Do NOT Blow Your Entire Budget on Two Channel Audio


Yes, two channel audio is here, and is not going away. However, object based audio is delightful, widely available on Tidal and Apple Music, and should be in the listening room of every music lover on the planet, not just "audiophiles. If you plan to be a music fan a year from now start building your object based audio system today. You will need:

1) A receiver/processor capable of Dolby Atmos.

2) A subscription to Tidal or Apple music.

3) A Firestick, ATV, or Nvidia Shield.

4) A minimum of 7 timber matched speakers and a subwoofer.

Once you experienced stereo would you ever go back to only mono? No, you would build a system capable of either mono or stereo. Now that object based audio has arrived do the same thing. Build a system capable of mono, stereo, AND object based audio. When Elton John heard Rocket Man in an object based format for the first time why did he demand to convert his entire catalog to Atmos? If you don’t know, then you need to go listen to Rocket Man in a good Atmos setup ASAP.

So, take your budget, DIVERSIFY, and get a good Atmos capable receiver or processor. Object based audio is NOT last decades surround sound or home theater. It is for MUSIC first, if you need a recommendation on how to allocate your budget feel free to post a question. Most importantly, you don’t NEED two systems, one for music and one for movies. A good object based audio system can play two channel music just fine. A two channel system on the other hand can’t play object based audio without a proper processor or receiver.

Greg Penny talks mixing Rocket Man in Atmos.

https://youtu.be/ggzfcUKDqdo?feature=shared

 

kota1

@bikeboy52 Wrote:

Breaking Story: Washed up pop stars try to remain relevant/rich by repackaging their catalogs in buzzy new format .Yawn.

I agree!

Mike

After listening to multichannel music I've found that I often don't like what they do with the mixes. I'm not especially fond of sound coming from way off to the sides or behind me. It's good in video games where  you have to keep track of opponents outside your field of view. With music they often do a stereo wide mix, which either very meagerly uses the center channel, or doesn't use it at all. What I'd really like is a 7 channel system with all 7 speakers across the front, and recordings made with that in mind. Short of that, I'll just stick to 2 channel recordings and employ some crosstalk reduction. 2 channels on 2 speakers without crosstalk reduction is actually pretty bad, if you ask me. It's become a HiFi  tradition but there's nothing technically correct about it, and it suffers unresolvable tonal problems for the phantom center. It's interesting that audiophiles who are otherwise exceedingly keen to hear differences in DACs and cables are capable of completely hearing past this problem. It's true of passive crossovers too. These are cases where it seems the roles get reversed. The objectivists will admit that these problems are highly audible, while the subjectivists will claim they are not, or at least suggest that they are not in any way audibly offensive. 

@asctim 

What I'd really like is a 7 channel system with all 7 speakers across the front, and recordings made with that in mind. 

Check out the photo of my virtual system, 5 speakers across the bed layer in front (L-C-R plus two wide channels) and 3 height channels (L+C+R).

As for the mixes I agree, I don't like every mix in either format. I have found engineers/studios/labels that I like and are pretty consistent mixing for my taste in both formats

 

In this Darko podcast, John talks to Jason Stoddard of Schiit Audio about the Urd CDT and the Syn Surround Sound generating Preamp/DAC (the discussion on the Syn is at the 38:00 mark).

Turns out, Jason is not a big fan of surround, immersive, object (take your pick) Dolby Atmos sound processing and goes on to explain why, giving examples of set ups where some found they preferred it to Dolby and considered their expenditures on it a waste of money. YMMV but it's something else to consider.

All the best,
Nonoise