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

[yerbas07]

@jimfisheye has been working on a 24bit live Atmos mix recently and compared the Source vs. the TrueHD encode vs. Dolby EAC3 encode (lossy streaming Atmos):

The Atmos mlp (TrueHD) sounds like the master when I A/B. The lossy streaming version of Atmos is audibly damaged vs the master.

I quoted Jim as I trust his pro engineer hearing vs. my 67 yo ears.

The TrueHD Atmos encode is around 5000kbps vs. EAC3 JOC streaming Atmos at 768kbps. TrueHD is multiplexed into 8 channels, EAC JOC into 6 channels.

I don't understand why such a low rate768 is currently used in streaming. If they want to convince the user of the benefits of Atmos, they should go up to 1700kbps and 7.1. With those parameters,
60mbs per song on average, the difference with TrueHD would be imperceptible.

 

[dabl]

I don't understand why such a low rate768 is currently used in streaming. If they want to convince the user of the benefits of Atmos, they should go up to 1700kbps and 7.1. With those parameters,
60mbs per song on average, the difference with TrueHD would be imperceptible.

Yep, we discussed this long ago when the format first arrived.

A shame they aimed so low when a higher bitrate could have easily been implemented.

It still could and eventually probably will be.

I think lossless atmos music streaming is inevitable just like with lossless stereo, which took a very long time to happen from the earliest days of lossy stereo streaming.

If/when a company like Apple, Amazon or Tidal thinks the market is big enough to make it worth doing they will and likely attempt to charge double the going rate for lossless stereo.

 

[jaap74]

Maybe we can get MQA to process ATMOS and make the stream rate lower and better sounding.........

Just kidding

 

[yerbas07]

Maybe we can get MQA to process ATMOS and make the stream rate lower and better sounding.........

Almost all portable dacs (daps) have adapted to MQA and platforms like Tidal opted for MQA, but in the end they switched to ATMOS. Currently there are no daps that process Atmos (neither for streaming nor playing m4a 24/48 atmos files). I mean that to listen to Atmos in streaming you can only use Android or the latest generation iPhones. Will dap players adapt to Atmos? That can be complicated, if there are hardware and software problems simultaneously, right?