Creating this thread to start a discussion about lossless Atmos music among Kaleidescape owners.
Some thoughts on why lossless Atmos music might be of interest to this community:
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Some thoughts on why lossless Atmos music might be of interest to this community:
- Music that from the start is performed, recorded and mastered with a 3D playback environment in mind can offer a much richer immersive experience than most Atmos movie soundtracks. Whereas an Atmos track is often added to a movie as more of a marketing exercise to highlight incidental effects, for much immersive music the 3D effects are an essential feature of the creative process and therefore the same also holds for the playback experience.
- Although the availability of Atmos music recordings has so far not grown at the same pace as Atmos movie releases, Apple Music's recent launch of its spatial audio catalog should jumpstart the Atmos music market.
- All streaming services, including Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon, can only deliver Atmos music via the lossy Dolby Digital Plus codec, which has a maximum bitrate of 768kbps. Squeezing 12+ channels through such a narrow pipe results in a more degraded listening experience than going from CD quality to MP3 when compared to playing Atmos music via Blu-ray disc, which employs the lossless Dolby TrueHD codec.
- Since FLAC files cannot store the metadata with the location coordinates for the sound objects that are a core feature of Atmos mixes, there is currently no way to deliver lossless Atmos music over the internet (interestingly, it is possible to deliver an Auro-3D mix via a FLAC file, but since the format of choice for immersive music has now shifted from Auro-3D to Atmos, that will not really solve the internet delivery problem for lossless immersive music).
- Given that Kaleidescape has vast experience with Dolby TrueHD and prioritizes lossless audio, maybe someday we might see Atmos music available in Kaleidescape's online store?
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
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