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

[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 

[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