I’m a huge fan of “the flavor of Dolby Atmos that’s used in movie and TV soundtracks,” for playback on 7.1.4 surround speaker setup. I’ve had a system for over a year now. And the Dolby Audio Surround 2.0-to-7.1.4 upmixer is brilliant. I don’t know quite what to make of “whatever it is Apple Music is calling Dolby Atmos,” however, listening with headphones. I don’t have an Apple TV4K running tvOS 14.6 yet, which Apple says is needed to feed an AVR processor via HDMI, so I’ve reserved my listening so far to headphone listening.
The affect is impossible for me to pin down, kind of nice on some projects, pretty awful on others. When listening with conventional headphones/earbuds some recordings have an enhanced sense of isolation and space (two different concepts) between individual sound sources and a wider soundstage that seems to extend laterally beyond my ears. Often the responsible parties seem to take the occasion of a remix to just boost the shit out of the bass while they’re at it, or make something much louder or much more recessed in the mix. I’ve never heard any sense of “height” over headphones like what you get with overhead speakers in a theatrical or home theater Dolby Atmos setup. At best, some mixes sound more spacious and with more distinct isolation. At worst, on poorer remixes, things just sound distant, dull, muted and with excessive reverb. It’s a real mixed bag. Maybe it’s just growing pains/learning curve issues for the engineers. I hope.