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I have a pair of Sonos ARC 300s and a Gen 2 sub in a Garden room (well more like a Shed really!).  I have tried Apple Spatial music through these and, whilst I sounds great, I was not blown away.

 

In my lounge I have a Playbase and two Symfonisk Bookshelf speakers as surrounds.  I rarely listen to music with this set up as I don’t like the sound.  I have tried both Full and Ambient music settings and they are not for me.  

So if I want to listen to Music I go to the Cabin.  It was -2C in there yesterday! 

I recently received an Apple TV box from a friend who was not using it, and have connected it up to my TV/Playbase.  Works well.

Anyway I thought I’d set up the Apple Music app on the Apple TV box just to check it worked.  Out of curiosity I thought I’d check to see how spatial Audio sounded on this Non Atmos set up.

 

WOW, just WOW.  The Spatial tracks come alive. The music no longer concentrated at the Playbase but fills the room.  I could swear Roger Taylor drums were set up on our Coffee table at one point. The tracks play in 5.1 (According to the Sonos App) and I have set the Apple music TV Box to 5.1 with Atmos disabled.  

But the surround sound of the spatial audio tracks is fantastic and a world apart from the Standard Music Audio when a Spatial Music Track is played in that same room.

 

Give it a try, even if you don’t have Atmos enabled kit with you Home Cinema set up.  I wasn’t expecting much.

 

This actually makes a lot of sense, when you think about it.  While understanding that the reason why atmos music has gained popularity and quality content is due to the height effects, the reality is that a lot of content is pushed through the traditional rear speakers.  If your Apple TV is capable of converting spatial/atmos content over to the traditional 5.1 discrete channels, then it should sound very good.

 

Put another way, I think an argument could be made that surround sound music never took off not because it wasn’t a good idea, but because there wasn’t good content for it, and perhaps not enough  consumers had the right audio equipment and desire for it. It just wasn’t the right time.

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