Dolby Atmos?

[GXAlan]

Yes. My experience is that atmos on Mac to multichannel DAC works for Apple Music, Apple TV, and one streaming site in the Safari browser (https://www.digitalconcerthall.com/en/immersive). I have not had success with Netflix or Amazon Video.

That’s impressive! With Movies Anywhere linked to Apple TV+ this would give Dolby Digital Surround Atmos with a premium DAC, right? You don’t get lossy TrueHD Atmos, but so much of content today and the hand wringing among AVR SINAD is still using streaming exclusives.

 

[DavidMcRoy]

"Spatial" is just Apple branding for Atmos. Any AVR that can decode Atmos can play it. Though the marketing materials all focus on headphones because that's what Apple is selling.

I "think" Spatial Audio refers to the Apple audio process that accommodates "head tracking" with specific devices (headphones and IEMs) that are compatible with that technology. When you turn your head, the 3D sound image remains stable in its location around you, not moving with your head movement (supposedly.) I believe that Dolby Atmos and/or Spatial Audio files will still work as intended with any stereo headphones, but the head movement tracking feature won't. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

In my opinion, Apple and Dolby Labs have done a distinctively poor job of explaining all this to consumers, like, not bothering to try to explain it at all. A similar situation exists with trying to hear a genuine HiRes audio signal through an Apple device with an outboard DAC. To do that from my iOS devices I have to assemble an unruly mess of wires and adapters to make it work. Not that I ended up caring about any supposed "improvements," anyway.

 

[DVDdoug]

I "think" Spatial Audio refers to the Apple audio process that accommodates "head tracking" with specific devices (headphones and IEMs) that are compatible with that technology. When you turn your head, the 3D sound image remains stable in its location around you, not moving with your head movement (supposedly.) I believe that Dolby Atmos and/or Spatial Audio files will still work as intended with any stereo headphones, but the head movement tracking feature won't. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't know but without head tracking there's not much point in streaming multichannel and then downmixing to stereo. It could be downmixed to stereo before streaming or they could just make a "different" stereo mix if they think it sounds better with Atmos-like processing in stereo..

I haven't tried Atmos (and I only have a 5.1 channel setup) but I tried Dolby Headphone once. (I think it's obsolete now.) Some people say Dolby Headphone gives them surround in headphones but I just got a vague "spatial" effect... Maybe some reverb or delay or some other processing. I have a surround-test DVD that sends a signal to one speaker at a time and I did NOT hear rear-channel sound coming from behind, and I would have been surprised if I could. Dolby doesn't claim that it creates real surround, just that it "enhances" surround programs when listening on headphones. I wasn't that impressed. With headphones I'm just as happy with the normal downmix (or on DVDs & Blu-Rays there is usually a separate stereo track).