surround sound from a front sound source is doable, and has been for decades.
The tech really relies on constant distant from speaker driver to the listener, and ‘a lot of math’.
The physical pinnae around a listeners ear removes treble from sounds occuring behind us.
This translates to Qsound and ‘methods’ to use psychoacoustic steering techniques.
If a user is introduced to a sound effect, and then the treble information alters, it can appear that the point source has moved.
Works well when siumlating a helicopter or plane flying overhead (from front to back), but no so well when introducing a new sound to the listener from behind them… the treble gets added and becomes ‘clearer’, sure, but without the initial setup to the users’ brain saying “this is the initial sound”, the altering of the sound properties needs to be experience in ‘one direction’ to work well…
good thing most movies have action moving FROM the screen, but it is easy for a surround encoded 2 channel source to fatigue the end users…
Atmos encoded music might serve millenials well, but for anyone expecting 70/80/90s music to sound as experienced, might not like the modern ‘reinterpretations’.
The Beatles established a ‘rock stage’ and to a certain degree us humans LIKE our music to have familiar locations.
in the early nineties I used my surround amps ‘surround music’ modes (mostly only Yamaha did this well, but Harmon Kardon and Denon/Marantz had some decent surround music settings that actually didn’t DESTROY the music (too badly)).
And this is the rub-
modern hifi, having to support Dolby Height speakers, and whilst no longer using phase effects etc to place sound at height above us (Atmos and object based audio allows heights to actually be virgin sound bytes); actual high quality two channel and five channel (surround) sound is noticeably a better listen on 98% of all media… (most falling back to a 5.1/7.1 'base layer)…
I’d certainly want ‘good enough’ two channel to render music, and to my ears, south of five figure pricepoints, surround setups are NOT GOING TO DO TWO CHANNEL MUSIC worth listening to (vs a couple of thousand dollars on a two channel ‘music’ setup).
The best of both worlds is to use a Naim amplifier in AV Bypass mode, as an add on to a modern (crappy) Atmos capable processor… (when considering ‘multinchannel’ audio setups),… and a simple ‘stereo amp’ for two channel setups,… (where a user could use a Playstation 5, and the tempest audio engine can encode all media (eg Netflix/Disney/Prime etc) to two speakers simulating surround sound (on the fly).
For anything with a music focus, I’d prefer two channel (better quality audio), and if that means robbing my gaming etc of ‘surround sound’ benefits- that is alright as ALL the sounds will sound GREAT, and the instruments in the soundtrack with natural sounding properties…
Atmos (2 channel) is a great way to resell everything old as ‘new again’.
Best investment is to forget the ‘buzzword’ Atmos altogether; buy a second hand FLAGSHIP surround receiver/processor and use a Naim stereo amp in AV Bypass mode…
THAT sound will be untouchable for any ‘sane prices’ (and would allow buying a large collection of UHD discs that actually have some Atmos tracks on them)…
re-engineered for Atmos (2 channel) is for selling Apple wireless headphones as if they are the replacement to good home hifi (they ARE NOT).
The effect is great and I’d listen to Deep Forrest and Enigma via just such a tech…
but for Deep Purple and Eurythmics - pure (/raw) two channel please