Recent Audio Technology Articles

After launching a limited, mobile-only Dolby Atmos Music experience last December, Tidal is now offering the real deal. Subscribers to Tidal’s $20/month HiFi tier can now stream Dolby Atmos Music to their Atmos-capable AV receivers or sound-bars, bringing immersive music into the living room and home theater environments. So far, only a handful of third-party streaming devices are compatible, but more are expected. Read on to learn more.

When Dolby released Atmos, it was done in concert with their surround upmixer which does a great job enhancing 2CH music thanks to a key feature Dolby is now removing from new products. We don't understand why "center spread' is being eliminated but implore you to voice your concerns to Dolby and your favorite receiver manufacturer if you feel this to be an important feature for your music playback enjoyment . Perhaps we can all be part of a collective voice to persuade Dolby to reverse this decision so we can all enjoy the benefits of our multi-channel speaker system for our 2CH music sources.

Sound United LLC announced that several Denon and Marantz products received Roon Tested accreditation. This certification enables music lovers to seamlessly stream music from a Roon server or Roon Core devices to 68 Denon and Marantz products for a visually rich, and easy-to-use listening experience. To see what we think of these new additions read on...

The vinyl record industry may experience shortages of new releases after the plant that made some 75% of the world’s blank lacquers burned to the ground. But it won’t be the apocalyptic “vinylgeddon” suggested by some. Delayed new releases on vinyl may begin sometime in the next year, but the real long-term tragedy could be a permanent loss of some homegrown American record manufacturing. Will Vinyl media adapt and survive? Read on to find out.

Not long after Dolby announced the Home Atmos format, Audioholics ran some competing predictions about its potential for success and failure. Now, more than five years later, we take stock of how Home Atmos has panned out and which predictions were right and which were also wrong. Read our assessment of where Dolby Atmos stands today relating to the home theater environment.

Dirac Research and China’s miniDSP have collaborated to deliver Dirac Live processing for cars via an $899 digital processor called the miniDSP C-DSP 8x12 DL. The C-DSP is the first aftermarket solution to provide Dirac’s advanced loudspeaker and room-correction system for car audio. But it’s not Dirac’s first foray into automotive sound. Dirac has been working with luxury car manufacturers for over a decade to improve the sound of their factory-installed audio systems. Read on to learn more.

Sony’s object-based “360 Reality Audio” format will soon launch on Tidal, Amazon Music HD, Deezer, and the live-performance streaming service nugs.net. Sony hopes to “usher in a major music milestone” with the new format, which will work on any iOS/Android mobile device, and any brand of headphones. But Sony’s new format faces direct competition from Dolby Atmos Music. Will either contender emerge victorious, or will this be the next SACD vs DVD-Audio format war head to the streaming front? Read on to learn more.

When it comes to streaming services, we have the big players like Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. Now we can add Qobuz to the list of boutique brands like Tidal that cater to audiophiles. Given that Tidal seems to be struggling, we wondered if there was in fact a need for yet another niche streaming service. We extensively tested the two Hi-Res streaming services for the last SIX MONTHS! See what our conclusions were between the two services in our article and which one sounded best. Be sure to watch our recently added YouTube discussion.

Last year we reported on Dolby restricting upmixing of non-native content through their DSU or crossmixing their formats with other upmixers. This had the potential of restricting consumer choices for upmixing content through competitor upmixers such as DTS Neural:X or Auro-matic. Apparently enough backlash was felt from licensee partners and consumers causing Dolby to withdraw this restriction on new Atmos enabled AV products. Read on to find out the implications and what to expect going forward.

The new Dirac Live Bass Management protocol debuts at CEDIA this September and promises perfect bass for your home theater. Their long awaited bass management software is said to analyze the bass in your room from each subwoofer and speaker and put them in perfect phase alignment with each other while also smoothing out the response. Will this open up more placement options and make it easier to integrate your subwoofers? Read on to find out.

Turntables are getting very popular again. People are rediscovering the romance and appeal of vinyl, plus there is the now-solidly-entrenched faction that simply believes that analog-produced music sounds better than digitally-produced music. Today, $3000 turntables are commonplace. But how did we get here? Let’s take a step back and look at the history and development of the modern turntable to see why things are as they are.

IMAX has been a staple in the movie theaters as the best in sound and video for over a decade. Now they want to bring that experience into the home theater realm but it's going to involve 3 things: IMAX Enhanced hardware, and content. OK that's 2 things. Ironically the new standard that they're attempting to set mentions nothing about the room acoustics or speaker dispersion or output requirements. Perhaps in the near future that will be revised but let's go with what we know so far to determine if IMAX Enhanced is a must have in your home theater.

Dirac Panorama Sound is a new mobile audio solution designed to improve the relatively unsatisfying experience of watching content and playing games on portable devices with small, closely-positioned speakers. Like the company’s state-of-the-art room correction software, Dirac’s mobile tech optimizes both impulse and frequency response to improve sound quality and create the impression of a wider soundstage. Does Dirac Panorama Sound have the edge over competing solutions from Dolby and DTS?

Variety is said to be the spice of life. Why only eat cherry Starbursts when you can sample orange, watermelon, lemon, etc? The same applies to multi-channel surround sound upmixers. But the folks at Dolby® apparently want you to eat ONLY one flavor. Their flavor. Dolby recently issued a mandate to ALL of their Atmos licensee partners to restrict usage of 3rd party upmixers with ANY Dolby signals including 5.1/7.1 DD, DD+, TrueHD and Atmos. What implications will this have in your system? Read on to find out and be sure to watch our related YouTube video discussion too.