PC for Multichannel Music Playback - What's your Setup?

[dabl]

I think the cryptic-ness is unnecessary. If the mix engineer is mixing with a 7.1.4 speaker array for the main rig, it's a freakin' 7.1.4 mix. Atmos ability to speaker manage on the fly is crafty and welcome for sure! But we're not suddenly turning the speakers off and making the mix some conceptual experiment. We're listening, reacting, crafting as always.

I DO think the format has merit and I think the object system is crafty for speaker management. There's still the mix as heard on the original speaker system it was mixed on. 7.1.4 is hitting as default. (eg the Steve Wilson example) The concept of wanting to deliver the mix to a like speaker array 1:1 is still a thing. It doesn't downplay anything and in fact it's just the opposite. The system has the ability to deliver an original 7.1.4 mix to a 7.1.4 speaker array 1:1. That's a big deal and a hard starting point for a certain audience.

The restrictiveness is the only problem. Refusing to even sell the encoder subscription to outsiders is a hard call. That's what turned me off.

I don't disagree with some of your points as they relate to dealing with Dolby from the perspective of independent audio engineers.

It is a bit curious that they changed tact to require proof of a legitimate business to purchase the encoder required to produce a high resolution final product but my guess is that might be to try and mitigate cracked versions getting into the wild perhaps with some kind of watermarking.

You're focusing specifically on mixing music for surround and presumably understand Dolby is of course shooting far higher than that market, ie movies and television where the object oriented nature of the new design really becomes important because it scales to theaters with dozens of speakers where the previous channel based tech could not and offers consumers new and useful technology such as being able to manipulate the volume of the dialog in a program vs previously what was merely mixed to the center channel (ie the dialog and everything else).

None of us would even be thinking of having a 7.1.4 system had Dolby not come along. Trying to re-invent or work around what they're doing for purposes of that specific format seems pointless especially since well accepted containers supporting lossless audio such as .wav and .flac don't support it. WavPack seems like a cool idea but also like it hasn't really caught on.

It is good news that meanwhile it's still possible to bust regular channel based pcm audio out of an atmos container if that's what floats your boat.

 

[mandrix]

At the endpoint it's all channel based audio, isn't it? I mean when it's decoded and hits the speakers, that's what it is.
The Dolby Reference Player it self does that; that is it decodes the Atmos objects and bed channels to pcm and sends to your amp > speakers.

I most certainly agree with yours and Jim's points about Dolby. I think 7.1.4 (and higher) has made a sea change in audio listening, at least for myself, and kudos to Dolby for that.
For Atmos itself, and for enhancing the Meridian Lossless Packing, I give Dolby due credit.

For those of us that truly like well done Atmos music, it's a joy.

 

[humprof]

Has anybody found (or built) a skin for VLC Player that they like--say, one similar to "DarkOne v4.0" for foobar2000? All the skins I can find easily seem to be a) old and b) geared towards video playback. I only use VLC for Atmos mp4 or mka/mkv audio.

 

[mandrix]

Has anybody found (or built) a skin for VLC Player that they like--say, one similar to "DarkOne v4.0" for foobar2000? All the skins I can find easily seem to be a) old and b) geared towards video playback. I only use VLC for Atmos mp4 or mka/mkv audio.

...and an icon that doesn't look like a traffic cone?

 

[atrocity]

Just fired up Kodi. It doesn't see wavpack files at all.

I've been putting DSD/DSF files in Wavpack and playing them on Kodi lately. My first attempt was a 5 channel file and the assignments came out wrong, but the recent 6-channel Dutton Vocalion batch has been working great, both on an NVidia Shield and a Raspberry Pi 4.

 

[mkt]

I settled on VOX.app for now.

I was using Songbird forever but it doesn't support above 5.1 very well. And it's an older 32 bit app, so High Sierra is the end of the line OS for using it.

VOX handles 12 channel 7.1.4 mixes just fine.
Atmos on the computer is more about working around the gatekeepers and lockouts.

Tutorial for MacOS:
When you set the system audio in Audio MIDI Setup to one of the Atmos formats (eg. 7.1.4), the Atmos channels (eg. ch 9-12 in 7.1.4) are muted/disabled from playback! I’m not sure if this is unlocked for other media player apps with a paid subscription to their Music streaming service. The channels are muted even when using a standard music player like VOX.app with your own files.

There’s an easy workaround!
When you select a device for system audio… DO NOT click on ‘configure speakers’ and select a speaker array format! Just don’t ever do it. (You will be scolded by various apps like VLC player that you haven’t selected an output format. Don’t do it! Just close that alert. It doesn’t stop playback.) Now all 12 channels (for 7.1.4 format) or 16 channels (for 9.1.6) just pass through and play!

There’s more good news. Not only that but you can play 12 or 16 channel 7.1.4 or 9.1.6 media in older MacOS like High Sierra (10.13) with the same method! The older OS doesn’t have the options to even select the Atmos speaker arrays, of course. Skipping the speaker config allows full playback just like in Monterey or Ventura. You can simply delete the device and start over if you have selected a speaker option previously. (Probably a preference file can be deleted to erase that selection too.)

Cons to this:
The formats between 2.0 and 5.1 are 'depreciated'. VOX wasn't handling them correctly even with the OS speaker manager in use. (ie. When you select a speaker array format.) Songbird did!

I can throw 12 channel files at it and it just works though and I can add blank channels to older 4.0, etc files to make them 5.1 format. Most releases nowadays avoid the in-between formats anyway.

This method (unconfigured speakers + vox) is the only way that I have managed to play 10-channel wav files on macOS. Thanks for sharing it!

Weird/interesting that the same aggregate device works (all channels play) when unconfigured and does not work (4 channels play) when configured. Some success with Audirvāna Origin (trial version) too.

 

[jimfisheye]

This method (unconfigured speakers + vox) is the only way that I have managed to play 10-channel wav files on macOS. Thanks for sharing it!

Weird/interesting that the same aggregate device works (all channels play) when unconfigured and does not work (4 channels play) when configured. Some success with Audirvāna Origin (trial version) too.

You're welcome!

Happy to have stumbled into discovering what they're up to with this! That the Dolby reference player app gets unrestricted access to the Atmos channels while other media players get them muted is pretty matter of fact that this is intentional.

 

[mkt]

You're welcome!

Happy to have stumbled into discovering what they're up to with this! That the Dolby reference player app gets unrestricted access to the Atmos channels while other media players get them muted is pretty matter of fact that this is intentional.

I am probably naive but I tend to favor incompetence over malevolence since this is such a corner/niche case.

 

[jimfisheye]

I am probably naive but I tend to favor incompetence over malevolence since this is such a corner/niche case.

Same. Except here we have a repeatable feature that works like a switch. These people are not incompetent! Or if we're calling them that it's more about the decision to go this hard with the 'copy protection gone wild' aspect!