Dolby Atmos Critique Video

[JoeWhip]

I use the Kodi app on my Nvidia Shield Pro to play my MKV TrueHD Atmos files. Works pretty damn well.

 

[Zensō]

The massive marketing push for Atmos in recent years is much more about selling Apple Airpods (with annual sales of over $12 billion) than it is about speaker systems. Guaranteed Dolby wants a piece of that pie. Approximately 80% of Atmos content is being consumed on headphones, with a large majority on Airpods (Pro and Max).

 

[Curvature]

Actually I can't let it rest at that. You pointed to a stanford website about audio technologies. That's not a solution, that's an idea that exists in fairy tale land. The delta between that and my home theater room is so huge, you could fit planets inside. Good luck getting that standardized, implemented in hardware and software, implemented in the mixing studios, implemented with the content creators, the players, the full stack. It could be done, but it requires earnest organized effort that open source flat-out fails on.

Open-source proponents are often fanatical and oblivious to the real world - drumming up achievements like they are the God that brought light to the earth, while ignoring shortcomings, or the achievements of industry. Open source solutions didn't bring us CDs, that took huge efforts on the parts of Philips and Sony. It didn't bring us the mass-scale silicon manufacturing for all the chips we have, didn't design the chips. Didn't bring cars. Cargo ships. Airplanes. Roads. Often the open source development hopes to and is proud to achieve what industry already achieved in decades past.

Then there's actually using open-source solutions, which remain for the most part utter garbage. Linux is terrible and always has been terrible. Try to get your mother to use Linux as a desktop OS lol. Python is hot garbage when you need to actually get stuff done. Matlab wins. Microsoft office is way better than Libreoffice or whatever abomination linux users are forced to use. Photoshop reigns supreme for a reason (despite adobe's terrible subscription model). I was looking for a replacement to my WDTV media player. Unfortunately the best solution is Kodi. Getting something like that set up requires days of misery and delving into the deep recesses of the 2nd and 3rd pages of google searhc, along with sacrificing a few chickens that you find what you want/need.

I'm sorry to be so forceful, but to merely shouting "BUT OPEN SOURCE" only distracts from the issue and gets in the way.

The standardization is already done by defining the protocol. The hardware piece relies on having multichannel gear. Select musicians, usually elites, are interested in the main commercial channels and Atmos. With other immersive formats there is much more uptake which right now is centered either on binaural music, shows or live installations.

Atmos is just one example of an immersive format, and a relatively recent one. The fact that it was successfully marketed has more to do with Dolby's status as a leader than with the advantages of the technology.

Streaming is basically closed, controlled channel content delivery, and multichannel is for the most part the domain of equally closed AVRs and AVPs. The economics there are to do with limiting and controlling market access. That's the situation in which Atmos took root.

I can't answer your charge about naivete. That realpolitik sort of perspective always goes the way of power and selfinterest. Maybe the only counterpoint here would be that Atmos is more likely to be replaced than not, and is at most a tech stepping stone, but that's more of a semi-informed guess. A better answer would be that most artists will likely ignore it. If you take commercially successful media and compare it by quantity to everything that's released, there's far more of the latter. Music is way bigger than the big labels can ever hope to be.

I think about myself and my friends. If I make 2 channel music any of them could listen to it relatively uncompromised. If I make binaural or any multichannel music, I don't think any of them could listen to the first without problems, and none of them have multichannel setups. That's probably a good indication of the general situation. It's a lot easier to make two channel music. At some point, and Atmos is an indication of this, some object based audio format will take over that'a easier to produce and easier to playback with little compromise on any system of any channel count. I don't think it's a physical impossibility either—look at how successful codecs have been at psychoacoustic and psychovisual compression. Someone will release the goods for a spatial codec and that will be that. Piracy and disrespect for elite commercial channels will do its thing.

 

[FriedChicken]

I use the Kodi app on my Nvidia Shield Pro to play my MKV TrueHD Atmos files. Works pretty damn well.

I got one and immediately returned it, the nVidia Shield, a hardware device I just spent $200 on, required a google account to use. In the proverbial trash it goes.

 

[JoeWhip]

I have a back up gmail addy. That is all I needed.

 

[FriedChicken]

I have a back up gmail addy. That is all I needed.

Sure, but I'm pretty sure they demand a sign-up process so you agree to their "terms and conditions". The nVidia Shield has a microphone. There's no reason to believe they're not listening to everything.

 

[JoeWhip]

It is isolated in a closet and my AVR has a noisy fan. They will hear nothing so I am not worried.

 

[FriedChicken]

It is isolated in a closet and my AVR has a noisy fan. They will hear nothing so I am not worried.

The microphone is on the remote

 

[JoeWhip]

Well, they can listen to me watching movies and TV. That will be boring.

 

[JoeWhip]

There is always duct tape. Gee my Fios remote has a microphone too. Not worried about that either.