Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS™
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN points to it in Atmos and spatial audio threads as a knowledgeable critique of why the format rarely delivers.
What it is
Musician and audio engineer Benn Jordan tries Dolby Atmos as a consumer, covering the theory of immersive audio, its business model, and home theater and headphone listening. He concludes it often falls short of the pitch.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2023 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec philovivero · 2023-07 · on “Brian Eno Albums Available in Dolby Atmos and Spatial for the First Time”
Someone else posted this down in the bottom of a comment thread somewhere, but I think it deserves to be at the top level: [this video] This is a smart, motivated audio engineer talking about Atmos. Quick summary: it's awful when it works perfectly, and it almost never works perfectly, in fact, it rarely works at all. Good luck trying to get Atmos working, and even if this was a completely open standard, would you really bother?
Recommends Intermernet · 2023-07 · on “Brian Eno Albums Available in Dolby Atmos and Spatial for the First Time”
You can get very cheap digital to digital audio hardware that can convert any multi-channel audio stream (DRM or otherwise) to straight multi-channel PCM. I personally, occasionally, use an RME Babyface Pro (not cheap) for this purpose, but there are many options available. You can even do this purely in software. On Windows or Linux look at Jack. On MacOS I guarantee it's available. As an aside, Atmos is generally lossy. It's actually a terrible format for music distribution. It's only popular due to marketing. Interesting video from Benn Jordan at [this video]
Recommends TonyTrapp · 2023-08 · on “Dolby Atmos will use your TV to expand living room speaker setups”
I found this video by Benn Jordan very enlightening about the whole Atmos nonsense: "Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS" [this video] TL;DW: It's just not worth it. (but do watch it to understand why)
Recommends spamizbad · 2024-01 · on “Apple Music will now pay 10% higher royalties to artists for Spatial Audio music”
I imagine it's seen as a value-add by Apple and Dolby. Studios are forking off massive sums to build-out Atmos rigs. A savvy artists may ask for it because it helps you on Apple Music. As for the consumer experience, I feel like Benn Jordan's video from earlier last year does a good job of explaining the situation and its current limitations: [this video]
Cites harry8 · 2023-07 · on “Brian Eno Albums Available in Dolby Atmos and Spatial for the First Time”
[LINK] tl;dr New surround tech with added height channels. Great. I can imagine there could be uses. Like any new tech before you've analysed it, could be good, could be trash. Additional surround height channels cannot possibly be as good as 2 channels, properly recorded and mixed to drive stereo headphones for generating 3D sound. This is key. You can't beat headphones for 3D sound. If you can't understand why then the conclusions which follow will seem even more incomprehensible, grandparents involvement or no. Best way to meet that impasse head on is to go get your headphones and find some older 3D audio and listen to its quality. Or make some, like I did in the 1980s. It's really great