Listening to in Dolby Atmos Streaming, via Tidal/Apple/Amazon

[Ephi82]

Does anyone know if there is anything on the horizon that would see bit rates increase for streaming music?

 

[himey]

Does anyone know if there is anything on the horizon that would see bit rates increase for streaming music?

No, it would certainly be front page news here.

 

[dabl]

I listened to this last night. A fair number of discrete elements, but the mix sounds a bit amateurish and while some tunes are solid, on some others, there were odd volume disparities on guitar bursts (at least to my ears). This is supposed to be by Giles Martin? Huh. Still, well worth a listen.

Re: the Giles Martin 'Pyromania' mix, couldn't agree more. Some of it's 'ok' but man, the lead vocal level on the opening track is an embarrassment, like some total amateur mixed it. Mutt Lange would pound his head on a table if he heard that.

 

[LennonCobain]

Re: the Giles Martin 'Pyromania' mix, couldn't agree more. Some of it's 'ok' but man, the lead vocal level on the opening track is an embarrassment, like some total amateur mixed it. Mutt Lange would pound his head on a table if he heard that.

Has it been 100% confirmed that Giles Martin created the Atmos mix? I didn’t see any mention of it on his official Twitter account.

 

[austinsignal]

I think you can mix around the bit rate problem to some degree by limiting the frequency bandwidth used by the surround channels. Grateful Dead and Tom Petty are great examples. Discrete placement is better; ambience is a waste of bits.

Is there somewhere to read about mixing around the bitrate problem? I've never heard anyone talk about it!

 

[himey]

Is there somewhere to read about mixing around the bitrate problem? I've never heard anyone talk about it!

I don't have that problem, although I see many people seem to place blame where I personally, don't think it lies. The good mixes sound good regardless of format. If there aren't any streaming quality mixes, that sounds good on a particular setup, I blame the setup. A higher bitrate will not magically turn a bad mix golden.

 

[riskylogic]

Those mixes you mentioned don't seem to be limited in any channels in terms of frequency response. Are you making an assumption? I am getting nice low end all around with both of those mixes.

I am making an assumption about how compression algorithms work. Any one instrument or vocalist uses less frequency range than a whole band, which means you don’t really need a digital representation of the frequency range that isn’t used. So if I were designing an Atmos compression algorithm I’d just cover the range that is actually used for each channel. In any case, it seems to me that one instrument per channel works better when streaming Atmos.

 

[riskylogic]

Is there somewhere to read about mixing around the bitrate problem? I've never heard anyone talk about it!

No its my pet theory.

I don't have that problem, although I see many people seem to place blame where I personally, don't think it lies. The good mixes sound good regardless of format. If there aren't any streaming quality mixes, that sounds good on a particular setup, I blame the setup. A higher bitrate will not magically turn a bad mix golden.

I have a dozen Blu-ray’s that I can compare to streaming versions. The Blu-ray always sound better, but it varies. Sometimes it’s much better and other times just a little. Explaining that variation is the basis of my theory that discrete works better when.streaming.

 

[austinsignal]

No its my pet theory.

I have a dozen Blu-ray’s that I can compare to streaming versions. The Blu-ray always sound better, but it varies. Sometimes it’s much better and other times just a little. Explaining that variation is the basis of my theory that discrete works better when.streaming.

Ahhh - because I have no earthly idea how anyone could ‘mix around bitrate’. How would one monitor the effect of bitrate when mixing?

 

[austinsignal]

No its my pet theory.

I have a dozen Blu-ray’s that I can compare to streaming versions. The Blu-ray always sound better, but it varies. Sometimes it’s much better and other times just a little. Explaining that variation is the basis of my theory that discrete works better when.streaming.

Just curious - did the blu-ray’s and the streaming versions of the same program material come from the same master?

 

[sjcorne]

Just curious - did the blu-ray’s and the streaming versions of the same program material come from the same master?

Yes, in all examples I've heard both versions appear to be sourced from the same ADM master.

 

[Gregoree]

Remember that Dolby Digital was originally developed for movies and not specifically for music. Back in the late 90's and early 2000's when surround sound music was first released in multiple physical formats, you were sometimes able to compare the same lossy surround mixes in DTS vs DD, and it was pretty obvious that the DTS compression format sounded much better while the same mix DD sounded somewhat flat and lifeless. With the advent of blu-ray, DD Plus and DTS HD were both lossless and the playing field was levelled. Now with Atmos, we're back to lossy DD compression. My opinion is that Dolby has tried to tackle the shortcomings of their lossy compression by adding more channels. This has made multi-channel music streaming vastly more popular and available to the masses, and it has resulted in a new resurgence in the availability of multi-channel music (for which I am very grateful), but I don't think we should be surprised with some mixes sound somewhat flat using lossy DD. I think this is very apparent when you compare lossy Atmos mixes of titles that were also available in other formats like DTS and DVD-A (i.e. The Police, Lynard Skynard, etc.). I'm not sure we can necessarily blame the mixing engineer for the shortfalls of DD as a compression format, although I do think some Atmos mixes appear "rushed" and not carefully mastered before release. I personally hope that one day they will offer lossless (or at least higher resolution) multi-channel streaming for those with the bandwidth to support it and pocket change to afford it

 

[AYanguas]

In the music production chain, there are several factors that have influence in the final sound quality.

1 - Interpretation and recording is the first. The initial recorded tracks will have a certain quality depending on the musicians, the equipment and technics used and recording engineers skills.

2 - Then it comes the tracks processing and mixing. This may have great influence (if not the most). Sound processing and level balance of all tracks to get a clean sound of all vocals and instruments. (We discard the lo-fi style )

3 - Finally, the mastering process may have influence (if it modify the mix in excess) and it is needed to adapt the Master to the final distribution support.

I'm convinced that the final codec format for distribution (either lossy or lossless) is the step in the chain that has less influence in the overall sonic quaility and fidelity.

I base myself on the general fact that you can find Blu-ray's (mainly in concerts) that even beeing lossless the sound quality is poor. On the other side, there are Atmos DD+ streaming albums that have a very high sound quality. One example could be xPropaganda - The heart is Strange (Tidal), but there are many others.

My conclusion is that, assuming the interpretation and recording is correct, the most influential step is the mixing, followed by the mastering adaption. The difference between lossy and lossless should be minimal, unless there is an intention, for comercial purposes, in generating diffferent masters for releasing on different supports.

 

[Gregoree]

In the music production chain, there are several factors that have influence in the final sound quality.

1 - Interpretation and recording is the first. The initial recorded tracks will have a certain quality depending on the musicians, the equipment and technics used and recording engineers skills.

2 - Then it comes the tracks processing and mixing. This may have great influence (if not the most). Sound processing and level balance of all tracks to get a clean sound of all vocals and instruments. (We discard the lo-fi style )

3 - Finally, the mastering process may have influence (if it modify the mix in excess) and it is needed to adapt the Master to the final distribution support.

I'm convinced that the final codec format for distribution (either lossy or lossless) is the step in the chain that has less influence in the overall sonic quaility and fidelity.

I base myself on the general fact that you can find Blu-ray's (mainly in concerts) that even beeing lossless the sound quality is poor. On the other side, there are Atmos DD+ streaming albums that have a very high sound quality. One example could be xPropaganda - The heart is Strange (Tidal), but there are many others.

My conclusion is that, assuming the interpretation and recording is correct, the most influential step is the mixing, followed by the mastering adaption. The difference between lossy and lossless should be minimal, unless there is an intention, for comercial purposes, in generating diffferent masters for releasing on different supports.

Well said, and I agree that if the original beds/stems used for the multichannel mix are poor quality/damaged, or the multichannel mixer makes poor decisions, the end results may not sound good no matter what. My main point was that the data compression format (lossy vs lossless, DD vs DTS, etc.) also has an impact on the mix. We know this because there have been many previous multichannel mixes released in multiple formats and a side-by-side comparison shows how the data compression format (DTS vs DD) altered the sound even when it's the same mix, same source material, same mixing engineer. The other thing I'll add is that mastering does make a big difference. A good mastering engineer can make a poor mix or lesser quality source sound better. I think some new Atmos mixes are well-mastered but in other cases, the labels are probably not spending the extra money to hire a decent mastering engineer to polish or correct issues with the Atmos mix. I agree with you that xPropaganda Atmos and blu-ray both sound great. Stephen Lipson did the mix (same guy that produced and mixed the stereo Propaganda - A Secret Wish...one of my favs) and it was a limited SDE release so you know they'd put some care into the mastering of the mix too.

 

[haikubass]

Iggy Pop – Every Loser
Wasn't expecting this one, but it's got a mix now!
And two balls.

https://tidal.com/album/272455524

 

[cdheer]

Does anyone know if there is anything on the horizon that would see bit rates increase for streaming music?

Disclaimer: I don't work in audio, and I have no insider knowledge.

Having said all that, I doubt it. In my experience, streaming providers (and cable/satellite providers) are constantly looking for ways to use less bandwidth, all else being equal. By that I mean, the video side of streamers is in the process of adding 4K (some already have it; some don't), because the market is demanding it pretty widely. Apple added lossless stereo (and Tidal basically built their business on higher quality) as a differentiator from Spotify (and I suppose Amazon).

However, one thing the streamers have not done to my knowledge is add bandwidth to individual streams. They are trying to push that down as much as possible, because bandwidth is expensive. On the video side, they've progressively moved to more efficient codecs and cut the bitrate. Audio is trickier, though; is there a lossless codec that can get multichannel audio down to ~768kbps? I'm not aware of one, and in any case, it'd require something new from Dolby (or DTS). But audio codecs take longer to be adopted (for a variety of reasons); just ask anyone trying to deal with AC-4.

I don't think we will ever see the likes of TrueHD/DTS-MA streamed.

 

[riskylogic]

Ahhh - because I have no earthly idea how anyone could ‘mix around bitrate’. How would one monitor the effect of bitrate when mixing?

The proof is in the pudding: Evaluate the result after mixing and mastering and distribution via streaming.

 

[himey]

Well said, and I agree that if the original beds/stems used for the multichannel mix are poor quality/damaged, or the multichannel mixer makes poor decisions, the end results may not sound good no matter what. My main point was that the data compression format (lossy vs lossless, DD vs DTS, etc.) also has an impact on the mix. We know this because there have been many previous multichannel mixes released in multiple formats and a side-by-side comparison shows how the data compression format (DTS vs DD) altered the sound even when it's the same mix, same source material, same mixing engineer. The other thing I'll add is that mastering does make a big difference. A good mastering engineer can make a poor mix or lesser quality source sound better. I think some new Atmos mixes are well-mastered but in other cases, the labels are probably not spending the extra money to hire a decent mastering engineer to polish or correct issues with the Atmos mix. I agree with you that xPropaganda Atmos and blu-ray both sound great. Stephen Lipson did the mix (same guy that produced and mixed the stereo Propaganda - A Secret Wish...one of my favs) and it was a limited SDE release so you know they'd put some care into the mastering of the mix too.

Curious if you have thought about the old DTS CDs and where they fit in this discussion? It seems eac3 is much better. The best streaming titles sound much better than the best DTS CDs. The bitrates aren't that much different but the quality to these ears, are much different. Does the 24 bit starting point carry over to streaming lossy, combined with 48 vs 44.1kHz make all the difference? In the end, I am grateful for all these new mixes despite being lossy. I enjoy it for what it IS and not get caught up in what it COULD be.

 

[Cheezmo]

New Jethro Tull album out in April. One song available now..

 

[marcb]

Disclaimer: I don't work in audio, and I have no insider knowledge.

Having said all that, I doubt it. In my experience, streaming providers (and cable/satellite providers) are constantly looking for ways to use less bandwidth, all else being equal. By that I mean, the video side of streamers is in the process of adding 4K (some already have it; some don't), because the market is demanding it pretty widely. Apple added lossless stereo (and Tidal basically built their business on higher quality) as a differentiator from Spotify (and I suppose Amazon).

However, one thing the streamers have not done to my knowledge is add bandwidth to individual streams. They are trying to push that down as much as possible, because bandwidth is expensive. On the video side, they've progressively moved to more efficient codecs and cut the bitrate. Audio is trickier, though; is there a lossless codec that can get multichannel audio down to ~768kbps? I'm not aware of one, and in any case, it'd require something new from Dolby (or DTS). But audio codecs take longer to be adopted (for a variety of reasons); just ask anyone trying to deal with AC-4.

I don't think we will ever see the likes of TrueHD/DTS-MA streamed.

I hope you’re wrong, but I suspect you’re right.

However, I think the biggest rate limiting factor isn’t really bandwidth, but rather the lowest common denominator of eqpt compatibility/universality.