Moving to music that is already familiar in multichannel, Morten Lindberg's magnificent recording of Arnesen's Magnificat (2L-106, SACD/Blu-ray), the Atmos rendition adds, in my recently revised system, four height channels to the SACD's already immersive mix, but it lacks the fine-spun detail of the SACD. Yet the streamed Atmos rendition delivered through the H2-4D was even more breathtaking than the SACD due entirely to its superior recreation of the Nidaros Cathedral acoustic. While the SACD presents chorus, orchestra, and organ all around, the Atmos version fills the listening space with a convincing envelopment. It's thrilling despite the lossy medium.
I wanted to hear Atmos content from the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall. It's one of my favorite music resources, and it has embraced Dolby Atmos (footnote 9). At first, I hit a snag: I couldn't access Atmos with their desktop streaming app because it is accessible only via Apple hardware and Apple's Safari browser; I live in Windows world. Fortunately, I was able to load the Digital Concert Hall app on my AppleTV 4K. Lo and behold: a new library of recorded live concerts in Atmos!
Playing them in Atmos through the Arvus, I was impressed with their consistency. My favorite so far is a BPO concert from December 22, 2022, with Vikingur Olafsson at the piano and Santu-Matias Rouvali conducting works by Salonen, Adams, Bach, and Prokofiev. Of the four pieces on the program, one in particular—Prokofiev's Symphony No.5 in B flat major—clearly demonstrates what Atmos has to offer. Despite the lossy, 48kHz constraint, the H2-4D delivered balance and clarity with good soundstage detail, all within the acoustic space of the Berliner Philharmonie. Begin with the polite applause that accompanies Rouvali's entry, and don't be timid: Turn the volume up. The symphony starts with an Andante that's appropriately gentle, but an intensifying development section builds to the staggering coda, with its emphatic tam-tam. By the time you reach this point, you will feel that you're hearing the full orchestra at what seems like concert levels. That illusion is achieved not because Atmos has injected another 200Wpc into your system but because those immersive enhancements have convinced your ears that you are in the concert hall.
Multichannel discs with the H2-4D
If you thought streaming via Arvus from the AppleTV+ was easy (once the Atmos system was assembled), playing Atmos and other "immersive" formats from Blu-ray discs is a piece of cake. Plus, it comes with the bonus of truly lossless 48kHz audio. I selected my Oppo BDP-105's HDMI output with the Marantz switch, popped in a Blu-ray disc, and navigated the menu with the Oppo's remote control. The H2-4D displayed "Dolby Atmos (Dolby TruHD)," although still at 48kHz. First up: a much-praised disc that had already shown me, via 5.1, how inadequate two-channel stereo is to resolve musical detail in recordings made in highly reverberant venues. Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia, with Alexander Lingas and Capella Romana (Capella Romana CR420-CDBR), is actually a studio performance that has been digitally enhanced to recreate a performance in the domed Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul. In stereo, the voices were indistinct and seemed to swim in the lively acoustic. Multichannel added specificity to the ambience and definition to the voices. The Atmos tracks provided a much more realistic experience than stereo—even than 5.1—in that the distance between the listener and individual (and group) voices was specific with Atmos, defined not just by level or the degree to which the voices became lost in the ambience but as if the musicians and the listener truly were sharing the same space. A true immersive experience. I bought Yello's much anticipated 14th album, Point (Blu-ray, Polydor 06024 3551161 0) in anticipation of the arrival of the Arvus H2-4D. Point is an enjoyable, playful mélange of rhythms and sounds bounced around in three dimensions. Riffs and details popped up where I didn't expect them. The effects were often startling and always entertaining. As music I didn't find it all that interesting, but it is fun enough that I expect it to grow on me as I listen more.
Overall, though, disc playback with the Arvus H2-4D is more satisfying than streaming because the user interface is more coherent. Discs also permit easy comparison of Atmos with higher-resolution multichannel formats.
The 2L label has released many recordings that include both an SACD with discrete multichannel tracks and a Blu-ray disc with Dolby Atmos (48kHz), 5.1 DTS HD MA (24/192), 7.1.4 Auro-3D (96kHz)—even 5.1 Dolby TruHD (24/192). Since the Arvus does not play DSD or render Auro-3D (footnote 10), I chose to focus my listening on how Dolby Atmos (48kHz) sounds different from 5.1 DTS HD MA (192kHz) and 5.1 Dolby TruHD (192kHz), all lossless.
Atmos and Dolby TruHD versions are found on Stale Kleiberg: Concertos, with Marianne Thorsen, Fredrik Sjolin, Eivind Ringstad, Peter Szilvay, and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra (2L 2L-166-SABD). With Atmos, the soundstage expanded vertically and horizontally. I heard a consistent, albeit small, advantage in inner detail with the higher-resolution TruHD. More important than either of those differences is the contrast between Atmos's "you are there" presentation and the "they are here" presentation of the discrete multichannel experience.
I had a similar response to the Atmos and DTS HD MA versions of Ole Bull – Stages of Life, with Annar Follesø, Wolfgang Plagge, Eun Sun Kim, and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra (2L 2L-159-SABD). Higher resolutions confer an advantage, but the more-immersive Atmos has undeniable appeal.
Playing local Atmos files with the H2-4D
As of now, Dolby does not offer an Atmos renderer as a consumer software product (footnote 11); thus, for now, the Arvus H2-4D is the simplest, most direct way to play Atmos files. This is straightforward with Macs, but for Windows users (including me) there's a small complication: We must download the Dolby Access app (footnote 12) from the Microsoft Store and install it. Once I did that, I was able to play the IAA Sonic Brand & Dolby Atmos Channel Test in MP4 format (footnote 13), using JRiver to confirm my speaker/channel layout. So far so good—but I did struggle getting JRiver to work with some files in MKV Video and other formats. Rather than delay this review, I switched from JRiver to the VLC media player, which seems to play anything. Now I was able to access the Spatial Audio Calibration Toolkit, downloaded from spatialcd.com. The toolkit is invaluable for anyone setting up an Atmos system, providing a wide array of tests and calibrations for perceptual evaluation and measurement with a calibrated mike and Room EQ Wizard. Setting levels, timing, polarity, and bass management can be a bear if you're not using an AVR or pre/pro, but the toolkit makes the process at least coherent.
I finally got to play some files, downloaded from the 2L and TRPTK websites. Recordings from both labels capture the ambience of the performance space, but they do it somewhat differently. Tuvayhun (2L 2L-171) is a delicate, moving, multimovement work by Kim André Arnesen for voices, solo instruments, and small orchestra, performed in the same Nidaros Cathedral as Arnesen's much larger Magnificat. Playing the Atmos file through the Arvus, the cathedral's vast space dominates our attention in what's probably an accurate representation of how this small ensemble really sounded in that space; it certainly was convincing. Switching to the 5.1 DTS MD MA (24/192) file, I felt a closer connection to the performers, probably as a result of the obvious reduction in ambience, although the higher resolution may also be a factor. These differences seem mostly attributable to the choices made by the recording engineers (at TRPTK, Brendon Heinst, Antal van Nie, and Hans Erblich; at 2L, Morten Lindberg).
There was little to choose when making the same comparison with B.ACH (TRPTK ttk0096). Featuring an instrumental group of seven musicians playing flutist Kersten McCall's arrangements in the smaller Waalse Kerk (the Walloon Church) in Amsterdam, the immediacy of the performers was clear in both Atmos (via the Arvus) and 5.1 24/352.8 FLAC (direct to DAC) versions (footnote 14). If there was any difference at all, it was that the projected space was marginally more generous in the former, while the higher-rez FLAC provided a feeling of more delicate detail.
The bottom line
There are really two. First, with the hardware finally catching up with the software, Dolby Atmos is going to be a major factor in music going forward. I think it may succeed, finally, in pushing multichannel reproduction into the mainstream. The 48kHz limitation may be an issue for some, but a horsepower race may drive that up if Atmos becomes a media standard.
Second, the Arvus H2-4D is the single piece of audio hardware that can deliver Atmos into a component audio system. Whether auditioned through its digital outputs (via my Okto DAC8 Pro) or its analog outputs (via its own, unspecified DAC hardware), the results were excellent. True, it was not made specifically for the home, and users may have to wrestle a bit with system integration, but their efforts will be rewarded. Adventurous audiophiles everywhere take note!
Footnote 9: The BPO's Digital Concert Hall provides Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 at 1024kbit/s via Dolby Digital Plus, the same technology used by Apple Music (although not necessarily at the same bit rate). It's lossy, sure, but to look at it another way, the 7.1.4 BPO feed contains about 30% more information than a two-channel CD-rez FLAC stream does. What's more, that extra information is far more sonically meaningful than some extra samples in a two-channel feed.—Jim Austin Footnote 10: Actually, the H2-4D is not supposed to play Auro-encoded material, but it does. However, it displays it as DTS and the soundfield it generates seems quite different from the other formats. It is also different from what I hear with a real Auro-3D decoder on my other system.
Footnote 11: Dolby does include the Dolby Atmos Renderer in Mac and Win versions of its Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite. The suite is offered under an annual license.
Footnote 12: The app says it is free for 14 days and, afterward, costs $14.99 only for headphone use. Continued use of it for file output is free indefinitely. After install, click "Skip" to get to "Products" and select Setup for "Dolby Atmos for Home Theater."
Footnote 13: Free download from immersiveaudioalbum.com/product/iaa-sonic-brand.
Footnote 14: The H2-4D could play this file, but I could not get it to play it (or any PCM file) at more than 48kHz from my WinPC. TRPTK also offers files in DXD 5.1.4 WAV, which will be ideal once I figure out how to manage them.
Multichannel discs with the H2-4DIf you thought streaming via Arvus from the AppleTV+ was easy (once the Atmos system was assembled), playing Atmos and other "immersive" formats from Blu-ray discs is a piece of cake. Plus, it comes with the bonus of truly lossless 48kHz audio. I selected my Oppo BDP-105's HDMI output with the Marantz switch, popped in a Blu-ray disc, and navigated the menu with the Oppo's remote control. The H2-4D displayed "Dolby Atmos (Dolby TruHD)," although still at 48kHz. First up: a much-praised disc that had already shown me, via 5.1, how inadequate two-channel stereo is to resolve musical detail in recordings made in highly reverberant venues. Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia, with Alexander Lingas and Capella Romana (Capella Romana CR420-CDBR), is actually a studio performance that has been digitally enhanced to recreate a performance in the domed Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Istanbul. In stereo, the voices were indistinct and seemed to swim in the lively acoustic. Multichannel added specificity to the ambience and definition to the voices. The Atmos tracks provided a much more realistic experience than stereo—even than 5.1—in that the distance between the listener and individual (and group) voices was specific with Atmos, defined not just by level or the degree to which the voices became lost in the ambience but as if the musicians and the listener truly were sharing the same space. A true immersive experience. I bought Yello's much anticipated 14th album, Point (Blu-ray, Polydor 06024 3551161 0) in anticipation of the arrival of the Arvus H2-4D. Point is an enjoyable, playful mélange of rhythms and sounds bounced around in three dimensions. Riffs and details popped up where I didn't expect them. The effects were often startling and always entertaining. As music I didn't find it all that interesting, but it is fun enough that I expect it to grow on me as I listen more.
Atmos and Dolby TruHD versions are found on Stale Kleiberg: Concertos, with Marianne Thorsen, Fredrik Sjolin, Eivind Ringstad, Peter Szilvay, and the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra (2L 2L-166-SABD). With Atmos, the soundstage expanded vertically and horizontally. I heard a consistent, albeit small, advantage in inner detail with the higher-resolution TruHD. More important than either of those differences is the contrast between Atmos's "you are there" presentation and the "they are here" presentation of the discrete multichannel experience.
As of now, Dolby does not offer an Atmos renderer as a consumer software product (footnote 11); thus, for now, the Arvus H2-4D is the simplest, most direct way to play Atmos files. This is straightforward with Macs, but for Windows users (including me) there's a small complication: We must download the Dolby Access app (footnote 12) from the Microsoft Store and install it. Once I did that, I was able to play the IAA Sonic Brand & Dolby Atmos Channel Test in MP4 format (footnote 13), using JRiver to confirm my speaker/channel layout. So far so good—but I did struggle getting JRiver to work with some files in MKV Video and other formats. Rather than delay this review, I switched from JRiver to the VLC media player, which seems to play anything. Now I was able to access the Spatial Audio Calibration Toolkit, downloaded from spatialcd.com. The toolkit is invaluable for anyone setting up an Atmos system, providing a wide array of tests and calibrations for perceptual evaluation and measurement with a calibrated mike and Room EQ Wizard. Setting levels, timing, polarity, and bass management can be a bear if you're not using an AVR or pre/pro, but the toolkit makes the process at least coherent.
There are really two. First, with the hardware finally catching up with the software, Dolby Atmos is going to be a major factor in music going forward. I think it may succeed, finally, in pushing multichannel reproduction into the mainstream. The 48kHz limitation may be an issue for some, but a horsepower race may drive that up if Atmos becomes a media standard.
Footnote 9: The BPO's Digital Concert Hall provides Dolby Atmos 7.1.4 at 1024kbit/s via Dolby Digital Plus, the same technology used by Apple Music (although not necessarily at the same bit rate). It's lossy, sure, but to look at it another way, the 7.1.4 BPO feed contains about 30% more information than a two-channel CD-rez FLAC stream does. What's more, that extra information is far more sonically meaningful than some extra samples in a two-channel feed.—Jim Austin Footnote 10: Actually, the H2-4D is not supposed to play Auro-encoded material, but it does. However, it displays it as DTS and the soundfield it generates seems quite different from the other formats. It is also different from what I hear with a real Auro-3D decoder on my other system.
