Surround Sound vs Dolby Atmos vs Spatial Audio

[Drifter]

I have a full dedicated Atmos 7.1.4 theater room using a Denon AVR6700 as a amp/receiver which is fed by an Apple TV 4K.

Some old movies only have a stereo soundtrack, some of the ones from 90's and 00's have Dolby Digital soundtracks (5.1 or 7.1) and most of the new movies are Atmos. I often watch old movies and it is easier for Dolby Surround to do this "upmixing" if the original movie already has a 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack. Dolby then only needs to add the overhead channels. It does work very well. Using a straight stereo soundtrack is less effective of course as Dolby needs to decide how it will split 2 channels into 12 channels (7.1.4) but it does an element of "spatialization" to the sound (using Devialet's wording).

As a 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack does have channel metadata that the Dolby decoder uses for front, centre and surrounds placement, I would assume that the Dolby Surround decoder knows what type of metadata must to be reallocated to the over head channels. Of course a standard stereo signal has no multi channel metadata and in these cases Dolby Surround must use some other type of Voodoo to decide to which speaker to send the sounds. As mentioned, in my experience and in my theater setup is less effective but their are noises coming from behind and above you.

I am sure Devialet will register their SPACE algorithm as IP. I'm quite keen to get Dione users' impressions of how effective this "spatialization" is, both using a 5.1 signal as well as standard stereo (or mono for that matter) signal.

Lastly, I don't use the Home App so I have no first hand experience. I sometimes stream some Tidal tracks that have Atmos encoding from Roon (hosted on an iMac) to my Denon AVR via Airplay2 and that works. Whether you like the result (multi channel music) is of course a matter of taste. Strange that Apple would restrict that, but again I have no experience as I don't use that part of their echo system.

Hi Drifter nice setup!

For SACD it is still alive it is a neige format, Marantz actually released a new Sacd player last year the SACD 30n. DVD Audio as you said not relevant anymore and replaced by Blu Ray audio.

For the user experience of the Dione I can tell you in rainy scenes with Dolby movie rain sounds like it’s actually coming from above. For helicopters the sound is flying one side to another.

Let me know if you want me to test something specific. I’m willing to help you investigate.

For the Apple part of Dolby Atmos and Spatial audio I would like to share the following article:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182


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It would be brilliant to get some sound impressions for the following 3 scenarios:
- Atmos signal decoded by the Dione using Atmos
- 5.1 signal decoded by the Dione using SPACE
- stereo signal decoded by the Dione using SPACE

It would be be even better if the source material (i.e. movie) is the same just with 3 different audio tracks. You can then use the same scene in the movie and explain how the sound changes between the 3 scenarios.

That would be awesome ....