Stereophile's "Dolby Atmos: a Bleak Shadow?" - LOL

[Archimago]

I thought that article in Stereophile demanded a response.

 

On Stereophile's "Dolby Atmos: A Bleak Shadow?" - really? 🤔

 

I respect Morten Lindberg and what he's doing, but he really needs to shut up about spreading FUD when talking to people like Jim Austin (and distance himself from the ridiculousness of MQA all these years).

 

If magazines like Stereophile want to stick within their 2-channel lane, that's totally fine and their choice. But if they're going to be prodding into the Immersive world, it sure would be nice to have more realistic coverage than headlines like these and providing little context into actual sound quality.

 

Jim Austin's columns and writings IMO have been disappointing since his role as editor when Atkinson left in 2019. He certainly doesn't seem to write like someone with a physics background! I really wonder what future that magazine sees for this hobby/Industry...

[The Computer Audiophile]

Thanks @Archimago  

 

I actually left a comment on the Stereophile site, first time in many years. Austin’s stance is based on fear. Why else devote two AWSI articles to denigrating something? Surely there are plenty of other less than perfect audio “things” to excoriate and wish for their demise.

 

It’s the perfect storm of fear and a major helping of the old guard’s Minister of Information perspective. They believe they are the tastemakers and they are to lead the audio masses to music Mecca. 

[fas42]

I'm not sure what the fuss is about ... reading the article, the thrust is

 

Quote

A key point of that column was that Apple Corps, at least—and who knows how many others in the music industry—are abandoning high-quality Atmos in favor of that streamed by Apple Music. Tom and I criticized this development in no uncertain terms, concluding that if Apple's lossy-compressed version of Dolby Atmos is what we're being offered, "we should hope for its demise."

 

So, something equivalent to using MP3 to archive recording masters, is what this is about. Since most audiophiles have to wash out their mouths with soap after uttering the word "MP3", , I can understand why Stereophile would raise concerns. Personally, I have no issues with competent compression - but I would be strongly against any storage or distribution method which effectively "threw away information" as being the only, normal, choice.

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 minute ago, fas42 said:

I'm not sure what the fuss is about ... reading the article, the thrust is

 

 

So, something equivalent to using MP3 to archive recording masters, is what this is about. Since most audiophiles have to wash out their mouths with soap after uttering the word "MP3", , I can understand why Stereophile would raise concerns. Personally, I have no issues with competent compression - but I would be strongly against any storage or distribution method which effectively "threw away information" as being the only, normal, choice.

Not correct at all. 

[fas42]

In what way?

[The Computer Audiophile]

1 hour ago, fas42 said:

In what way?

Everything you said, with the exception of your opinion, is incorrect. 

[The Computer Audiophile]

I will also add that John Lennon’s Mind Games is coming out in high resolution TrueHD Atmos in June. A little looking and anyone would know that Apple hasn’t abandoned high quality Atmos. 
 

Mind Games, Apple Records catalog number SW 3414

[fas42]

Going back to that Stereophile article,
 

Quote

 

"Our MP4 version of Atmos is identical to Apple Music's version, at 768kbps. Our Dolby TrueHD bitrates average around 6000kbps with peak data rates up to a maximum of 18,000kbps for high sampling rate multichannel content." For comparison, stereo 24/192 uncompressed has a bitrate of about 9000kbps, so that's a lot of data.

 

What, then, is Lindberg's judgment on the version of Atmos disseminated by Apple Music?

 

"The lossy version of Atmos is to me a bleak shadow of the real, uncompressed source."

 

 

My goodness, YouTube standard MP3 sounds like a good deal in comparison to this, .

 

And,

 

Quote

At the event, Tom asked Apple Corps CEO Jeff Jones whether Beatles music would be made available in a better immersive form, perhaps on a Blu-ray disc, as it had been on some earlier "remixed" Beatles albums. His response: The streaming version of Atmos "made the Blu-ray obsolete." Why? Because that Blu-ray disc raises prices, and "very few consumers care."

 

Well, that would fill anyone with confidence that Apple will do the "right thing" by the customer, wouldn't it?

[The Computer Audiophile]

13 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Going back to that Stereophile article,
 

 

My goodness, YouTube standard MP3 sounds like a good deal in comparison to this, .

 

And,

 

 

Well, that would fill anyone with confidence that Apple will do the "right thing" by the customer, wouldn't it?

I encourage you to continue in your ongoing thread(s), rather than in this one. 

[botrytis]

Chris - you can't stop him.

[kumakuma]

4 minutes ago, botrytis said:

Chris - you can't stop him.

 

He can but he's unwilling to use the "nuclear option". 

[botrytis]

27 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

He can but he's unwilling to use the "nuclear option". 

 

Well, Chris could put him in Artic prison or just talk to him like they are another Minnesotan. 😁

 

Chris is living in the Artic now.

[The Computer Audiophile]

47 minutes ago, botrytis said:

 

Well, Chris could put him in Artic prison or just talk to him like they are another Minnesotan. 😁

 

Chris is living in the Artic now.

-8°F this morning. Good thing I installed heaters in the chicken coop :~)

[PeterG]

As a person on the sidelines of both MQA and ATMOS, I have to admit that I am confused:

 

MQA supporters told us not to worry that their system was proprietary and lossy.

 

Then MQA critics asserted that proprietary and lossy were so bad that MQA should not exist.

 

Now a prominent MQA supporter, Stereophile, has criticized ATMOS for being burdened by corporate control (ie proprietary) and lossy.  

 

And now MQA critics who are also ATMOS supporters, are telling us we should not be concerned about corporate control or lossy.

 

So the sides seem to have flipped 180 degrees 😳

 

I could understand saying the lossy format of ATMOS is partially mitigated by the mix and/or more than made up for by the thrilling effect of the extra channels.  But when we don't acknowledge a medium's weakness as a weakness, we risk the rest of the discussion sounding like rhetoric rather than an earnest explanation 

[The Computer Audiophile]

No worries @PeterG, let me explain my position. 
 

 

14 minutes ago, PeterG said:

MQA critics asserted that proprietary and lossy were so bad that MQA should not exist.

 

MQA critics, as far as I saw it, couldn’t care less if MQA was proprietary and lossy. It was the lying by the company and the replacement of pure PCM by MQA that got people upset and made them speak up. A proprietary and lossy codec on its own is a nothing burger and certainly nothing to fight about. 
 

MQA publicly stated its goal was replacement of pure pcm by a single mQa file. The supporters said not to worry. Then huge swaths of pure pcm were replaced with mQa on Tidal. 
 

 

18 minutes ago, PeterG said:

Now a prominent MQA supporter, Stereophile, has criticized ATMOS for being burdened by corporate control (ie proprietary) and lossy.  

Of course. 
 

 

 

18 minutes ago, PeterG said:

And now MQA critics who are also ATMOS supporters, are telling us we should not be concerned about corporate control or lossy.

I haven’t seen anyone say not to worry about Atmos being proprietary / corporately controlled. if there was an open source version, I’d be all for it. There just isn’t. 
 

Many supporters say the lossy is really good. 
 

I say it can be really good, but more importantly it’s the highest resolution ever released for 99.9% of Atmos albums. Huffing and puffing until labels release what we want is no way to enjoy music. I’d rather work to get TrueHD, as I do behind the scenes every week, while at the same time educate people on how to make what’s available sound as good as possible. 
 

 

23 minutes ago, PeterG said:

But when we don't acknowledge a medium's weakness as a weakness, we risk the rest of the discussion sounding like rhetoric rather than an earnest explanation 

For sure. TrueHD is better, but TrueHD is a unicorn for 99.9% of albums. Must we always discuss weaknesses of all formats, analog and digital, because they aren’t as good as the studio master, even though the master is only available for a few albums from some tiny labels?
 

Hoping for the demise of lossy streaming Atmos because it isn’t TrueHD, is like hoping for the demise of all formats that aren’t the studio master. Sure the master is better, but it’s a unicorn outside the studio. 

[botrytis]

33 minutes ago, PeterG said:

As a person on the sidelines of both MQA and ATMOS, I have to admit that I am confused:

 

MQA supporters told us not to worry that their system was proprietary and lossy.

 

Then MQA critics asserted that proprietary and lossy were so bad that MQA should not exist.

 

Now a prominent MQA supporter, Stereophile, has criticized ATMOS for being burdened by corporate control (ie proprietary) and lossy.  

 

And now MQA critics who are also ATMOS supporters, are telling us we should not be concerned about corporate control or lossy.

 

So the sides seem to have flipped 180 degrees 😳

 

I could understand saying the lossy format of ATMOS is partially mitigated by the mix and/or more than made up for by the thrilling effect of the extra channels.  But when we don't acknowledge a medium's weakness as a weakness, we risk the rest of the discussion sounding like rhetoric rather than an earnest explanation 

 

*A fungus' take on this* 🤣

 

Not quite the same. In m-QAnon's case, they wanted control from front to end, and they get a little piece all the way through. This was about control

 

ATMOS, is more like the USB standard -Everyone that wants their cable to be called USB needs these things. That is what ATMOS is. Just like Dolby HT was before. This is about STANDARDIZATION.

 

I am not in it one way or the other, currently (I mean into ATMOS). I think it could be just another form, like vinyl CD, DSD, etc. 

[jacobacci]

Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker, so please give me some slack if a word is not absolutely correct.

I find that both the article and the many comments about the article completely miss the issue that is really at hand here.

In my view this is about the fundamental question of access to (audio or video) material in different qualities. It becomes contentious in the context of the current trend to move away from physical media. This is a (for the retailers) totally understandable and economically reasonable move. I expect that in 5 years there will be no more physical BluRay discs available.

This basically means that access to audio down the road will be exclusively through streaming, which again makes total economic sense for the content owners from several perspectives (bandwidth for distribution, customer lock in, control).

For the consumer this means that he can only get access to the quality that the streaming service choses to deliver. Quote form the article:

"Our MP4 version of Atmos is identical to Apple Music's version, at 768kbps. Our Dolby TrueHD bitrates average around 6000kbps with peak data rates up to a maximum of 18,000kbps for high sampling rate multichannel content."

"For comparison, stereo 24/192 uncompressed has a bitrate of about 9000kbps, so that's a lot of data."

The point whether there is an audible difference between Apple Music Dolby Atmos and TrueHD Dolby Atmos is somewhat besides the point. Quite surely the mastering of the material was done at 24/48kHz, so as a customer I would like to own the material in the quality it was mastered in. I am ready to pay for this privilege, but I would like to have the choice.

Besides the quality issue I am extremely bothered by the fact that content owners are moving away from ownership models to streaming / rental models. Should the content owner decide to pull a release, it is no longer available to me.

An real life example to the point. At high end 2019, PMC presented a Dolby Atmos remaster of Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue', done by Steve Genwick. I had met Steve at the Sheer Pleasure of Sound Event in Basel that same year and we discussed extensively  about the project and how the legacy of Kind of Blue had been meticulously transferred into the immersive era. The demo of the Dolby Atmos mix at high end 2019 was as expected very impressive. After this it became very quiet about this project and it was never released on physical media for whatever reasons. It did surface on Apple Music some time later, as did many of Steve's Dolby Atmos mixes.

Next episode in the saga. Yesterday I attended a demo at SE Musiclab (created by Jürgen Strauss, Swiss sound engineer) in Bern. The BluRay demo was really impressive. I then asked the operator to find 'Kind of Blue' on Apple Music, which he did. I don't have an Atmos Setup at home (I hope this does not disqualify me from making my points), so this was my first reencounter with the remix since 2019. I really enjoyed it. Lossy Apple Music does sound good, no doubt. Would it have sounded even better in TrueHD? I will never know how  Steve's mix really sounds, unfortunately, unless someone publishes it in TrueHD.

In the end this whole issue is one of control by the content owner, what quality we have access to, be it in streaming or in physical media form.

All of this is deja vu of course (I won't go into the MQA debate, that one has been done to death). There are loads of CDs from 20 years ago that carry the moniker 'remastered in 24/96kHz). Why was the 24/96kHz remaster never published as a download. I would like to hear what the remastering engineer intended.

I would simply like to have the choice, to have access to the source. And by the way it does not have to be at the same price as the lossy version.

[semente]

2 hours ago, jacobacci said:

All of this is deja vu of course (I won't go into the MQA debate, that one has been done to death). There are loads of CDs from 20 years ago that carry the moniker 'remastered in 24/96kHz). Why was the 24/96kHz remaster never published as a download. I would like to hear what the remastering engineer intended.

 

10 or 20 years ago people had CD players, it made sense to distribute remastered material in that format. And the sound will not be different from "what the remastering engineer intended" if the programme has been mastered for CD. Much worse is the fact that for non-Classical that remaster is probably loud and compressed to death.

 

In the grand scheme of (consumer) things the reality is that the audiophile market is a tiny niche, and the immersive audiophile is a minuscule minority of that tiny niche. I have no idea if immersive audio has any traction with the 'normal' consumer but most will listen to Spotify so I would guess the answer is no.

 

Record labels are interested in profit. If they thought that there'd be money to be made in ownership or high-res they'd be on it, as they have with vinyl. We're walking towards extinction (I'm talking of audiophiles and of content ownership here, not the species, although...).

[PeterG]

10 hours ago, jacobacci said:

Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker, so please give me some slack if a word is not absolutely correct.

I find that both the article and the many comments about the article completely miss the issue that is really at hand here.

In my view this is about the fundamental question of access to (audio or video) material in different qualities. It becomes contentious in the context of the current trend to move away from physical media. This is a (for the retailers) totally understandable and economically reasonable move. I expect that in 5 years there will be no more physical BluRay discs available.

This basically means that access to audio down the road will be exclusively through streaming, which again makes total economic sense for the content owners from several perspectives (bandwidth for distribution, customer lock in, control).

For the consumer this means that he can only get access to the quality that the streaming service choses to deliver. Quote form the article:

"Our MP4 version of Atmos is identical to Apple Music's version, at 768kbps. Our Dolby TrueHD bitrates average around 6000kbps with peak data rates up to a maximum of 18,000kbps for high sampling rate multichannel content."

"For comparison, stereo 24/192 uncompressed has a bitrate of about 9000kbps, so that's a lot of data."

The point whether there is an audible difference between Apple Music Dolby Atmos and TrueHD Dolby Atmos is somewhat besides the point. Quite surely the mastering of the material was done at 24/48kHz, so as a customer I would like to own the material in the quality it was mastered in. I am ready to pay for this privilege, but I would like to have the choice.

Besides the quality issue I am extremely bothered by the fact that content owners are moving away from ownership models to streaming / rental models. Should the content owner decide to pull a release, it is no longer available to me.

An real life example to the point. At high end 2019, PMC presented a Dolby Atmos remaster of Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue', done by Steve Genwick. I had met Steve at the Sheer Pleasure of Sound Event in Basel that same year and we discussed extensively  about the project and how the legacy of Kind of Blue had been meticulously transferred into the immersive era. The demo of the Dolby Atmos mix at high end 2019 was as expected very impressive. After this it became very quiet about this project and it was never released on physical media for whatever reasons. It did surface on Apple Music some time later, as did many of Steve's Dolby Atmos mixes.

Next episode in the saga. Yesterday I attended a demo at SE Musiclab (created by Jürgen Strauss, Swiss sound engineer) in Bern. The BluRay demo was really impressive. I then asked the operator to find 'Kind of Blue' on Apple Music, which he did. I don't have an Atmos Setup at home (I hope this does not disqualify me from making my points), so this was my first reencounter with the remix since 2019. I really enjoyed it. Lossy Apple Music does sound good, no doubt. Would it have sounded even better in TrueHD? I will never know how  Steve's mix really sounds, unfortunately, unless someone publishes it in TrueHD.

In the end this whole issue is one of control by the content owner, what quality we have access to, be it in streaming or in physical media form.

All of this is deja vu of course (I won't go into the MQA debate, that one has been done to death). There are loads of CDs from 20 years ago that carry the moniker 'remastered in 24/96kHz). Why was the 24/96kHz remaster never published as a download. I would like to hear what the remastering engineer intended.

I would simply like to have the choice, to have access to the source. And by the way it does not have to be at the same price as the lossy version.

 

Great points!

 

At its best, recorded music is great art that we can have in each of our homes for a modest price, or let's say a price that works for us personally.  Kind of Blue is a great example of how this can work really well--there are excellent, true to the source versions available in several different media that can sound excellent on systems costing as little as a few thousand dollars.  Even better, some combination of Miles's estate and corporate overlords have steadily pushed great new versions.  To the ones you mentioned favorably, I will add the recent "UHQR" LP from Acoustic Sounds.

 

But this model is under steady attack as various corporate interests are always quick to compromise excellent sound in order to increase short term profits.  They often do this by releasing new versions with less concern for fidelity to the original or sound quality in general.  At some level these new versions are always competing with the audiophile versions.  Lower bit rates, higher levels of compression, streaming, certain remixes and remasters that pander to a mass audience.  Have you seen the DR numbers on the recent Beatles releases? Very sad, I long for Yesterday.

 

We all need to be pushing for the forces of goodness and truth to conquer the Dark Side here

[firedog]

On 1/21/2024 at 1:22 AM, The Computer Audiophile said:

I will also add that John Lennon’s Mind Games is coming out in high resolution TrueHD Atmos in June. A little looking and anyone would know that Apple hasn’t abandoned high quality Atmos. 
 

Mind Games, Apple Records catalog number SW 3414

Interesting. The original releases (both vinyl and CD) are pretty muddy sounding. At best mediocre sound.

The 24/96 remaster released in 2010 is something of an improvement.

Wonder if this new remix will result in generally upgraded SQ (IOW, not just ATMOS related changes). I certainly hope they also do a new stereo remix. 

[garrardguy60]

On 1/20/2024 at 6:22 PM, The Computer Audiophile said:

I will also add that John Lennon’s Mind Games is coming out in high resolution TrueHD Atmos in June. A little looking and anyone would know that Apple hasn’t abandoned high quality Atmos. 
 

Mind Games, Apple Records catalog number SW 3414

 

It's interesting that Apple (the IP owner) and Universal (the distributor) decided that sales of the (more appealing to a broader) mass market Beatles Blue and Red would NOT be worth the expense of creating a Super Deluxe with the Atmos fixes on a blu ray. (And so, as discussed, Red and Blue are only streamed in lossy Atmos by Apple Music.)

 

ON THE OTHER HAND, Apple and Universal also seem to have decided that Lennon's Mind Games NEEDS TO HAVE an Atmos blu ray included. As a John first Beatles fan, I concur. There'd be little reason for me to buy Mind Games without the attraction of a fully lossless Atmos disc.

 

COROLLARY:  Lossless Atmos on blu ray is now even more attractive to me as a consumer. Because I now know that if I don't snap up the lossless Atmos blu ray, I will have to live with lossy stream on Apple Music otherwise. At least until the next major BW leap, which'll not be for a while. Also, if you have Spotify -- I don't move to Apple Music because it's a PITA to use in HT/MC, not cause of the cost -- the blu rays are your only option.

[The Computer Audiophile]

2 hours ago, garrardguy60 said:

 

It's interesting that Apple (the IP owner) and Universal (the distributor) decided that sales of the (more appealing to a broader) mass market Beatles Blue and Red would NOT be worth the expense of creating a Super Deluxe with the Atmos fixes on a blu ray. (And so, as discussed, Red and Blue are only streamed in lossy Atmos by Apple Music.)

 

ON THE OTHER HAND, Apple and Universal also seem to have decided that Lennon's Mind Games NEEDS TO HAVE an Atmos blu ray included. As a John first Beatles fan, I concur. There'd be little reason for me to buy Mind Games without the attraction of a fully lossless Atmos disc.

 

COROLLARY:  Lossless Atmos on blu ray is now even more attractive to me as a consumer. Because I now know that if I don't snap up the lossless Atmos blu ray, I will have to live with lossy stream on Apple Music otherwise. At least until the next major BW leap, which'll not be for a while. Also, if you have Spotify -- I don't move to Apple Music because it's a PITA to use in HT/MC, not cause of the cost -- the blu rays are your only option.

One possible way to look at this is - The Beatles albums without a Blu-ray Atmos release all stem form the AI software that pulled the audio apart. Perhaps this software isn't read for the close up that Blu-ray would give it. 

[Apollo]

43 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

One possible way to look at this is - The Beatles albums without a Blu-ray Atmos release all stem form the AI software that pulled the audio apart. Perhaps this software isn't read for the close up that Blu-ray would give it. 

Sorry but can you rephrase in other English please. I don’t get any of it.

[The Computer Audiophile]

5 minutes ago, Apollo said:

Sorry but can you rephrase in other English please. I don’t get any of it.

Sure. 
 

The oldest albums were remixed for Atmos using Peter Jackson’s AI that pulled apart the instruments because multitracks aren’t available. Nothing that has used this process has been released in TrueHD. 
 

https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-beatles-revolver-stereo-remix-ai-tech

[garrardguy60]

4 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

One possible way to look at this is - The Beatles albums without a Blu-ray Atmos release all stem form the AI software that pulled the audio apart. Perhaps this software isn't read for the close up that Blu-ray would give it. 

 

At first, I thought that you must intuitively be correct. That's not the case when you consider the following. Many of the songs on the new Beatles  "Blue," which are from the later (1966-1970) period, already have Atmos mixes available. Songs from Pepper, White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be have all been released on Atmos as part of 50th anniversary Super Deluxes over the past several years.

 

As for the Red songs, 1962-1966, those were the ones taken apart by AI. However, even for those many of those early songs, there are existing 5.1 mixes, which were created and released as part of the Beatles 1+ deluxe package in 2015. However, apropos of your point, those 5.1 mixes have been widely criticized as being "thin."