Has anyone abandoned stereo for atmos for music?

For those with sound quality as the priority for music will have a two channel system for music and a home theater. I do. The difference in sound quality for music given the same investment level in two channel vs multichannel is huge.

The number of ATMOS recordings are in the thousands I believe and two channel recordings in the millions.

@dain The pushback here is quite substantial.  Twenty-five years ago it was against digital.  I  would like to hear more about your experiences.

I abandoned having a multimedia system for a sound bar and a stereo.

Part of my decision was based on living space - I wanted to down size and appreciate an open floor plan.

I'm open to listening to music and find some of demos and various interesting.  Regarding ATMOS, I'm not planning on a major change to my audio equipment due to a format - but you never know.  I thought CDs would replace LPs.

@abnerjack  thanks! Odd that the minutae that is discussed here with gusto that this isn’t a hot topic. My experience is this technology isn’t for movies which may be why we ignore it. It’s the freedom to reproduce the music as the artist intended. Were used to mountains of reverb to indicate space. In atmos, rather than channels, it’s objects. Each sound can be placed in relative space and the receiver decodes it for your speaker setup. Phase and bass management is spectacular, but the aha moment is all these tunes are reimagined without the constraints of two channel. It’s that night and day difference that is truly engaging. The problems of having lots of speakers is an issue, but they have less to do so easier to get great definition . More like an array, with lots of math to keep phase issues at bay. My producer friends are embracing this for the money, but also the creative opportunity. I am in on the ride, and getting my Audio pals here in Chicago to try it. It seems to deliver what we want from our systems anyway, so well worth the time compared to other audiophile junk like bitrate or mqa. 

@ghdprentice it plays two channel, just decodes to the way your speakers are setup. I have a spectacular two channel system, and just saying this is a different beast because it frees up the mix for the master not to have to play the games to get things to gel in 2 channel. Also to be beholden to sit in one spot to get the full effect. I’ve lately found many mono mixes to be better than stereo, because they were mixed that way to sound good. Stereo is fine but all recordings are mono, just lots and lots of individual slices of sound - them, artificially grouped and layered to sound pleasing. Here you can leave them alone, just say where in the sound field they belong. The BAACH system tries to do this with head tracking and other gimmicks on 2 channel recordings to hint at immersiveness. This actually delivers it. 

I have a dedicated 2 channel and a dedicated 5.1.4 setup and purchased my first SACD surround when DSOTM came out to sell multichannel surround mixes.  As should be expected, the experience is entirely based on the source material and the setup.

Not all sources are created equal which carries over from the world of 2 channel music.  The great is great and the mediocre is mediocre.  Steven Wilson produces amazing multichannel surround music and some of the Dolby Atmos mixes are good as well when it comes to surrounding you with the mix.

The second item is setup.  My Dolby Atmos speakers are in the ceiling, which is the recommended and preferred location for spatial audio.  So I get "true" overhead sound compared to the setups where the sound is reflected off the ceiling and back to the listener.

I'm excited about spatial audio but horses for courses as the saying goes.  Some music lends itself well to more than 2 channel reproduction and other music does not.

Op,

👍

@plain_fan  yes. Many technologies have come and gone. Almost all classical and all pop and bits and pieces of other back catalog have been re constructed in atmos. And I’m saying this is what most people think hi-fi should sound like! I am amazed they can put Danny Richmond in 3 of my speakers in the recent redo of miles Nefertiti. Indeed it’s never heard it that way because of stupid stereo mixes. It’s now antiquated. You’ve heard this and think it’s not a game changer? I just heard a 100k system play an atmos track in stereo. Ok. In my cheap atmos, spectacular.  I’ve spent thousands of hours in this hobby. Why? Because getting a lifelike performance from stereo is hard. Now it’s not, because of technology. We don’t spend hundreds of hours talking about tv because the tech has leveled up to where it doesn’t matter. I think this will do the same for audio.