Do NOT Blow Your Entire Budget on Two Channel Audio

I enjoy Dolby Atmos, but in 5.1 format (downconversion in the Marantz pre/pro from AppleTV streamer).

I think the requirement for a pair (or four) ceiling speakers will be the deal-breaker for nearly all audiophiles. The Atmos requirement for a ceiling speaker installation only works for wealthy people who have dedicated home theater rooms in their house. For that small group, listening to Dolby Atmos music in a dimly lit theater room, with the curtain for the blank screen closed, is going to be minority activity. That expensive room is going to used for movies, not music, because it’s really a single-purpose room. It’s not a relaxing place to socialize with the lights on.

Which leaves the rest of us, listening in either our living room or a dedicated music room. What percentage will install the Dolby Atmos ceiling speakers? 5% of the 2-channel audiophile market? 1%? A few audiophiles will tolerate rear speakers and the nuisance of running fat cables around the room. Fewer still will tolerate moving the couch out into the middle of the room to accommodate 7.1 surround, and the required four side and rear speakers, and the required cabling.

And now two or four ceiling speakers, requiring an expensive professional installation to cut the holes, install the speakers, and snake the wires through the walls? If you want to upgrade the ceiling speakers to timbre-match the others, you call the installer back to cut new holes?

Not to mention the discrepancy between the size of the existing 2-channel catalog vs Atmos remixes ... maybe 100,000 to one, or being generous, 10,000 to one?

That’s something that often gets missed. Read about the production guides for Atmos, and it is clear it is a superset of Dolby Digital 5.1 (not 7.1). So down-mixing simply remaps overhead, or spherical, content, into the 5.1 plane.

Down-mixing Atmos into 2-channel, or discrete 5.1, into 2-channel, essentially destroys it. The Dolby guides are clear: make a separate 2-channel mix, and while you’re at it, make sure the 2-channel mix has good mono compatibility (because that really matters in the 2-channel world).

5.1 is the common interchange format between stereo and surround, and the Dolby/DTS upmixers/decoders work surprisingly well. And it’s not a big deal to add 5.1 to a top-of-the-line 2-channel system.

Rather than an either/or between purist 2-channel and a full-on Atmos setup, 5.1 is a satisfying halfway house. I can say from experience Atmos folds down into 5.1 very well, and conversely, a lot of 2-channel content upmixes/dynamically matrixes into 5.1. I’ll go a little further: sometimes the 2-channel content sounds better in 5.1 than the Atmos mix.

The Atmos fold-down into 5.1 is no accident; Atmos is based on 5.1 as the starting point, with additional spatial information tacked onto other "stems" as they pop in and out of the mix. So 5.1 playback doesn’t actually lose any information; overhead content is simply re-mapped into the 5.1 plane of sound.

But down-mixing Atmos content into 2-channel goes too far; too much is lost, and a separate 2-channel mix is usually recommended.

So a system with purist 2-channel, combined with 5.1 in the same room with a bit of extra switching, lets you enjoy all the dominant formats: 2-channel music, movie and TV soundtracks, and most of what Atmos offers.

I personally found the Atmos mixes kind of variable: the "Rocket Man" remix is stunning, no question about it, but others were in poor taste, or just flat-sounding, with nothing but a splash of reverb in the rear and sides.

Being able to switch on-the-fly, in the same room, between purist 2-channel, upmixed/DTS enhanced 5.1, or Atmos in 5.1 let me decide which mix sounds best. And the answer was they are all over the place, between option A, B, or C.

In theory, yes, Atmos should always sound the most modern, with all the studio tech that’s available today. But ... with the heavy compression we hear on a lot of modern "remastered" recordings, the actual musical experience might not be as satisfying as a plain old 2-channel CD made in 1990. An awful lot comes down to the taste (or lack of it) of the re-mastering engineer.