Streaming Atmos: Do you lose any fidelity with a Tidal Atmos stream compared to a Blu-ray Atmos?

[Sal1950]

Department store style ceiling speakers are quite different from anything to do with Atmos or surround sound. That's all I was riffing on. The target audience is genuinely people like my mother who pointedly do not actively listen to music

Why would you bring "Department store style ceiling speakers" into a discussion on this site between Hi Fi enthusiasts?
Does Not Compute

 

[Owen Smith]

The stereo listening audience is missing the entire surround sound element. It's just matter of fact and they aren't interested.

Actually my mum is interested in the surround element and agrees my 5.0 system sounds much better and more immersive. But she wants the same at their house without the 5 good speakers in sensible places to make it happen. I had to fight hard to put them off a sound bar and keep the stereo hifi amp and decent speakers they have under the TV. They could have excellent stereo with their existing gear if only they'd let me move things around.

 

[Owen Smith]

Why would you bring "Department store style ceiling speakers" into a discussion on this site between Hi Fi enthusiasts?
Does Not Compute

I said "ceiling speakers". I meant decent ones, possibly for Atmos, and jimfisheye turned that into department store ceiling speakers.

My parents have a stereo pair of ceiling speakers in the dining area, they are KEF Uni-Q ceiling speakers. If you sit in the one or two dining chairs that are between them the stereo image and sound quality are quite good. Anywhere else and you get no stereo image from them.

 

[jimfisheye]

I mentioned the number of people hanging hi-fi speakers from their ceilings and putting together actual 12 channel systems is likely the minority. That came from wondering if lossless Atmos was right around the corner. I speculate it isn't because the audience demanding it is small and the bandwidth needs to increase 6x. That led to comments about the number of "ceiling speakers" sold. That led to mentioning that what are usually called "ceiling speakers" are the lo-fi department store fare and have little to do with indicating Atmos music installs.

 

[Sal1950]

I mentioned the number of people hanging hi-fi speakers from their ceilings and putting together actual 12 channel systems is likely the minority.

A minority yes, but of what?, The 5,000 number you stated I felt was drastically underestimated.
I just checked at AVS forum and was quite surprised to see they have over 1.5 million members. I do know there's a heck of a lot of them with full Atmos capable HT rigs and they do watch a lot of concerts and play music only sources too, sooooo.
https://www.avsforum.com/

 

[KG10]

Not sure if this has been discussed here but how long do you think before lossless Atmos starts releasing on streaming?

 

[nickleb474]

Not sure if this has been discussed here but how long do you think before lossless Atmos starts releasing on streaming?

When pigs fly.

I know, it would be cool, but for 95% of people who use Atmos (be it headphones or surround), 2ch at 256 kbps or 6ch at 768 kbps is damn near transparent. The 5% who care (honestly probably less) isn't enough for these streaming services to justify implementing, getting the masters, and streaming the high bitrate lossless TrueHD 8ch content in 24 bit/48 kHz. Just my opinion.

 

[KG10]

When pigs fly.

I know, it would be cool, but for 95% of people who use Atmos (be it headphones or surround), 2ch at 256 kbps or 6ch at 768 kbps is damn near transparent. The 5% who care (honestly probably less) isn't enough for these streaming services to justify implementing, getting the masters, and streaming the high bitrate lossless TrueHD 8ch content in 24 bit/48 kHz. Just my opinion.

Then how comes they have started doing hi res stereo streaming dispite that also being pretty niche? I'm guessing that's because it uses much less bandwidth.

 

[nickleb474]

Then how comes they have started doing hi res stereo streaming dispite that also being pretty niche? I'm guessing that's because it uses much less bandwidth.

Good question! Another opinion here: the hucksters that run the music industry fooled people into believing that content with a faster sampling rate than 44.1 or 48 khz = better sound quality (not true). People will pay for that, it's intuitive that more resolution = more better, even though it's simply a lie in this case. That made high res streaming a viable option because it is popular enough to be profitable.

 

[KG10]

Good question! Another opinion here: the hucksters that run the music industry fooled people into believing that content with a faster sampling rate than 44.1 or 48 khz = better sound quality (not true). People will pay for that, it's intuitive that more resolution = more better, even though it's simply a lie in this case. That made high res streaming a viable option because it is popular enough to be profitable.

I have a feeling the vinyl and recent cd craise may have also had something to do with it as it made people more aware that they could get audio that is better than lossy streaming.

 

[mkt]

Regarding getting the masters, ADM BWF is the required delivery format to the online services, so maybe a bump in quality would be possible. I’m a dreamer.

 

[jimfisheye]

Not sure if this has been discussed here but how long do you think before lossless Atmos starts releasing on streaming?

I do hope all my cynical "this is too niche" comments are proven wrong.
Either way, the technical answer is: When someone wants to dedicate 6x the current bandwidth to surround sound enthusiasts.

We have 24 bit lossless for two channel now. That bandwidth divided down across 12 channels comes out around the 64k mp3 sound range for lossy Atmos. Crosses a big line for me but if you like it and that doesn't matter then listen to it and don't let people like me tell you what to do!

 

[Sal1950]

Not sure if this has been discussed here but how long do you think before lossless Atmos starts releasing on streaming?

When the noise from the listener becomes too loud to ignore.

When pigs fly.

I know, it would be cool, but for 95% of people who use Atmos (be it headphones or surround), 2ch at 256 kbps or 6ch at 768 kbps is damn near transparent.

Possibly the end game, it depends on Atmos market penetration.
I was surprised by the boom in the number of streamers that jumped on the Atmos bandwagon since its start, but obviously the stream did start to attract a large number of listeners so no one wanted to be left out. We saw this happen with lossless 2ch streaming also. Once one of them went there, everyone wanted to fill the "me too" line. Maybe all the market really needs is for one of them to actually offer it.

 

[HomerJAU]

Streaming services currently stream (and sell!) new movies in 4K with video streams at around 24Mbps. Lossless Atmos is around 5 to 6 Mbps. So the infrastructure and ‘legals’ are in place to support lossless Atmos now. My guess is one of the streaming services will eventually offer lossless Atmos music.

 

[texeast]

In My humble opinion the Tidal Atmos titles loose fidelity compared to the ones in Apple Music so as good as Apple Music is I think that the actual physical disc is superior to both platforms but that is not to say the Apple Music titles are bad compared to discs but the best product is the actual disc. However when you are not available to listen to the disc or if the music is not available on disc then Apple Music is just fine.

 

[Orgillian197]

Not sure if this has been discussed here but how long do you think before lossless Atmos starts releasing on streaming?

It probably will never be due to the bandwidth required.

 

[jimfisheye]

When the Commodore64 was king the idea of an image file even close to 64k in size would have been absurd and everyone would have said not in a million years. So the same thing will eventually happen and it will be less than a million years.

But us surround listeners are niche enough that it will have to wait until it's zero effort and already happening for other reasons just the same way.

Remember that? 64k or ram was a LOT!
Today I have to clarify that I didn't mean 64TB and no, not even 64GB, right?

 

[KG10]

When the Commodore64 was king the idea of an image file even close to 64k in size would have been absurd and everyone would have said not in a million years. So the same thing will eventually happen and it will be less than a million years.

But us surround listeners are niche enough that it will have to wait until it's zero effort and already happening for other reasons just the same way.

Remember that? 64k or ram was a LOT!
Today I have to clarify that I didn't mean 64TB and no, not even 64GB, right?

Funny you mention the c64 as I believe that released the same year as the cd and the latter's 640mb capacity at the time must have felt like allen tech! (granted cd-r didn't arrive until 1988)

 

[SomethingAnything]

When the Commodore64 was king the idea of an image file even close to 64k in size would have been absurd and everyone would have said not in a million years. So the same thing will eventually happen and it will be less than a million years.

But us surround listeners are niche enough that it will have to wait until it's zero effort and already happening for other reasons just the same way.

Remember that? 64k or ram was a LOT!
Today I have to clarify that I didn't mean 64TB and no, not even 64GB, right?

Heartening to know that is will be less than a million years.

 

[theCharm]

Streaming services currently stream (and sell!) new movies in 4K with video streams at around 24Mbps. Lossless Atmos is around 5 to 6 Mbps. So the infrastructure and ‘legals’ are in place to support lossless Atmos now. My guess is one of the streaming services will eventually offer lossless Atmos music.

Competition between the streaming providers will compel one of them to add the lossless Atmos as a differentiator, possibly at a higher price tier. Just like it happened with HD stereo streaming, someone would start first, others will have to follow. The pure music Atmos is relative novelty, but for new movies is now a default, so it won’t be another dying format.

Also, the number of people who upgraded their home theaters with ceiling speakers is way above 5000, by couple orders of magnitude easily. Just to hear that helicopter overhead.