Stereophile's Jim Austin Says Streaming Atmos Sucks

[krabapple]

I had Quad 8-track tapes. Genuine fully separate 4 channels. There weren't too many.

Rather a lot really, among the corpus of popular music quad releases back then

(anything marked 'DQ8' or 'Q8' was an 8-track cartridge tape)

 

[krabapple]

Discrete system here. Atmos movies sound great, especially from a 4k blu-ray disc. Atmos does improve movies. Some Atmos music sounds good if it fits having sounds all around you like some Pink Floyd songs. Most Atmos music I've listened to gives the same effect as playing regular stereo music with the AVR set to multichannel stereo.

Multichannel stereo is barely even 'upmixing', it's simply replicating front left/right in rear left/right. And maybe common L/R content goes to center.

This would be laziest possible way of doing a real multichannel mix.

It is a silly option that IMO should only be use for parties, if at all. (Better for parties : all channel mono)

 

[Sal1950]

It is a silly option that IMO should only be use for parties, if at all. (Better for parties : all channel mono)

Yep but probably the best option if you have a big room and are having a party, otherwise it's useless, no ones paying attention to what's coming out of what speaker.
IMHO a Mono feed to all speakers would be even better.

 

[Sal1950]

WHOPPER ALERT!

Jim Austin has just posted the following comment on his Stereophile column. (Click here for link.)

That first sentence is a doozy: "To summarize, MQA is lossless at all frequencies where music (and music-related sounds) exist."

Clearly, he is just trolling us now.
View attachment 343212

He now has my sincere response.

LOL So not only has Stereophile locked out any and all comments from their readers but also have now removed all older user posts. Click on the link for my post above and you'll only get,
"Page not found
The requested page could not be found. "

I've been a paid subscriber since sometime in the early 1980s, shouldn't I be allowed to post my opinion?
Since Mr Austin doesn't have the power to censor me here I will just quickly repeat MHO

"Stereophile has had its head on backwards towards surround sound ever since J. Gordon Holt left over the issue, and the loss of Kal's Rubinson's "In The Round" put the final nail in its coffin at that magazine. [ASR OP Note just fyi: Kal has said that it was he who decided to sunset his column.] While over at The Absolute Sound multich coverage continues and expands with things like Robert Harley's October 2023, eight page article on the building of the new HT/Music room in his home."

"Mr Austin, your short sighted vision of High Fidelity's SOTA is slowly leading the magazine into the stone age and its demise. I highly suggest you step down and turn the reins over to someone with a wider view of High Performance Audio." -- Sal1950"

Update, yes over at The Absolute Sound, a number of writers there continue to review multich sound goings on and multich new music releases in the music section.

 

[Newman]

not only has Stereophile locked out any and all comments from their readers but also have now removed all older user posts.

Yes, I noticed that some time ago. I'm guessing that advertisers put pressure on them to do something about all the comments debunking the poetica esoterica magica reported in the reviews and claimed in the advertising.

In a moment of unintended clarity, the editorial staff may have suddenly realised that the publication's mission has nothing to do with community conversations, and everything to do with echo chamber circle work.

cheers

 

[Sal1950]

Yes, I noticed that some time ago. I'm guessing that advertisers put pressure on them to do something about all the comments debunking the poetica esoterica magica reported in the reviews and claimed in the advertising.

Well I also believe the "objective analysis audio renaissance" has them worried, very worried, almost scared you might say.
The market for $15,000 needles and $150,000 turntables that can't come close to equaling the sound of a $500 digital front end is showing off the Emperors New Clothes.
Not to mention the sound of a 24/96 5.1 or 24/48 Atmos BluRay.
Websites like Archimagos, Audioholics, Erins Corner, not to mention Amir's ASR have actually moved the goalposts increasing the reproduction ability of modern systems.

 

[pinger]

LOL Austin has very little credibility. He works for Stereophile who still push cables make a difference etc. I just let my subscription lapse. Tired of the snake oil and paid for "reviews".

 

[Mort]

"objective analysis audio renaissance" has them worried, very worried, almost scared you might say.

More scared than when the Internet destroyed the magazine business? Stereophile is a thin shadow of its former glory. I think they already lost.

AI and slop will be the final nail, not objectivism imo.

 

[BrooklynNick]

I'm well aware of the differences in bitrate, but the whole point to DD+ is the complex compression algorithm, so bitrate comparisons don't necessarily say anything about audibility.

I would also be very interested in any objective differences. Subjectively, I've compared DD+ to full TrueHD and always found the TrueHD to sound significantly better and to be more immersive. Obviously, could be bias, but the difference seemed significant.

 

[BrooklynNick]

Update, yes over at The Absolute Sound, a number of writers there continue to review multich sound goings on and multich new music releases in the music section

I used to subscribe, more than a decade ago. I'm surprised they still exist. When I stopped reading it, cable nonsense dominated.

 

[RDoc]

I'm still not clear -- you were AB testing what to what? What is heard on lossless ATMOS on disc, versus lossy streaming ATMOS on Apple Music ?

And if so why would Atmos encoding be brighter than the other, surely that is not an effect of lossy encoding? (If anything, bad lossy encoding removes too much high frequencies.) Rather , it's an EQ or DR effect.

My comment came from actual AB tests of source vs encoded heights that were isolated at a local company with such a setup.

I'd very much like to hear more about these AB tests. I can imagine some kind of high frequency artifacts due to the way DD+ encodes harmonics by specifying a multiplier to the base frequency, but that seems unlikely to be audible. OTOH, I've never experienced such a comparison.

 

[RDoc]

I would also be very interested in any objective differences. Subjectively, I've compared DD+ to full TrueHD and always found the TrueHD to sound significantly better and to be more immersive. Obviously, could be bias, but the difference seemed significant.

Was that music or movies? I'm pretty convinced that the more complex sound placements and especially the special effects in TrueHD are better than DD+, but I'm much more interested in music which is generally simpler.

 

[Sal1950]

When I stopped reading it, cable nonsense dominated.

Still does at both. There are constant reviews and claims of veils removed and all that.
I do fully agree that their readership base are fully believers in cable sound.

 

[Thighsofsteel]

I have a Tidal connect subscription and a Lyngdorf MP40 processor. There are a lot of Atmos mixes about now, a lot of the modern mixes are good especially the classical genre. But many are rather forced and unrealistic. Three albums/tracks that come to mind that are very good mixes are Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and LA Woman by the Doors, particularly Riders on the Storm.

 

[Andysu]

stereophile magazine sucks i don't even read that rubbish magazine not for 27 years now

 

[mhardy6647]

Veils... hmm... the environmental impact of all of those removed, and presumably discarded, veils must be catastrophic. And yet, nary a peep on this from the mainstream media. Wake up, sheeple!


ahem...

Oh, and I had another thought about the boutique wire market. Buying expensive cables and, umm, interconnects used seems to constitute a massive market. Where do all of those used cables come from? Some poor jaspers must buy them new, at full market prices.

But that's not my thought!

My thought is -- when giving a set of used cables a new home in a virgin (relatively speaking) hifi, I wonder how long it takes to purge the quantum mechanical echoes of the previous cable owner's music from them?

Imagine the sheer horror of the initial power up in a system used to playing Vivaldi or Schubert or Buxtehude or Diana Krall suddenly interconnected with cables drenched in the residual space-time ripples left behind by, oh, I dunno, Stravinski or Kenny G or Dr. Dre or Sara K!
Imagine the mortal combat between those wave functions pummeling that seven-nines copper?!

Oh the humanity.

Hmmm... maybe I've had too much coffee.
Or not enough.

 

[krabapple]

I have a Tidal connect subscription and a Lyngdorf MP40 processor. There are a lot of Atmos mixes about now, a lot of the modern mixes are good especially the classical genre. But many are rather forced and unrealistic. Three albums/tracks that come to mind that are very good mixes are Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac and LA Woman by the Doors, particularly Riders on the Storm.

The one difference I truly did hear vis a vis Atmos mixes was between Tidal and Apple Music streams. The level for the same Atmos mix was distinctly lower on Tidal than Apple. A distinctly memorable example was Donna Summers' 'I Feel Love'.

I never identified the cause but I dropped my Tidal subscription not long after. This was over year ago, so whatever that was, it may have been corrected by now.

 

[Axo1989]

Veils... hmm... the environmental impact of all of those removed, and presumably discarded, veils must be catastrophic. And yet, nary a peep on this from the mainstream media. Wake up, sheeple!


ahem...

Oh, and I had another thought about the boutique wire market. Buying expensive cables and, umm, interconnects used seems to constitute a massive market. Where do all of those used cables come from? Some poor jaspers must buy them new, at full market prices.

But that's not my thought!

My thought is -- when giving a set of used cables a new home in a virgin (relatively speaking) hifi, I wonder how long it takes to purge the quantum mechanical echoes of the previous cable owner's music from them?

Imagine the sheer horror of the initial power up in a system used to playing Vivaldi or Schubert or Buxtehude or Diana Krall suddenly interconnected with cables drenched in the residual space-time ripples left behind by, oh, I dunno, Stravinski or Kenny G or Dr. Dre or Sara K!
Imagine the mortal combat between those wave functions pummeling that seven-nines copper?!

Oh the humanity.

Hmmm... maybe I've had too much coffee.
Or not enough.

These are important issues to shed light on (I would say rich jaspers rather than poor, but that's a triviality). I wonder for people like me with diverse/eclectic musical taste, how we wrestle with quantum echoes ourselves? No wonder given musical pieces give such different impressions to me at different times.

 

[Sal1950]

Sending out a tip of my hat once again to Andrew Quint at The Absolute Sound.
I just received my Feb 2026 issue and again he has updated his 50 Best Sounding Atmos Mixes list first published six months back.
Andrew also oft discusses surround sound issues along with Robert Harley talking about his custom built multich listening room, more.
Look out Stereophile, if you don't wake up over there, TAS just might run you down.

 

[BJL]

I would also be very interested in any objective differences. Subjectively, I've compared DD+ to full TrueHD and always found the TrueHD to sound significantly better and to be more immersive. Obviously, could be bias, but the difference seemed significant.

TrueHD has a much higher bit rate vs. DD+. Isn't that an objective difference?

And I agree with you. TrueHD sounds much better.