Is 'Spatial' audio a good thing or just a passing fad?

Haha yeah, Dolly in surround would be chaos 😂

Totally get it—remastered stereo blown into Atmos can feel gimmicky. When it’s native (Pink Floyd, new stuff), it’s awesome. When it’s forced? Sometimes cool, sometimes “put the violin back in front please.”

Sonos does solid with what it gets, but missing heights limits the magic.

Eventually good mixes will win, classics stay stereo. Johnny Cash stays sacred.

What tracks blew your mind vs made you hit “stereo only”? 🎧

Great video and on topic. I like his soundbar comment: ‘a forcefield of ghost speakers’. Ha!

One of the YouTube comments had a point. ‘Dolby licensing patents on their prior tech is going to expire soon”. Are they pushing Atmos to regain a product? 

Amazon ‘Unlimited’ has 15 or so Spatial albums and playlists. They have a few Pink Floyd tunes in the 60 song ‘Rock in Spatial Audio’ playlist and Pinks are worthy the remix. Others are hit and miss most being the latter. 

Something I didn’t consider was the nature, forest, outdoor soundtracks. That may be an interesting used correctly. Or, one could simply go outside? Tough stuff here!  

I really enjoyed the video submitted by ​@craigski . Why...because it validated my thoughts about Dolby Atmos music and videos.

Music

IMO Dolby Atmos music is smoke and mirrors or as was said in the video a bunch of phycological brain manipulation. When I attend a concert which is mainly smooth jazz the artists are up front not overhead, left/right or behind me. The only time I might imagine an instrument displacement is when the concert is contained by walls which may reflect sound to a degree. In an open-air environment, there’s no such displacement of instruments. The music is presented how the artist intends...up front in your face.😄

Movies

IMO movies are where Dolby Atmos can truly be realized for an immersive effect. However, that comes with certain conditions being met.

If your area where you intend to enjoy the full immersive effect of Dolby Atmos sound is a large open space with 12–14-foot ceilings then you will most likely be disappointed. The ideal room IMO using the Arc Ultra, dual Subs and Era 300’s is approximately 17-18-feet wide x 25-30 feet long with 8–10-foot ceiling.

My room for size mimics those dimensions. It allows for the refection's and bubble creation that Dolby Atmos in movies needs to provide full immersion. I get the sound of a helicopter flying overhead. 

Does everyone need a room of the dimensions I mentioned? Of course not. However, if your space is such that there are very few reflective surfaces nearby or overhead for containment; then no Dolby Atmos sound system will be adequate.

I’m reminded of the early “ping pong” stereo records where a heavy drape was separating left and right orchestras. This easily proved it was a stereo recording, but it was hardly realistic.

Way back we had the same thing with quadrophonic, some mixes were excellent, some not.

And then there were the folks that went all out, I'm thinking the song American Woman by the Guess Who, but my brain is old and it was long ago. It was being used as a demo track in almost every audio store in Tokyo back then.

https://quadraphonicquad.com/threads/guess-who-the-american-woman-cd-4-q8.6808/

I didn’t have quadraphonic in home but a few of my friends did. I’m talking 1971. The draw back was that the speakers had to be positioned so that the seating was dead center. Nearly impossible. I mean who placed their sofa in the middle of the room? Maybe if you had one of those 360 degree sofa’s on plush white shag carpet 😂.

Seriously, the home quad systems came and went very quickly.

Fast forward to 1976-77 quadraphonic sound made a comeback however, not in the home. It was in cars with 8-track players.

I had a quad system in my 1977 T-Bird. Ironically, cars made the perfect environment. The cabins were small and enclosed with four (4) speakers_two front and two rear. Adjustments allowed for a pusedo-elimination of vocals and/or instruments. I must say the sound was great.

However, the bulky 8-track tape enclosures gave way to small stereo cassettes tapes which also sounded the death-nell for quad systems. After cassettes came car CD systems and for a while cars had both CD and cassette players installed. I at one time had Mini-Disc in home and in my car.

Of course the rest is history. Streaming services like SiriusXM are now available in cars. CD players in cars IMO are akin to the human appendix. Still there but seldom used.

Oh...while we're waxing nostalgic and this device has nothing to do with music...let’s not forget CB radios that for a while were factory installed in cars. So at one time a car might have a CD player, cassette player and a CB radio! 😂 

Ahh...the good old days...but; it's time to get back to enjoying my Sonos that has been playing smooth jazz in the background; courtesy of Spotify Lossless.

Had a 60’s Pontiac Grand Prix with a spring reverb tank under the rear shelf. The thing had a chrome knob labeled Space or something you could crank the rear 6X9 into the depths of Hades. My high-school friends were seriously jealous.

“Pontiac Grand Prix offered a unique Delco Reverb (or Echo) radio option, especially popular in the mid-to-late 1960s ('65-'69), creating a spacious sound with a separate reverb box”.

Got my Wife a 2005 T-Bird convertible roadster with a Jag engine. Read: Swoop Coupe. That thing has a Bose system that I thought meh, early Bose stuff. But… there’s DSP settings in the menu. One is labeled ‘Top Down’. When selected, the L/R separation and presence is focused at ear level, maybe slightly above your head. It’s crazy and very noticeable. I demoed this for my Wife and she was blown away. The speakers are in the doors but it sims their placement in ‘Space’. Wow! Who knew? 

Nice system, okay, monster system no doubt. But gotta counter defending lesser output setups in a similar space. That being my system proved a player not a return-fest.

Reading the ‘ideal’ room size suggested made me gulp. I was close to those dimensions when shopping the brand. I have a 15’W X 19L X 8H room. Thinking reviews were all over the place so I started with a baseline product demo, I snagged a Ray, 2X 100’s and a Sub Mini. (Known as the ‘Unwashed’ bundle). :)

Figured if this thing is meh, room specs saying it was at the Max, back it goes. I used the term ‘demo’ as ordered from Amazon thinking return and upgrade might be the plan. But ended up keeping the humble ($800 sale) setup as ordered. 

It can hit 79-85dB (at the ears) showing ¾  Vol on the app slider. No clipping, no distortion, no box buzzing, Basically, a nice subby kick without blooming and well balanced mids/highs. I found longer sessions are not ear fatiguing. I was indeed surprised for the room being considered ‘large’. RTL graphing reveals how well TruePlay EQing works where after optimized, this little pup has plenty of girth

I agree for Atmos pay-off, ceilings over 10’ are a problem for reflected drivers bouncing off the thing. Sonos may roll in some time delay to lessen the affect, but can only do so much to correct it. Just saying size matters but their specs are iffy. If their entry system can ‘fill’ a reasonable size room, an ARC, 300’s, and dual subs would kill it. Awesome for high level gain, maybe benchmark sound going on there. Didn’t say overkill. I’m in here for what a minimal system can do in a ‘big’ room. Definitely not comparable systems, but should a Ray setup be more than adequate in a reasonable sized space, that thing should power a stadium! 

Geeze...I thought I was old 😂.

To be clear my FATHER owned a 1964 Pontiac Grand Prix (bought new)! If you owned that GP new or used through 1969; you are definitely a charter member of the old Gezzers club in this community 😂