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Topic: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music (Read 1868 times) previous topic - next topic
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Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Does anyone have any objective information on what Dolby ATMOS and Spatial Audio is trying to do? Most of what I am finding is marketing speak

This is what my ears are telling me:

1. It's a new stereo mix.
2. The loudness is cranked up a tiny bit.
3. The bass is accentuated a tiny bit.

I'm not really hearing anything "spatial" about this, at least to me. And I don't think I'm hearing anything that a good mixing engineer could pull off.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #1 –
As it is on Apple Music it's doing basically what Dolby Headphone would do, it's virtualizing a number of speakers in 3D space into headphones. I don't know if it has head tracking, but if it's available, it's only with Airpods Pro and Max, whereas it's supposed to work without tracking for any other set of headphones. The music in Apple's service comes in proper DD+ Atmos, and it's supposed to play in Atmos if you have a home theater connected for example to an Apple TV. I don't have their Music service so I haven't tried it myself though.

Is it not working well for you? I tried their spatial audio demo before with my iPhone and Airpods pro and it was very effective, with head tracking and all. I'm waiting eagerly for tvOS 15 which will bring it to videos on the ATV4K.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #2 –
I'm using Beats Solo Pro headphones, which have an Apple H1 chip, which they say support Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos.

It definitely sounds different from the stereo version. But it doesn't sound "spatial" to me. Just sounds louder, with slightly accentuated bass.

Some people would describe it as a more "full" sound, which is what happens when you crank up the volume.

They talked it up, like I was going to get simulated 5.1 surround in my head. And it's not even close to that.

I'm curious if you have a Dolby Atmos system at home, and you play one of these tracks, will you actually get multi-channel audio out of your speakers, or is this just a stereo experience.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #3 –
I have an Apple TV 4K but don't have the music service, and Apple doesn't let you listen to samples in that device, but other people at AVS Forum have tried it and they get Atmos on their AVRs. Here's some instructions on the Apple website https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182

Pretty much everyone else who has tried it says it's great. I'm just waiting for it to be enabled for movies on tvOS 15. Maybe I can test with my iPhone later if its music app allows to play samples, like on the website.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #4 –
Quote from: andy o on
I have an Apple TV 4K but don't have the music service, and Apple doesn't let you listen to samples in that device, but other people at AVS Forum have tried it and they get Atmos on their AVRs. Here's some instructions on the Apple website https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182

Pretty much everyone else who has tried it says it's great. I'm just waiting for it to be enabled for movies on tvOS 15. Maybe I can test with my iPhone later if its music app allows to play samples, like on the website.

You can get a 30-day free trial of Apple music, if you want to try it out. Just cancel on Day 29,before you get charged.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #5 –
Yeah, I actually got an offer for 3 months when I was gonna try the samples but can't be bothered. Will know soon enough when a somewhat stable beta of tvOS 15 is out, plus I already heard the demo on the iPhone when you go enable it so I assume it's the same. It's pretty cool with the head tracking.

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #6 –
marketing speak
 

Re: Dolby Atmos music went live this morning on Apple Music

Reply #7 –
It's not just that, it can be very effective, and on the surface it's nothing new or extraordinary, Dolby Headphone did something like it more than 15 years ago, and the company that Dolby eventually bought was doing it in the 90s. If binaural audio can be effective there's no reason why spatial audio wouldn't work since the spatial audio encoder is being fed information of the location of the speakers from the multichannel (or even stereo) track.

There's been multiple other schemes that do the same with varying levels of effectiveness all this time. The A16 Realiser is the most effective and complex, also extremely expensive. What Apple has done compared to the others (except for the A16) is add Atmos and head tracking support, and a mass scale marketing push. IMO from the 3 new things they pushed with Apple Music (lossless, hi-res, and spatial), it is the one that's not just marketing.