Sadly this won’t appeal to the masses in the least, who probably think they’re enjoying the full benefits of Atmos through their single smart speaker in the kitchen or through their laptop that has a DolbyAtmos sticker on it.
However, for those on this forum at least, it’s a very interesting prospect. The multichannel music I have is awesome, so the possibility of there being much more content available sounds great. One or two caveats and questions though.
I have a pre-Atmos AV receiver, so when I encounter Blurays for example that are encoded in Dolby Atmos, I can still listen to them due to the 7.1 ‘layer’ on the disc. I don‘t have to select the non-HD Dolby Digital option on the disc just to get a sound out of it. OK I don’t get height channels, but then I don’t have height speakers, and I still get to enjoy full-fat HD 7.1.
But discs have a far greater bitrate capacity than streaming typically does, so my first question would be whether I would hear anything at all through my 7.1 AV receiver or whether Atmos streaming has the same 7.1 layer underneath as a disc?
My other main observation is that to enjoy multichannel Atmos Music on Tidal (as opposed to he headphone variety), you seem to need a display turned on to operate it. That’s a shame, I would have liked to have streamed Atmos music without having my projector switched on; simply operating it on my iPad app through a streamer. But counteracting that, there aren’t many (or any?) music only streamers that have a multichannel HDMI audio only output, so I guess with current hardware options, that’s the only way they could do it. Although I know with my Roku I can operate it using an app, so technically I don’t need to switch on my display to navigate my way around it. Would that apply to Apple TV and Fire Stick?
Would love to hear comments from those who are enjoying it through compatible hardware and what their impressions are. As with all music, much will depend on the mastering and mixing.
One of my favourite genres of music is Original Motion Picture Soundtracks. It’s struck me for years that it’s been a shame that listening to the soundtrack, purely from the audio point of view, that I could never get close to the DTS-HD 7.1 experience that I heard the same movie on.
Wouldn’t it be great to hear the Original Motion Picture Soundtracks like Inception, Interstellar, First Man, The Martian, The Village, 1917, LaLa Land, Star Wars etc etc in the 7.1 they must have been mixed in for the film, but just without the dialogue and Jar Jar Binks getting in the way!