Will Atmos go away in a couple years?

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I think part of the problem is the new music sucks.....speaking as an old fart
bah humbug! 😋 there's plenty of music in Atmos for everyone, of all tastes and age ranges 🤗

just tonight i've been enjoying Neil Diamond, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Sting, Joni Mitchell, Grace Jones & The Beatles, all resplendent in Atmos.

all from the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's. nothing newer than 30 years old! doesn't get much old fartier than that! 😅🤣
 
High-end snobbery isn't only on the part of those customers who have sunk umpteen thousands of dollars into systems that might sound only marginally better than a "mid-fi" (as the high-end snobs call it) system, but it's also on the part of the stores that sell these so-called "holy grail" components. From the moment a new customer wanders into a high-end salon, he's immediately "sized up". How is he dressed? How much money does he have? Is he worth spending time with, doing demos and extolling the virtues of the different components? Is it right to do? No. Does it happen? All too often. Mention surround sound for anything but movies, they recoil in horror. I prefer to deal with a store that treats everyone equally, without pre-judging. Are there really any high end audio shops like that?
 
I guess I shouldn't say I don't like a lot of music. Where I live I don't hear much except Country and "Classic Rock" on the radio, which is only on in my shop.
More of a Prog Rock kind of guy, but I do listen to Country on the radio..
Pretty sure I qualify for the dubious distinction to be a really really old fart. lol.
 
I had a very similar experience recently.
There are fewer and fewer audio stores here in St. Louis and one survivor a big home theater store that opened after I stopped going into stores for the most part, had an event where they promised food (which was inedible even though it was catered by a nearby Italian restaurant ) and factory reps (chatting with one who also was an old geez was the highlight of the evening.) and the latest gear.

They call themselves the Sound Room but that is in the past. They really are "the Home Theater Room" and they did have multiple rooms with all kinds of screens and projectors and variants of audio systems.

I did want to hear an Atmos system but most of the displays were clearly not Atmos and the ones where there were ceiling speakers I still wasn't sure.
The one thing I was sure about was that I did not like ANY of the sound that I heard. It all was the audio equivalent of over processed junk food.
I am sure it all would have been wonderful on movies but even attempts at music were movies (Eric Clapton and a movie about Queen that was actors)
The bass all sounded to me like what you hear at traffic lights when the young fella pulls up next to you. The kids that won't stay the fuck off your lawn.
These were all very expensive systems with big name audio sections. Treated rooms. Sounded awful to me.

And even though I made it my business to dress well , and I am not poor, I did explicitly feel like I was being sized up constantly and there were a lot of their regular customers there who didn't even realize they were being very rude. Many of these were not kids.
 
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I think part of the problem is the new music sucks.....speaking as an old fart
I was going to reply “I resemble that remark,” but was beaten to it several times.

Regarding the topic of the thread, I find that fortune-telling is not among my skill set. I’ve “early adopted” so many things that went bust that I just let them go obsolete on their own. Alas, not quite true. I still love my 3-D movies, which is why I put up with the crappy blacks on my TV.

But I set up my room primarily for audio - the music is why rhe room exists, although I made a career out of electric pictures. It’s pretty good, which is, well, pretty good. I installed ceiling speakers as close to Dolby specs as the existing structure would allow, although the equipment to decode Atmos and drive the speakers remains in the supply chain. 5.1 is what I have for the moment, and I like it and it impresses the hell out of my guests. Whether Atmos dies before I can purchase the necessary hardware isn’t anything I can control, but I would like to experience it eventually.
 
I had a very similar experience recently ... And even though I made it my business to dress well , and I am not poor, I did explicitly feel like I was being sized up constantly...
I sussed out this "evaluate the customer" business years ago. As I always dress like a dag (an even lower social class than a bogan), I make a point of immediately saying to the shop server that "I've just come into an inheritance, and money is no option, so show me what you've got".

The subsequent result is undivided attention to my questions and obsequious fawning on their part. :p
 
I had a very similar experience recently.
There are fewer and fewer audio stores here in St. Louis and one survivor a big home theater store that opened after I stopped going into stores for the most part, had an event where the promised food (which was inedible even though it was catered by a nearby Italian restaurant ) and factory reps (chatting with one who also was an old geez was the highlight of the evening.) and the latest gear.

They call themselves the Sound Room but that is in the past. They really are "the Home Theater Room" and they did have multiple rooms with all kinds of screens and projectors and variants of audio systems.

I did want to hear an Atmos system but most of the displays were clearly not Atmos and the ones where there were ceiling speakers I still wasn't sure.
The one thing I was sure about was that I did not like ANY of the sound that I heard. It all was the audio equivalent of over processed junk food.
I am sure it all would have been wonderful on movies but even attempts at music were movies (Eric Clapton and a movie about Queen that was actors)
The bass all sounded to me like what you hear at traffic lights when the young fella pulls up next to you. The kids that won't stay the fuck off your lawn.
These were all very expensive systems with big name audio sections. Treated rooms. Sounded awful to me.

And even though I made it my business to dress well , and I am not poor, I did explicitly feel like I was being sized up constantly and there were a lot of their regular customers there who didn't even realize they were being very rude. Many of these were not kids.
The problem with the audio industry as a whole goes much deeper as I see it. People are curious about Atmos and RA360 and want to hear it. So one guy I communicate with has bought no AVR with Atmos decoding because he's a pc guy and prefers to keep it that way. So he got the Dolby Reference Player. But it is not working well for him, which I'm hearing from a few people.
If Dolby's own software player....well you get it. I had the same experience myself, to some degree.

Then you walk into a storefront and hear...garbage? Not going to win over a music fan.

My personal complaint is that AVR's these days try to be everything to everyone.
I'm retired, money is at a premium. So I just bought an open box, mid-level Onkyo, the TX-RZ50.
I bought it for the 11 channel Atmos processing, pre outs, and Dirac room correction (which works very well, BTW!). I did not buy it for Sonos, Chromecast, multiple stereo inputs, Internet radio, etc, etc, ad infinity, ad nausem. While I'm sure some or all of that is handy for some people, I'd much rather see them improve their amplifier specs.
 
High-end snobbery isn't only on the part of those customers who have sunk umpteen thousands of dollars into systems that might sound only marginally better than a "mid-fi" (as the high-end snobs call it) system, but it's also on the part of the stores that sell these so-called "holy grail" components. From the moment a new customer wanders into a high-end salon, he's immediately "sized up". How is he dressed? How much money does he have? Is he worth spending time with, doing demos and extolling the virtues of the different components? Is it right to do? No. Does it happen? All too often. Mention surround sound for anything but movies, they recoil in horror. I prefer to deal with a store that treats everyone equally, without pre-judging. Are there really any high end audio shops like that?

I got two audio only High End stores in my area that are pretty mellow.... since many rich people dress down here in SoCal, they never really know... these stores do carry extraordinarily priced components, and they will demo them... now, normally I just buy their records so I help keep their power bill in check.

But the stores that have gone to the Home Theater seem to cater to the "status" and "Porsche SUV" crowd. When I walk in wearing jeans or shorts they ignore me, even though my components blow their stuff away... I've stopped going there, all they want to sell is overpriced junk for a dedicated "theater room"... I must say that the shift away from projectors to very large OLEDs is gonna kill them. With an OLED you can have a very good HT experience in your den, no need for a dark room anymore.

Which is sort of like the way it always was... the true "audio" stores used to be cool about it... but the mid-fi stores that moved to HT were always poseurs in the Audio World.

Atmos? Forget about it. When we built our house I put in four surround, in ceiling speakers (PSB) and with my front three, I got a very good sounding 7.0 system, but no way I'm I gonna bother with the extra Atmos speakers... who cares? Now, most people would not even bother to do what I did, they'd go with a sound bar and call it a day. IMHO, the technology to do this right is wireless surrounds with a base station that syncs and adjusts the delays accordingly... sort of a "take speakers, put them on a shelf, plug them in and press a button in the front box" sort of complexity.

And really, it should just be five speakers, perhaps a subwoofer that also contains the transmitter. That's it... no one in that crowd is gonna install 14 channels in their den.

Btw, I'm also looking at doing something wireless in a couple of my 2ch set ups. Just for the quad.
 
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I'm wondering how they created a Atmos soundstage from that Frank Sinatra master, At best a stereo master?
Might not have been a stereo master--or at least not for all tracks. But they may also have used stem separation software, as Verve/UMG apparently did with Ella Fitzgerald's Irving Berlin Songbook (for example).
 
I am just going to reply to original post.
As many know I have been all 5.1 starting around 1992 with my Phillips surround set up and the added Kplisch sub, to play those glorious Laser Discs, they had a Laser Disc store on Noriega, God was I addicted to going there.
Been listening to surround music since 2014 and am listening daily to either, 2.0, 4.0, 5.1 and Dolby Atmos, love it all.
If Atmos falls by the wayside it will take quite a while, it will not be abrupt.
Will I care, I haven't really cared so far. I am more concerned about quality of recordings leaving us than anything else.
 
Regarding the name of this thread
I HOPE SO.

Regarding the latest batch of music.....compare 1969 to 2022

1969

Try it between 1962- 1973

2022


Anyway I will get back to my Perry Como records now

Don't worry about popular

In fact, avoid that at all costs

i am nearly 70 now,i love all my old toons and can testify that there is enough "new" music/artists across all genres that i will be dead long before i even scratch the surface

i admit that the 2021 list had nowt on it that has crossed my radar, and when i looked into some,i cringed lol

Also,i am somehow discovering music that somehow slipped by me decades ago as well

i will be busy discovering old music i missed when it was new,and new music until i die
 
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