Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS™

Someone else posted this down in the bottom of a comment thread somewhere, but I think it deserves to be at the top level: link to 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?

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 link to this video

I found this video by Benn Jordan very enlightening about the whole Atmos nonsense: "Gaslighting Your Fans w/ Dolby ATMOS" link to this video TL;DW: It's just not worth it. (but do watch it to understand why)

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: link to this video

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…