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

[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. 

[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. 

[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

[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. 

[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 :~)

[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. 

[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. 

[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