Apple Music Atmos files are all compressed to some extent but I don't imagine that upsets channel balance/imaging much if at all? Some time back I compared a couple Apple streamed versions against my BluRay versions and didn't hear any major distortions but it's very hard to set up streaming for any kind of serious A-B tests.
"Pentatone" is another well known label for classical surround recordings, first on DVD-A later on SACD. But there are also interesting classical recordings which don't bring you closer to the concert hall but play with effects like "Peter and the Wolf" on the "Tacet" label.All fair enough, since I really know nothing at all about classical music, let alone it's recordings in spatial
formats by specialty labels like 2L. If you could recommend one or two outstanding examples that may be available on Apple music it might be interesting for me to check them out.
I've been actively into multich since the mid 70s but my musical passions have always been in the more popular forms, rock, blues, a little jazz, progressive rock specially. Like many here, I most appreciate the mixes that make active use of all available channels and have often found myself at odds with the types that just can't accept that recording style, insisting on calling it gimmicky and non-musical. I didn't spend all this money on surround only to reproduce some hall ambiance.
As you know I very much appreciated and miss your "In The Round" columns at Stereophile and will never stop my whining about your abandonment of them. Or at least until someone else there picks up the flag and runs with it. LOL
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving with friends and family..
Cheers
Also the lesson of "Just because it says 'HDtracks' doesn't mean it's a good mastering." I've been thoroughly unimpressed comparing some of their stuff against early CD releases in terms of dynamic range. Not all, but a lot.
Ugh... people who will look you dead in the eye and say digitally remastered vinyl is the best way to listen to an album. No wonder the world is a mess, when that's the kind of thing people with money convince themselves of, and repeat as gospel.
"Sounds gimmicky and artificial." - 'audiophiles' sitting in the room during the live performance
I stopped buying from HDtracks, so many releases are brickwalled now. It's primarily the fault of the record companies but HDTracks should be refusing these defective releases. HDTracks should also show the DR value of all that they sell.
I remember a performance of Holst’s “The Planets” back in the late 90s. Toward the end of the piece, there’s an off-stage choir. In that performance, the choir was in the balcony, split very wide. It was magical!
Congratulations Steve ...it's a beauty. Maybe you can hook it up to your alarm clock to avoid the stridency of that first wake up call!
Decades ago, I had some Altec folded horn speakers. Took little to drive them, as I recall. Back then I don't think I had anything that would push more than 45 w/ch.
That may be so and I don't remember the exact year I downloaded the sampler but I can only go by what 2L says about the year the sampler was recorded and released?
