The stereo version of that old Marvin Gaye tune sounded to me like distortion, compression and even some reverb had all been added. The Atmos version sounded better to me, only because it sounded cleaner. I think the demo is rigged. The Atmos version sounds better, but not because of Atmos. It sounds better because it's been cleaned up whereas the stereo version comes from some completely different copy that hasn't been cleaned up, and likely has been distorted in various ways. This kind of demo is almost guaranteed to be rigged. Why wouldn't they do this kind of thing? Is anyone watching over their shoulders to make certain that they created the Atmos version from the stereo version and that the Atmos version wasn't given any special treatment as compared to the routine Atmos conversion of other material?
By the way, I couldn't stand listening to that narrator guy, or whatever he's referred to. His voice sounded whiny and wimpy, and he ran words togetherlikeeverythingwasallonelongword. Why would they do something like this and not hire someone with a good speaking voice?
I haven't much liked anything that Apple has done in a very long time. In fact the only thing they've ever done that I much liked was when they ditched their old operating system and adopted a variant of UNIX. That was a great move, but there still way too much stuff in Mac OS that is carried over from that ridiculous softcontraption that Jobs first introduced back in the mid-early eighties. And as far as I'm concerned most all of their application software, including iTunes, is grotesque.
I do not believe in synthesizing extra tracks from a two-track recording. A regular stereo recording made years ago does not contain any information that corresponds to an additional, reflected-off-the-ceiling track. You cannot create something from nothing. If the process by which the off-the-ceiling tracks are being created is any different from what could otherwise be synthesized within the playback equipment, then it is necessarily a creative process. To me, it isn't much different from someone taking an old original painting and painting over it with their own personal touches, to make it look more the way they think it should look. I don't really see any difference. But it is very much the sort of thing that Apple would do, in cahoots with some other company. (Shhhh ... don't anyone mention Beats.) It makes me sad to think that all those sheep-people who are perpetually crowded into the Apple store at the mall are now going to start listening to music that has been modified, no longer the same as the original, and they are going to think of it as an improvement, because some of it is intentionally reflected off the ceiling. Very, very sad. Somehow, the idea of people preferring to listen to old-style amplifiers that add distortion that they think equates to "better" sound quality doesn't seem as bad as did up until several minutes ago. I think maybe I'm going to patent a process that will detect the main tempo of recorded music and add cowbell. Instead of it being a preset amount, it will have a control to let the listener add cowbell to suit their personal taste.