This is such a scam. Atmos content sounds dreadful, and its just a last ditch to keep dolby relevant in the consumer space. Find a single audio engineer who supports it, they are hens teeth and this is an advert.
And yet, most atmos mixes aren't very good. Even movies with good atmos mixes for cinema often have a shitty mix on streaming or BR with only the surround soundscape expanded into the overhead channels.
And that's not a surprise — if you know the overhead and surround speakers are dedicated speakers of high quality, e.g. in cinemas, you can put dialogue and important audio onto these channels. But if the atmos and surround speakers might just be reflected from the ceiling or tiny satellites you obviously can't use them for audio that's essential for understanding the plot.
And for music it's even worse, while some music was originally mixed for quadrophonic or 5.1 listening — kraftwerk 3D, pink floyd's dark side of the moon — most atmos mixes are just upmixed from the stereo mix and provide no benefit whatsoever.
And so the way most people interact with atmos — cheap soundbars reflecting channels off the walls and lazy upmixes of pop music — provide no benefit whatsoever and just result in disillusionment.
The same has already happened with 3D films (Avatar looked spectacular in 3D, but obviously if you watched 3D-converted films on a cheap TV it sucked) and is happening again with HDR content (properly mastered content on a mastering monitor or even a good 1000nits Rec.2020 OLED looks absolutely spectacular, but converted content on a 400nits IPS sRGB panel obviously sucks).
There is a large library of _freakin incredible_ made-for-spatial-audio tracks on Apple Music.
It makes for a great demo when people come over, they're always blown away.
But even if you do get the object-based streams, it still contains a "bed" of 7.1(.2) audio channels that still require precise placement of your speakers.
Besides which, even 5.1 content is mixed horribly by content providers (use the center channel for dialogue, people! And lay off the explosions for a bit..)
What makes it ultra disappointing, is that the atmos brand is just slapped on any old thing. If it's not in a cinema, it's not 128 objects, but maybe 20. If it's atmos music, it's something else. And how does a tiny soundbar deliver on immersive sound from all of those channels and objects?
Well-mixed 5.1 is still a joy to hear.
Complete nonsense. Maybe on _your_ setup this is true, but that has nothing to do with ATMOS.
It's funny because the absolute highest commercially-available quality out there at the moment is Apple Music's ATMOS tracks/high-resolution lossless. On a proper high-end system the difference is night and day.
>Find a single audio engineer who supports it, they are hens teeth and this is an advert.
I don't take people seriously who call themselves "engineers" who are not actually Engineers.