Atmos issue with Tidal on Denon AVR-X4500H

borafa

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Hi,

i have a Tidal Hifi Plus plan with acces to MQA and Atmos tracks.
So i installed Tidal on an AppleTV 4K and connected it (HDMI) to the Denon avr-x4500h which is capable of Atmos.
The displays on the receiver changes to "Atmos" when i play an Atmos-track but it only plays in stereo, so weird.

I also have a Philips 65OLED855 TV which can pass Atmos over HDMI. Works like a charm with Netflix and Disney+. So i installed Tidal on the Philips.
The TV detects the Atmos content and the Atmos logo comes up when i play an Atmos track, then the displays on the receiver changes to "Atmos", so far so good but then again; it plays in stereo.

I have no problem with other Atmos content, Netflix, Disney+ and UHD disks all are played correctly by the Denon through my 5.1.4 setup.
Cant figure out whats going wrong.
Anyone got any idea what it might be?

Thanks in advance
 
I use tidal too over multiple devices and with atmos tracks and the following happens
  • Although labeled "atmos certified" Chromecast with Google TV says incompatible audio and input to receiver is 2ch bitrate PCM
  • Even high-end pre 202? Samsung TVs output max DD+ so if you play Tidal atmos tracts it is 2ch PCM
  • Denon own inbuilt streaming service says 2ch FLAC so it is 1156kbps bitrate
The Denon x4500h does not even think about going into atmos mode.

Now in your case when you play music tracs in atmos it is only the 2.0 core content within the Atmos envenlope and it comes out in 2.0.2 ie. in stereo with 2ch atmos effect

There is no "real atmos" content in NF, D+, its all "DD+ with Atmos" i.e. DD+ packaged 5.1 content. Xbox upmixes to real Atmos if it is set up correctly but content is in most cases natively non-atmos.
 
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Just tested this as I have a 5.1.2 setup, a Pioneer VSX 932 AVR and a Google TV (Chromecast) connected straight to the AVR.

Setting the AVR to 1:1 output and using the Tidal app in Google TV, normal tracks come out in stereo and Atmos tracks play through all speakers correctly (I checked The Weekend - Blinding Lights to test).

Note: not all Atmos tracks utilise all speakers, took me a few attempts to find one!

Try that track to see; you should hear from the centre track pretty early in the song.
 
@cause_of_chaos I can confirm that but required that you set the format in chromecast gtv settings to manual "dolby atmos" and uninstall&reinstall of tidal app to clear the app data (previous autoconfig). Now it works in 7.1.2 mode or 6.1.2 mode since I have only single speaker in SB. however multi-ch stereo sounds better (original mastered format), atmos is just an upmix of original stereo recording
 
The quality depends on how the Atmos track is mastered, I'm not an audio guy so don't know how much effort is put into creating these Atmos tracks (I only listen to music in stereo 🙂).

But cheers for the info on how you sorted the issue out!
 
I had the same problem trying to play Atmos music from tidal via my Denon AVC X6500H. Tidal support told me my amp is not compatible for replaying their Atmos tracks. Not impressed by this at all.
 
HEOS, at least in x500 series avrs, does not support Atmos nor MQA streams just stereo. It does not have the the embedded software (or hardware in case of MQA) capability to decode those formats. Atmos bitsream is encapsulated in an MQA envelope. You can connect a laptop to denon aux or any hdmi port and set it to output atmos might work that way however haven't tried that out yet. In short the MQA encoding within witch the atmos bitstream is included cannot be decoded by denon. There are some devices that can do that. MQA is fairly new thing and it is just not supported by 2018 released avrs. For list of mqa combatible devices see Playback Devices | Unlock Studio-Quality Sound of MQA | MQA
 
I use an Amazon Firestick (4k or 4k Max) for Tidal Atmos tracks. It works well, but the tracks themselves appear to be 20-30 db quieter than the stereo tracks.

Heos is pretty much nonsense because it is so out of date. The only thing I use Heos for is Spotify Connect.
 
I use an Amazon Firestick (4k or 4k Max) for Tidal Atmos tracks. It works well, but the tracks themselves appear to be 20-30 db quieter than the stereo tracks.

Heos is pretty much nonsense because it is so out of date. The only thing I use Heos for is Spotify Connect.
how does it work actually? does the firestick decode the MQA compression into Atmos (or stereo) bitstream for a compatible bitstream. at least chromecast TV android app does not support MQA decoding but just passes bitsteam through to the Denon AVR (which it does not support) and computer says no.
 
As far as I am aware, there is no MQA alteration of the Dolby Atmos tracks. MQA and Dolby are separate companies and have not, to my knowledge, cooperated. I don't play MQA tracks because the Firestick does not have that capability. I don't think Heos does either.

The Firestick transmits the audio via bitstream so that the receiver does the processing, as it should. If your receiver supports Dolby Atmos (the Denon 6500 does) then a Firestick should just work.
 
There is no "real atmos" content in NF, D+, its all "DD+ with Atmos" i.e. DD+ packaged 5.1 content. Xbox upmixes to real Atmos if it is set up correctly but content is in most cases natively non-atmos.
DD+ with Atmos is still real Atmos. It doesn't matter whether the core audio is DD+ or TrueHD it's still Atmos.
 

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