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

[ar surround]

It appears like a lot of people wanted to go down this rabbit hole.

Guy, you know you could've bet the mortgage on it!

I had my hearing tested last month. Fortunately, my hearing is just fine up to test limit of 8000 Hz. The tests were quite extensive. (I do know that 10k is about my current limit with on-line tests.)

Regardless, there is a lot of good information about the Widex Moment hearing aid.

 

[Veganfloyd]

I think it's the opposite. It took me a long time to seek help as I didn't want to know that I had a hearing issue.

The Widex Moment is chosen by most musicians so it was a fairly easy pick given that.

This relates to the timing of when you decided you needed help, not whether or not you did it eventually, and this would have no effect on whether or not your physician would have seen your case.

The alternative hypotheses are that 'audiophiles' blast their music at hearing-damaging levels and/or people with poorer baseline hearing or age-related hearing loss trajectories self-select for being audiophiles, neither of which seem very plausible.

 

[jimfisheye]

I thought this end of hi-fi was aimed more at doctors and lawyers than construction workers and artillery range commanders? But then there's the weird stuff in the back pages of the hi-fi mags that's clearly aimed at people that apparently can't hear very well. Some of us are musicians. Large brass sections, cymbals, and rock guitar amp and rock snare can do damage. I started wearing musicians plugs on stage last century. Then my drummer got a v-drum kit and we could play at home hi-fi level of loud instead of hearing damage loud. Then I seemed to find myself behind the mixing board and forgot how to play guitar or something. I'd probably only ever play with a drummer with electronics now. Also I like the batshit crazy insanity you can program into those! They do suck and are highly embarrassing when trying to mimic real drum sounds. I believe I've digressed more than usual! Where was I going... Oh, I was still able to hear the 18k test tones I was putting through my tweeters the other day. Might have had to turn it up a smidge.

This lossy business...
Surround sound expanding to 12 or more channels is just about the most decadent artiste aimed thing I've ever heard of! Stunning to see this level of creativity in this plastic corporate world! Now someone wants to see how much they can step on the fidelity and get away with it?! You drink your fine wine in a red plastic party cup too? This isn't for you! This isn't about penny pinching. This is about being decadent! And when mono and stereo wipes the floor with the remains of your experiments and is more immersive than what's left of your multichannel mix, that's a clue something has gone wrong.

I'll still listen to stuff. I'll listen to stuff on ratty equipment in a pinch. The main midrange delivers a lot of content. It should anyway. I'll listen to a blown out audience recording of a band if I'm interested. (Anyone walking into the room might say "What the hell is that noise?!") But you're gonna get some shit if you do wierd lossy shit to surround recordings!

 

[Guy Robinson]

This relates to the timing of when you decided you needed help, not whether or not you did it eventually, and this would have no effect on whether or not your physician would have seen your case.

The alternative hypotheses are that 'audiophiles' blast their music at hearing-damaging levels and/or people with poorer baseline hearing or age-related hearing loss trajectories self-select for being audiophiles, neither of which seem very plausible.

And of course the longer you wait to seek help, the worse your hearing is likely to be.

 

[Owen Smith]

And of course the longer you wait to seek help, the worse your hearing is likely to be.

It's not like you can get any improvement in your hearing though. Unlike eyesight it can't be fixed at present.

 

[Guy Robinson]

It's not like you can get any improvement in your hearing though. Unlike eyesight it can't be fixed at present.

Yes, I am lucky that the ear I have the hearing aid in was "normal" other than the fact that volume was low due to a hole in the drum. So all I needed was a boost in volume.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

Just want to chime in that if you have a lot of processing going on with your setup you're likely to hear any artifacting more...

 

[scottm18]

Yes! Because true Atmos is the terrific UNCOMPRESSED Dolby TrueHD format and streaming is the much inferior Dolby Digital Plus compressed format. There's a significant bit-rate difference between the two...so depending on your hearing and system there's a correspondingly significant audio quality difference. The dynamics of the real thing is unsurpassed.

However, that said, it's much easier to come up with a streaming version so better something than nothing as the saying goes. But I *always* check to see if there's a real version of the streaming album (such as the case with the new Pet Shop Boys Nonetheless)

 

[Ephi82]

Interestingly enough this is what my Otolaryngologist says. He says from his experience people who say they are Audiophiles have the worst degradation in their hearing. I had 75% loss in my left ear due to a broken ear drum. My other ear had no issues with a normal frequency spectrum. This is the guy who put me onto the Widex Moment hearing aid. They are excellent and music with the left side hearing aid sounds the same as the right ear which has no hearing aid. It's profound. I'm back to hearing like when I was younger. They make a huge difference with surround sound. Anyone who has hearing loss should look into these. They aren't cheap (in Canada about $3500 each with support included). Anyway, sorry to get off topic.

​

Widex Moments. Game changing for me too! I can hear reverb tails again, among many other things.

 

[austinsignal]

Widex Moments. Game changing for me too! I can hear reverb tails again, among many other things.

I hear great things about Widex (no pun intended)...

 

[texquad]

I do Atmos on both Apple Music & Tidal. In most cases I prefer sound on Tidal, but the difference in volume between most stereo & Atmos mixes is night & day. I've had a few instances where I've gone from listening to Atmos to stereo and the difference in volume nearly blew out my ears & speakers. I asked Tidal about that and they said that's how the label gave it to them. Apple Music doesn't have this issue because they try to match volume between the two. Tidal Atmos sounds great, but the volume discrepancy can be dangerous.

 

[Thonolan]

Have you ever tried the volume normalization option on Tidal? It's in the settings section. I can't try it until my room is finished so I can't test it myself. It's supposed to match the volume between different tracks. It does work in stereo but I'm curious whether it does in Atmos and/or when switching between stereo and Atmos.

 

[AYanguas]

I do Atmos on both Apple Music & Tidal. In most cases I prefer sound on Tidal, but the difference in volume between most stereo & Atmos mixes is night & day. I've had a few instances where I've gone from listening to Atmos to stereo and the difference in volume nearly blew out my ears & speakers. I asked Tidal about that and they said that's how the label gave it to them. Apple Music doesn't have this issue because they try to match volume between the two. Tidal Atmos sounds great, but the volume discrepancy can be dangerous.

In case you missed it: https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/dolby-atmos-and-dialnorm.34788/post-720227

I guess the difference between Tidal and Apple could be that Apple TV uses the Dolby MAT and the particular encode/decode algorithm could ignore or compensate the DialNorm parameter.

Or perhaps Apple, being sensitive to this problem, process the Dolby Atmos files for his Spatial Audio, by leveling the volume in the the label file delivered before going into the streaming server.

It would be interesting to learn from who knows about it.

 

[scottm18]

...the difference in volume between most (Tidal) stereo & Atmos mixes is night & day. I've had a few instances where I've gone from listening to Atmos to stereo and the difference in volume nearly blew out my ears & speakers.

You aren't the only one... It was so ingratiating that I dumped it completely when I nearly did the same thing. Not that I would use it but there was no "normalization" option on the app I was using. I'm not going to risk my system, my hearing or even my house roof with their stupidity--Apple Atmos doesn't do this so why do they have a problem?

Qobuz sounds better than both of them anyway... and if you have a good system the 2ch streaming it provides is almost surround sounding on many many tracks.

 

[texquad]

Forgot to mention that I'm streaming using an Apple TV 4k unit and unlike my phone there is not a settings switch to turn on a volume limiter.

 

[Owen Smith]

Forgot to mention that I'm streaming using an Apple TV 4k unit and unlike my phone there is not a settings switch to turn on a volume limiter.

I'm sure I saw a reduce lound sounds setting in Audio and Video settings on Apple TV 4K.

 

[texquad]

I tried that and nothing changed

 

[texquad]

Even though Tidal has better sound quality, I cancelled because of it's inconvenience (mainly volume levels) compared to Apple Music

 

[dabl]

Even though Tidal has better sound quality, I cancelled because of it's inconvenience (mainly volume levels) compared to Apple Music

Yep, one of a couple of absurd, gross problems that have been going on for years. Maybe if more people vote with their wallets they'll get the message. They certainly ignored the many reports I made about it. I think it was maybe just good luck that Apple's use of Dolby MAT neatly side stepped more than one serious issue with Dolby Atmos lossy encoding and the use of dialnorm. It would be fantastic if there becomes some way to implement the use of Dolby MAT afterward on some platforms such as Android TV etc.

Tying back to the thread subject, for my money, there is often an easily heard difference in fidelity between a lossy atmos encoding and lossless. I will always seek out a lossless recording over lossy in any format. But I'm an ex professional recording engineer. It's a matter of principle if nothing else.

It's a shame they settled on the atmos lossy encoding bitrate they did as per the spec it could have been double that, easily handled by any decent internet connection, something explored here in detail when the first lossy atmos music files appeared.

I believe lossless atmos streaming will eventually appear, just as in the stereo world. There is no technical reason it cannot be done, only on the server and marketing sides to decide there is an audience/demand for it. If that does happen, just like in the stereo world, initially the cost will be higher, $20/mo to the current market $10. Remember when the first lossless stereo services appeared they charged double the going rate for lossy (Tidal for example). Now that market has settled down to $10/mo from any provider, mostly driven by Apple, who became the 800 pound gorilla in the music streaming world. Remember when Steve Jobs ran Apple and took the position that .99 cents per song, was it, period end of story and that Apple would never join the world of streaming? How times change. Again though, Apple led the way in the business then as now. And this is coming from a guy who's held off buying an Apple TV device or subscription. But I think it's inevitable. For Atmos music they're just better plain and simple. Having said that there's no reason in the world they couldn't develop a client for Android TV devices like my preferred Nvidia Shield TV. For some odd reason they did do that for LG TVs. I'm running the Apple Music client on an LG TV feeding an atmos system in my office and it's great.

 

[dobyblue]

Most of the 2 channel albums I would want to listen to on Qobuz are loudness wars victims, I am forced to go to lossy Atmos to hear these albums with dynamics which makes up for the drop in fidelity. They don’t get a mastering unique from anyone else.