I’ve been thinking about using the spatial audio feature on headphones as an alternative to trying to integrate AV into my stereo setup. Currently if using headphones I use my HD800’s through a ND555/552 to my Heed Cannot, so that’s very good and the HD800’s are quite holographic.
But would spatial audio headphones be better for atmos on movies? We have Apple TVs so I guess the AirPod Max would be the best option? Though I’d only get Atmos when streaming from the ATV, not my 4K UHD bluray?
I see that there is another option here, the Sonos Ace when used with a Sonos sound bar, using the TV audio swap feature. You then get Atmos sound to the headphones that way. As I pass my ATV through my 4K UHD bluray, I could output 7.1 audio from the ATV and bluray discs to the sound bar via HDMI audio and then the headphones using that feature, and still keep another audio output from the bluray to ND555 etc for music, indeed sound also to the TV as well, which also has an optical output to the ND555 for the TV apps.
The only downside with that is the Sonos Ace would only give Atmos through the one system, whereas we have two ATV systems. So the AirPods Max is better in that regard, but limited to ATV only then and not blurays. Apparently ATV can pass through HDMI audio, but it’s only enabled for HomePods and not the AirPods.
I know you posted the same question in the headphones thread and I responded so I won’t repeat that. You know my take on it.
So then I come back to, are you able to try one of these options to see how you feel about Atmos unpacked for headphones versus a lesser DD or DTS-MA downmixed to Stereo. As a Atmos user, and ex-dedicated surround on headphones user, I’m not convinced by Atmos 2 channel.
As an aside, don’t forget DTS-X: Neural . Like Atmos it is object based not channel based and has been around decades longer so there are a lot of DVDs even in DTS-X:Neural . I think this outperforms Atmos on Dolby TrueHD when combined with DTS-MA.