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

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New album by Dave Matthews Band arrives in two weeks and you can sign up for an Atmos party:
https://davematthewsband.com/dave-matthews-band-dolby-listening-parties
DMB_WATM_Invite_34x32-1024x964.jpg
 
Finishing a musical trip through all the Harrison Atmos albums with Cloud 9 which, along with ATMP, is at the top of my list of favorite Harrison albums.

The only one I listened to with my wife in the house was Wonderwall Music. We’ll put her down as “not a fan.” Can’t say I’m a big fan either, but I did play Drilling a Home over and over again. Glad I didn’t subject her to Electronic Sound.

 
My observations of Madonna - The Immaculate Collection:
  • The following tracks are upmixes/double stereo/all channel stereo (whatever term you prefer):
    • Lucky Star
    • Borderline
    • Into The Groove
    • Like A Prayer
    • Vogue
  • If you listen to the album on a 5.1 setup vs. Atmos, you will be essentially listening to a 4.0 mix
    • No tracks utilize the center channel
    • I only notice very slight use of the LFE channel on the following tracks:
      • Like A Virgin
      • Open Your Heart
      • Justify My Love
Other than the 5 tracks that are not discrete mixes, I am generally pleased. I wonder if there is an issue with the availability of the multitracks for these 5 songs. Or perhaps a different immersive mix engineer is responsible for the Atmos mix (there are no immersive mix engineer credits on Tidal).
I think Lucky Star is fantastic. Express Yourself also very good. Disappointed with Like A Prayer. Could have done so much more. Bass on all of these is anemic. Overall happy to have some Madonna in Atmos...hopefully a next round of her music is more on the Steven Wilson level of mixing.
 
My observations of Madonna - The Immaculate Collection:
  • The following tracks are upmixes/double stereo/all channel stereo (whatever term you prefer):
    • Lucky Star
    • Borderline
    • Into The Groove
    • Like A Prayer
    • Vogue
  • If you listen to the album on a 5.1 setup vs. Atmos, you will be essentially listening to a 4.0 mix
    • No tracks utilize the center channel
    • I only notice very slight use of the LFE channel on the following tracks:
      • Like A Virgin
      • Open Your Heart
      • Justify My Love
Other than the 5 tracks that are not discrete mixes, I am generally pleased. I wonder if there is an issue with the availability of the multitracks for these 5 songs. Or perhaps a different immersive mix engineer is responsible for the Atmos mix (there are no immersive mix engineer credits on Tidal).
Thanks so much for this info, LC -- I only have a 5.1 setup, but to my ears, the sweet spot of song and mix quality comes right in the middle of the album, with the back-to-back of Live To Tell and Papa Don't Preach.
 
My understanding is that Dolby does not offer head tracking, therefore Apple had to do it using their own renderer to work with Apple Airpods.

Additionally, Apple render Atmos on a variety of devices (Mac Laptops for one) where speakers are not in the standard Dolby locations... etc..

In Logic you can choose the Dolby Renderer of the Spatial Audio Renderer (with or without head tracking and using the AirPod HRTF improvement).
I wanted to add, AC4-IMS is not the right codec. This is a codec to encode binaural with Stereo. IMS standing for IMersive Stereo. It is a 2 channel format.

What you need is AC4-A-JOC (Advanced Joint Object Coding).
 
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