Tidal Adds Dolby Atmos Music

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The DiagNorm is -18, which is 13 higher relative to -31 (zero offset), and the AVR applied an offset of -13.


I turned the "Loudness Management" setting "On" and "Off" on the Denon/Marantz AVR, but it has no effect on the volume and it still shows the same offset.
The good news is that any way you slice it, although we might be annoyed that Atmos plays lower in relative overall volume to other stuff, it's simply a matter of just turning the volume up.

P.S. the dynamic range still remains the same (according to Dolby).
 
The good news is that any way you slice it, although we might be annoyed that Atmos plays lower in relative overall volume to other stuff, it's simply a matter of just turning the volume up.

P.S. the dynamic range still remains the same (according to Dolby).

I always appreciate your glass-half-full spirit, Eric!

I'll be the Gloomy Gus and counter that turning the volume up is the easy part. It's having to turn the volume down (at the end of an Atmos album or playlist, before Tidal's unquenchable Autoplay kicks in with something I didn't want to hear in the first place, at a deafening volume) that's the pain in the arse--made even worse by the fact that I tend to listen to surround music at louder than normal volumes to begin with, the better to appreciate the detail that a good surround mix often opens up.

If someone can tell me how to silence Autoplay on Tidal for Firestick once and for good, I'll stop complaining. I have a ticket in to Tidal, although based on past experience, my hopes aren't high. No answers on Reddit. I've made sure to open the settings on every other device on which I have Tidal loaded--laptops, desktop, Kindle Fire--and uncheck Autoplay. Yet it still kicks in on Tidal for Firestick. And the only setting you have access to on Tidal for Firestick, unfortunately, is "Streaming quality."
 
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I always appreciate your glass-half-full spirit, Eric!

I'll be the Gloomy Gus and counter that turning the volume up is the easy part. It's having to turn the volume down (at the end of an Atmos album or playlist, before Tidal's unquenchable Autoplay kicks in with something I didn't want to hear in the first place, at a deafening volume) that's the pain in the arse, made even worse by the fact that I tend to listen to surround music at louder than normal volumes, the better to appreciate the detail that a good surround mix often opens up.

If someone can tell me how to silence Autoplay on Tidal for Firestick once and for good, I'll stop complaining. I have a ticket in to Tidal, although based on past experience, my hopes aren't high. No answers on Reddit. I've made sure to open the settings on every other device on which I have Tidal loaded--laptops, desktop, Kindle Fire--and uncheck Autoplay. Yet it still kicks in on Tidal for Firestick. And the only setting you have access to on Tidal for Firestick, unfortunately, is "Streaming quality."
Have you tried turning off Autoplay on the desktop app, perhaps that would do the trick??

I don't see anywhere in the Apple TV App to turn it off, so I'm guessing the desktop app...?
Screen Shot 2020-08-30 at 1.01.49 PM.png
 
Have you tried turning off Autoplay on the desktop app, perhaps that would do the trick??

I don't see anywhere in the Apple TV App to turn it off, so I'm guessing the desktop app...?
View attachment 55741

Yeah---turned it off on the web app, desktop app, Android app, Kindle Fire app...still doesn't seem to affect playback on the Firestick app.
 
The adventure continues. (Apologies to those for whom the inability to turn off Autoplay on Fire TV Stick is not a problem. I'm aware that this has become my hobby horse....)

It took more than two weeks and four email exchanges before a "customer service" agent replied with anything even remotely germane to the issue that I described. I've bolded the bad news:

Hello,

Thank you for reaching back out!

Autoplay on TIDAL in THE TV app is there by default, currently there is no way to disable it at the moment.
Changes made to settings on other platforms like desktop or mobile doesn't affect the TV app. I have forwarded this feedback to our product team. Our developers are looking to implement additional settings on the TV app and take this feedback into consideration.

Thanks for being a TIDAL member!

(I assume that when she says "the TV app," she means not just Fire TV but also the Fire TV Stick.)

Just for kicks, I replied once more, asking her please to impress upon the developers the urgency of this problem, which apart from being generally obnoxious is a matter of health and liability. When an Atmos album or playlist ends and is followed by a non-Atmos track, the sudden increase in volume could easily damage hearing and equipment.

That said, I have absolutely no faith that this will be addressed any time soon. (I expect that "forwarded to our product team" is standard customer service-speak for "tossed into the virtual round file.") Of course, the whole thing would be a moot point if we could stream Atmos to our AVRs using Tidal's mobile or desktop apps.
 
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Does anyone know if they've finally fixed the volume issue? I just now started playing the new Diplo album, MMXX, and to my surprise, it feels like I'm not having to jack the volume way up in order to hear it properly...

Edit: and at the end of the album, when Autoplay inexorably kicked in...the next track did not blow my ears or my speakers. So I guess this is progress? Now I have to go check out some of the older Atmos albums & tracks.
 
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New album added today: MMXX-I by Diplo. Nice ambient music with a very good Atmos mix. After sampling Goats Head Soup, I wish it would have been mixed more on the style of this one. Diplo's is making really good use of all speakers

Agreed. This is one of the more imaginative Atmos mixes available on Tidal right now, IMO. I can't find any info about mixing credits, though.
 
Does anyone know if they've finally fixed the volume issue? I just now started playing the new Diplo album, MMXX, and to my surprise, it feels like I'm not having to jack the volume way up in order to hear it properly...

Edit: and at the end of the album, when Autoplay inexorably kicked in...the next track did not blow my ears or my speakers. So I guess this is progress? Now I have to go check out some of the older Atmos albums & tracks.

And sadly, the answer seems to be...no.

As reported above, the levels on the Diplo album are good, but I don't think they've fixed any of the older material. Even the last Atmos album I added to my collection, Gregory Porter's All Rise (from a couple of weeks ago), is the usual 15-20 dB quieter than non-Atmos content. (Just for reference: to hear most Atmos content at a normal level on my AVR, I have to crank the volume to 60. Everything else: 45. Supposedly Marantz receivers go up and down in half-decibel increments, which means the difference is only 7.5 dB. But it sure feels a a lot greater....)
 
No contest as far as stereo, Qobuz wins by miles. BUT in the ATMOS game, Tidal rules, as Qobuz has zero Atmos.

But do they have any actual customer service?

I'm genuinely curious, because that utter lack of meaningful customer service may be the single most infuriating thing about Tidal. I'm also thinking ahead, hoping that Dolby has granted Amazon and Tidal a duopoly on Atmos only for a limited time, and that eventually they'll open it up to everyone. (But what in the world are they waiting for?)
 
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