Atmos vs 5.1

[himey]

Everyone who stated you must have at least a 7.1 system to enjoy atmos is correct.

I don't think anyone said that? Can you quote someone saying that?

 

[inspclouseau]

Abbey Road Atmos fold down sounds damn good here in 5.1.

We have it.. I'll check it out later..

 

[jimfisheye]

Anyone who wants to reproduce audio needs speakers capable of doing that. Some people are fine with band restricted cheapness and just basic midrange. Other's like full range.

Anyone who wants to reproduce a 7.1.4 (Atmos) mix needs a 7.1.4 system. Some people are fine listening to it reduced to 7.1, 5.1, or stereo. Some of us are more interested in hearing it 1:1 and consider that the main point.

The weird claim is that Atmos is suddenly some weird "channel agnostic" system that magically delivers surround sound no matter how many speakers you have. Even stereo headphones! Yep, you'll magically hear the full mix! And it won't be just surround sound... it will be ATMOS! A whole new thing! Yeah, the mix engineer didn't even use speakers! This is a whole new thing!

Yeah, no. Brochure speak is fun and all. It's surround sound mixed on a speaker array. 12 channels now! Do what you will with it. Set up for 7.1.4 if you want to hear the full experience. And that probably only matters if it's music you like.

 

[inspclouseau]

Abbey Road Atmos fold down sounds damn good here in 5.1.

I'll check it out again.....We do love well recorded stereo versions too...
Any stereo we play is through a Decware Zen vacuum tube amplifier. Source is an Oppo bdp 103. We love this amp! Main speakers are our 1996 (last year made) Klipsch ChorusII speakers.
2.3 watts and never sounded as beautiful! And PLENTY of volume too! Well recorded discs sound unreal.

 

[stoopid]

Abbey Road Atmos fold down sounds damn good here in 5.1.

I went down this Atmos to 5.1 rabbit hole not long ago, of the few Atmos mixes I also have in 5.1, I know Van Morrison's Moondance was one that 'folded down' quite well to 5.1 on my system. The Sony bluray player [UBP-X800M2] seems to be handling the 'fold down' and hands the resulting 5.1 stream to my format agnostic Sony amp (I believe everything is set to stream/receive PCM, but don't quote me and I'm not going to check).

Storm Corrosion atmos also sounded good in 5.1, fwiw.

Everything stated about metadata object embedded mixing matches what I've read on the topic. How our personal equipment handles the 7.1 mix (to output 5.1) is the variable, and that's hardly an inherent fault of "atmos". Besides railing against change, how newer tech can be engineered to playback well on older or lower end tech is nothing short of amazing if you ask me. I am/was fine with 5.1 being the end all, but so long as I can still enjoy newer surround material regardless of how many channels it could potentially play discretely, I am fine with progress and how that progress is currently being handled.

 

[himey]

enjoy newer surround material

I can't imagine missing out on so many new Atmos releases over the past few/several years.

 

[par4ken]

The weird claim is that Atmos is suddenly some weird "channel agnostic" system that magically delivers surround sound no matter how many speakers you have. Even stereo headphones! Yep, you'll magically hear the full mix! And it won't be just surround sound... it will be ATMOS! A whole new thing! Yeah, the mix engineer didn't even use speakers! This is a whole new thing!

But that is the point of Atmos as I understand it. Twelve speaker channels is just not practical for everyone! Quad was a hard enough sell, just try to talk the typical family into installing a full blown Atmos system in thier small apartment or home! The biggest thing that Atmos has going for it is it's use in movie theatres, because of that continued usage we get the side benefit of Atmos mixed music. For typical home use those Atmos mixes will most likely have to be downmixed. You are implying that unless you can afford (and have room for) a full blown Atmos system then you should just forget about it altogether!

My personal "requirement" for music is that all speakers be large, full range and identical. Back to day one most audiophiles rejected surround as it was considered inferior to stereo because that "requirement" was so often overlooked. Multiplying that high end system by two is doable, multiplying many more times becomes much less practical. I will never sacrifice high quality sound reproduction for more channels. I will continue to enjoy Atmos mixes via only four speakers!

 

[himey]

I will continue to enjoy Atmos mixes via only four speakers!

Are you decoding Atmos?

 

[stoopid]

I can't imagine missing out on so many new Atmos releases over the past few/several years.

The only Atmos --> 5.1 newer material I own that isn't available as a standalone 5.1 mix is Pearl Jam's last album Dark Matter. The Atmos mix sounds mediocre and very uneven on my 5.1 setup, the same setup with same settings that play other Atmos --> 5.1 folded down mixes fine. Some newer Atmos releases include a dedicated 5.1 mix, some have an older/previously released 5.1 mix included. In some cases the Atmos folded down to 5.1 is better than the older 5.1 mix, but rarely much different from the dedicated 5.1 of the same mix which makes sense as previously explained.

 

[jimfisheye]

But that is the point of Atmos as I understand it. Twelve speaker channels is just not practical for everyone! ...

Yeah, this is pretty decadent all right! Probably not for everyone, no.

But the mixes are in fact 12 channel mixes. For good or bad or whatever you might think about that. And you really truly need a 12 channel system if you want to hear them in their full originally intended glory.

A lot of things are still pretty good... Absolutely fold down the new 12 channel mixes just to hear them even if you don't have the full system. Might as well! And the Atmos decoder system lends to that as designed. This is the secondary thing though. Clearly the first priority would be the ability to deliver the new 12 channel mix 1:1, no?

Yeah, fully niche, decadent, creative, excess for sure! Surprised me in this plastic corporate world of volume war CD releases too. Don't fall for the gaslighting brochure speak though. These are just surround sound mixes made on a 12 channel system. Check em out! Or just partially check em out.

I agree, mind you, that simply going from stereo to 4.0 quad is big night and day. Going from 4.0 to 7.1.4 is just another day. It's a really good day! But not as striking as the initial move to quad or 5.1. But ours go up to 12 now so hey!

The main point is these are still mixes made on and for a specific speaker array.

...
My personal "requirement" for music is that all speakers be large, full range and identical.

Agree 100% with that!
I'm strongly fidelity first, more channels second. Hi-fi mono is more immersive than gimmick surround.

 

[par4ken]

Are you decoding Atmos?

I'm playing Atmos via the Oppo BDP-103 analogue outputs, with the player setup for four speakers. Nothing to decode, the bed channels should just be downmixed to 4.0. I don't think that I'm missing anything.

 

[himey]

rarely much different from the dedicated 5.1 of the same mix which makes sense as previously explained.

Nearly all 5.1 mixes that are included with Atmos mixes are derived from the Atmos sessions and simply outputted to 5.1. It is rare that the 5.1 is any more than an afterthought these days. Again, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing IF the proper care was taken producing the immersive mix, and all the ingredients were available for that session.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Nearly all 5.1 mixes that are included with Atmos mixes are derived from the Atmos sessions and simply outputted to 5.1. It is rare that the 5.1 is any more than an afterthought these days. Again, I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing IF the proper care was taken producing the immersive mix, and all the ingredients were available for that session.

There have been a surprising number of recent releases that do include dedicated 5.1 mixes. Storm Corrosion (pre existing), Flaming Lips (pre existing), Thin Lizzy (new), Petty (new), Trower (new). Most Steven Wilson mixes include a dedecated 5.1, as it's said that is his starting point for Atmos. My favorite release of the year was 5.1 only.... Al Stewart's Past Present and Future.

But in general I agree with you. And some of those derived 5.1 mixes are sad indeed.

 

[AYanguas]

...

I'm fairly certain that once an Atmos mix is encoded to TrueHD for consumer playback, the whole bed/object thing at the mix stage essentially becomes irrelevant. All the sounds in the mix are 'baked in' to a 7.1 file, but there's some special sauce in there (the infamous 'metadata' we love to talk about here) that allows the information meant for the height and wide channels to parsed out upon playback.

As far as I have been able to read and understand on this topic, at least for TrueHD 7.1 (I don't know the details for EAC3-JOC), the Dolby Atmos encoding from the ADM master file generates up to the 4 called “Substreams” in the TrueHD 7.1 file. This to achieve backwards compatibility and playability on older systems.

Each of the “Substreams” can be recognized (or not) and decoded by each particular AVR/Processor.

So, an Atmos consumer file has up to these substreams:

Substream 1: Complete sounds in mch 7.1 (Let’s call it Downmix or Fold down to 7.1 MLP)

Substream 2: Automatic Downmix to 5.1 (The backwards compatible 5.1 AC3 I don’t know if it is here or in the Substream 1: MLP 7.1)

Substream 3: Automatic Downmix to Stereo 2.0

Substream 4: The famous “Atmos Metadata”. With this substream, the Atmos decoder subtracts the “Spatial audio” (No mention to mixing Atmos Objects here anymore) from the Substream 1 (7.1) and redirects it to the available Speakers according to the AVR system config: Wides and/or Tops/Heights.


What is important for us, hobby listeners, to understand is that the Automatic Downmixes to 7.1 (Substream 1) or 5.1 (Substream 2) may sound good or not depending on the characteristics of the Original Mix. If the downmix is not satisfactory to the mixer, then some of them do a different mix set to 5.1 to make it sound better. This is not done in all productions, either due to a lack of interest or budget, or because the Downmix may sound good.

 

[Thonolan]

There have been a surprising number of recent releases that do include dedicated 5.1 mixes. Storm Corrosion (pre existing), Flaming Lips (pre existing), Thin Lizzy (new), Petty (new), Trower (new). Most Steven Wilson mixes include a dedecated 5.1, as it's said that is his starting point for Atmos. My favorite release of the year was 5.1 only.... Al Stewart's Past Present and Future.

But in general I agree with you. And some of those derived 5.1 mixes are sad indeed.

All physical releases mixed by Bruce Soord include a dedicated 5.1 mix, too. In some cases, I like those better than his Atmos mixes. His approach tends to be quite different for each mix.

My favorite multichannel mix of the year (so far) is a 5.1 mix (Pure Reason Revolution - precisely by Soord). It's the only one that sounds pretty much flawless to my ears. I've heard a decent number of good to great recent Atmos mixes, but I haven't found any of them as satisfying as that one.

 

[hi-res_edition]

I was fortunate to have enough room to keep my 5.1 system in the same theatre room as my atmos system.

Clarification? Are you saying you have two unique speaker setups on the floor, a 5.1 and a7.1for a total of 14 speakers + the 4 ATMOS heights? What about Quad?