt 5y ago
Windows Media Player had a similar effect for playback, then branded as SRS Wow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Retrieval_System

Aloha 5y ago

I can hear the phase distortion induced by the processing from the Atmos stuff in the spatial audio, its.. objectively awful. (it sounds like high frequency swirling in the hiss in the track, or anything that could be in the range of hiss) I'm pretty sure I could measure it with the right tools, I'm not audiophile, and I don't believe much in the woo and snakeoil heavy claims, but for me, I agree that the sound is worse than a good stereo mix.

wonnage 5y ago

One thing I don't really understand about Atmos is, if you're listening through a stereo source (e.g headphones) everything has to be downmixed to two physical speakers. You can do fancy phase change psychoacoustics stuff but it's still coming out of those two speakers. You're taking a model with effectively unlimited sound sources and rendering it down to a stereo signal like any other non-Atmos source. So is there really a difference compared to a differently-mixed stereo track (other than sucking down a ton of Apple/Dolby marketing hype)? if an artist really wanted their music to sound 3D over stereo speakers, they can already do that during the rendering process.

miskin 5y ago
It is obvious advantage if you have nice surround spraker system that is not made for movies only but is good enough for listening of music. I tried this with Apple TV and 7.1 system and it works quite nice. For headphones it makes sense if they react to your head movement like some airpods do. When I first watched movie with iphone and airpods pro in spatial audio mode, I had to remove headphones to check that the sound was really comming from them and not from phone. It is actually quite good. I haven't listened to music like that yet.
- wonnage 5y ago
  > I had to remove headphones to check that the sound was really comming from them and not from phone I had this experience as well, I kinda liked it but suspect it will be divisive. Also if you switch positions it takes about 5-10 seconds for the system to recenter itself; until then it thinks you're looking left/right.
tester89 5y ago
On the technical perspective no. 3D stereo was always possible, but what Atmos offers is the ability to deliver the 3D experience to any audio player. A mix for headphones won’t sound right on a home cinema, or in a car and having the actual vector data allows for it to sound right everywhere.

wrs 5y ago

I wondered the same thing about the AirPods Pro Atmos head tracking (which just came out for music, in iOS 15 I think). If you turn your head and leave it there, after about 5 seconds the soundstage will start to move toward your new orientation, and fully recenters in about 10 seconds.