Jon Anderson releasing new surround material ("Olias of Sunhillow" upmix out in March!)

[Marplot]

Yeah much worse

 

[nikomen]

I haven’t seen the artwork, but can it possibly be any worse than “In the Court of the Crimson King?”

“Court” is one of the best, next to Greg Lake’s other side project (ELP) Brain Salad Surgery and Tarkus, and ELP self-titled albums

 

[Thonolan]

I haven’t seen the artwork, but can it possibly be any worse than “In the Court of the Crimson King?”

Court's artwork is absolutely iconic! Love it.

 

[Sal1950]

The last album cover I paid close attention to was Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick

 

[jimfisheye]

I stumbled across the live videos of Jon with "Band Geeks" covering Yes songs a little while ago. It sounded like a young student band. Decent level of competency and like it was all the top students from the class or something but it was very very stiff like you might expect from something like that.

Guess I'll have to track down this new Atmos mix and see what this is all about!

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I saw Anderson and the geeks live last year. It was a fantastic show. Better than I expected.

 

[Thonolan]

I saw Anderson and the geeks live last year. It was a fantastic show. Better than I expected.

The live recordings that appear on Youtube are nothing short of impressive IMO. They sound so much better than Yes nowadays, and I'm not a hater of the current Yes lineup by any means - went to see them live in May this year and I enjoyed it immensely, and I also like Mirror to the Sky.

 

[jimfisheye]

They sound so much better than Yes nowadays...

I stand by my "stiff" comment but you are still 100% correct there!

 

[Orgillian197]

From your lips to Gods ear! This is a brilliant album and I'd love to have a lossless BD Atmos mix here !

There's no such thing as lossless Atmos. It is definitely lossy.

 

[Marplot]

According to Dolby Labs, Dolby Atmos audio in Dolby Digital Plus is usually encoded at bit rates between 384 and 768 kilobits per second (kbps). To put that in perspective, lossless, two-channel CD-quality stereo in FLAC format uses 1,411 kbps — twice as much data as lossy, multi-channel Dolby Atmos via Dolby Digital Plus.


The second flavor of Dolby Atmos is via Dolby TrueHD, a lossless, hi-res-capable audio format that is used on physical media like Blu-ray discs and digital downloads of Dolby Atmos Music from hi-res music sites, where its higher data requirements are less of a concern.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/lossless-spatial-audio-dolby-atmos-music/

 

[LuvMyQuad]

There's no such thing as lossless Atmos. It is definitely lossy.

Only the streaming variety.

 

[jimfisheye]

There's no such thing as lossless Atmos. It is definitely lossy.

Oh hey, going there! Haha.
Yeah, it doesn't null for me either. Still sounds the same as the master when I A/B and listen. And I'm pretty critical. So it's at least "high falootin lossy". The decidedly lossy Dolby Digital streaming version sounds really obviously stepped on and corrupt. Makes it not work and you pick stereo instead. Half the bandwidth of 2 channel lossless and then divided by 12 will do that. Sounds like 64k mp3... because it is.

 

[Sal1950]

The second flavor of Dolby Atmos is via Dolby TrueHD, a lossless, hi-res-capable audio format that is used on physical media like Blu-ray discs and digital downloads of Dolby Atmos Music from hi-res music sites, where its higher data requirements are less of a concern.

Correct. BD Atmos is spec'd at 24/48k lossless TrueHD encoded.
Don't know what your hearing there Jim but the process is still lossless.
Must be some fishy errors in your encoding or mixing.

 

[GilWave]

True is easily Jon Anderson's best work in a long while - musically there are moments (not necessarily entire songs) that absolutely nail the sound of 70's Yes, including bass and backing vocals. The Atmos mix is pretty good - not bad by any means but not cutting edge either. However, the album artwork is an epic fail, even by Jon Andersons pretty low solo standards (excluding Olias, of course). And the name The Band Geeks? Sheesh.

Agreed. I saw him last month at The Ryman. The respect Richie Castellano and Band Geeks have for the Yes catalog, and for Chris Squire and Steve Howe, is as payable as it is obvious. I thunk Richie inspired and re-energized Jon during the first 12 dates they played together in 2023, and the subsequent tour this year. This new record contain some of his best music in years.

 

[mandrix]

Well, freak. I did not know Richie had a YouTube show. Apparently there's a lot I don't know about him. I know he's a very good musician...and I'd like to ask him why ALL the B.O.C. blu rays are DD instead of lossless...since he mixed them.

 

[barfle]

“Court” is one of the best, next to Greg Lake’s other side project (ELP) Brain Salad Surgery and Tarkus, and ELP self-titled albums

I will admit that the cover kept me from buying the album. Ever.

 

[mandrix]

When I lived in El Paso, there were 3 soldiers in the next apartment that played ITCOTCK every night at lights out. I came to look forward to it.

 

[jimfisheye]

Correct. BD Atmos is spec'd at 24/48k lossless TrueHD encoded.
Don't know what your hearing there Jim but the process is still lossless.
Must be some fishy errors in your encoding or mixing.

I'm using the software from the mouth of the beast itself. Present some evidence of a lossless null please! Render and encode a 7.1.4 mix with the Dolby Renderer and Dolby media encoder, decode it back to wav with the reference player, and null it against the master mix. Or if the claim is that Dolby's software is flawed, then what 3rd party gets it right?

I think they're relying on some FFT work to assist in nulling the objects back out of the bed. And this is not lossless! Similar to how center extraction works. ie. You can't do that passively with MS tricks. You need FFT assisted tricks.

Sorry, didn't mean to open this can of worms! Well, I didn't open it... But that's why I laughed! Orgillian197 is correct. This is very near lossless. It really does sound identical in A/B to me. Anyway, show me the files, show me the perfect null, and show me the software that did it. If you can.
I just think any complaints should be focused on the decidedly lossy Dolby Digital version because it flat out doesn't work well enough.

If I pipe the output from the renderer back to the DAW it nulls against the master. It's the encode to mlp step where it goes lossy. Just in case someone wants to distract with "But the objects!". A 7.1.4 mix off the board nulls with stems delivered to the renderer and having it finish the mix.

Anyway, we can't prove negatives. But null tests fully nulling are matter of fact. Show me the nulls and tell what software did it, please. 8 channel TrueHD encodes null 100% with the originals, FYI. With literally the same media encoder app.

 

[Sal1950]

I just think any complaints should be focused on the decidedly lossy Dolby Digital version because it flat out doesn't work well enough.

Now you got your head on straight.

 

[jimfisheye]

Now you got your head on straight.

That conclusion aside, that's why I wasn't jumping all over this yet. I'm amused someone else did though! Might put on some popcorn even and find a good chair. But if someone can produce a null, I'd be happy to get educated and pointed to whatever 3rd party software did it all the same. I really do think it works close enough. I think that about dts2496 too.

This would make a good thread on its own starting with @Orgillian197's post that started the aside.