Disappointing Surreal Sound Pro

[joec]

Baby shark do do do do do do do...

Jamie Tartt do do do do do do…

 

[CLTGT]

Jamie Tartt do do do do do do…

Jamie Tartt do do do do do do…

OK, now I know the tune...

 

[cplewes]

I have to agree the quality of the sound on tidal Hi-Fi Plus with Dolby Atmos recordings is outstanding! That said I would like to be able to adjust the balance which you can’t do on Dolby Atmos. It seems to me it is a little too biased to the front especially on the vocals.

 

[cplewes]

I think the purpose of Atmos is to put you in room of sound, not necessarily make you the center, We have the Burmeister system and I never set it to focus on single seat because it sounds flat in compassion to the normal setting. That said, when the auto drive is finally functional you can just move your seat back. LOL

 

[GEWC]

Isn't there some Baby Shark thing going with kids? I know my nieces and nephews mentioned something about that. We did just have shark week I think.

That is just cruel as it gets stuck in your head simply reading your post. Much, much worse than Barney.

 

[smyles09]

Not if you have an inconsolable 17 month old in the back seat. I just discovered I am VERY disappointed in my Tidal HiFi Plus subscription, as I'd got it partly because they give more $ to artists, and here's the sad news they just gave me, all due to one rescue playlist I made for road trips when the kiddo can't take it anymore.... "The Wheels on the Lucid go round and round, round and round, round and round, all the live long day..."

Just an FYI that Tidal pays artists if they choose to participate with the artists’ sharing program. I don’t know how it works on the artist’s side and not sure why one would not want to participate, but many independent artists I listen over more popular ones don’t show up on my monthly overview of that program.

With that said maybe you could record your 17 month old, listen to him/her on Tidal, then reap the benefits of the inconsolability! Just a thought

 

[Impatient7536]

I think it will happen if instead of empathizing and believing that people are having issues you criticize them

you're absolutely amazing. your ability to mental gymnastics anything into a self pity party is stunning. here we are, a bunch of online strangers shooting the shit talking about baby nursery rhymes, but you still manage to twist a thread that's by now twice removed from the original topic to be about you.

 

[Drendino]

you're absolutely amazing. your ability to mental gymnastics anything into a self pity party is stunning. here we are, a bunch of online strangers shooting the shit talking about baby nursery rhymes, but you still manage to twist a thread that's by now twice removed from the original topic to be about you.

He has been trolling this forum from his very first post to his last. I’m actually quite impressed with the courtesy that he has been afforded. Several members have taken the time to engage his “concerns” but a troll does what a troll does.

 

[Sam6062]

He has been trolling this forum from his very first post to his last. I’m actually quite impressed with the courtesy that he has been afforded. Several members have taken the time to engage his “concerns” but a troll does what a troll does.

You are a real piece of work. So your concerns are genuine but mine are trolling. Like the Pot calling the Kettle black.

My concerns are all being acknowledged and attended to by Lucid and THAT is what counts.

You people calling me a troll does not affect me in the least. Feel free to not engage.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Just an FYI that Tidal pays artists if they choose to participate with the artists’ sharing program. I don’t know how it works on the artist’s side and not sure why one would not want to participate, but many independent artists I listen over more popular ones don’t show up on my monthly overview of that program.

With that said maybe you could record your 17 month old, listen to him/her on Tidal, then reap the benefits of the inconsolability! Just a thought

For the $2 a month it would pay me, I think that’s a hard pass.

 

[Brad Carlson]

Am I the only one that thinks the speakers aren’t that great?

 

[TCGT]

Am I the only one that thinks the speakers aren’t that great?

Not sure. There has been some critics but most seem to like them. There is a clear qualittative difference depending on your source (Amazon/Tidal/Bluetooth). What aspect is not up to par for you? For me I find that the sound with HiFi Tidal is exceptional, with the only drawback (mentioned in a few posts) that there is a bias for vocals to be oriented toward the front of the car, which cannot be adjusted and apparently comes from the way Hifi tracks in Dolby Atmos are recorded. I'll let the experts on that chime in or sing out, as the pun demands.

 

[Drendino]

Am I the only one that thinks the speakers aren’t that great?

Not great, but I get the feeling that it has more to do with how I’m listening rather than the hardware. I tend to listen to Amazon streaming because it seems less buggy than Tidal and Spotify but the sound quality is poor. I still can’t understand how they missed satellite radio. One of my only gripes.

 

[MoniputerLM]

You could try ripping some high quality recordings to a USB drive and see they sound better.

Oh, no wait, you can't play music from a USB drive.

 

[hydbob]

Not sure. There has been some critics but most seem to like them. There is a clear qualittative difference depending on your source (Amazon/Tidal/Bluetooth). What aspect is not up to par for you? For me I find that the sound with HiFi Tidal is exceptional, with the only drawback (mentioned in a few posts) that there is a bias for vocals to be oriented toward the front of the car, which cannot be adjusted and apparently comes from the way Hifi tracks in Dolby Atmos are recorded. I'll let the experts on that chime in or sing out, as the pun demands.

@bunnylebowski can spell it out in more detail, but from what I understood from his post before was that tracks are meant for front bias with voices because that's how they are recorded, so what we hear in hifi is actually how it was meant to be heard and that's why you get dialogue in a home theater setup coming from the center channel.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

@bunnylebowski can spell it out in more detail, but from what I understood from his post before was that tracks are meant for front bias with voices because that's how they are recorded, so what we hear in hifi is actually how it was meant to be heard and that's why you get dialogue in a home theater setup coming from the center channel.

Yeah that only applies to Dolby Atmos tracks though, as they are often mixed that way in the studio to put vocals in the center speaker, and because the algorithm is controlling multiple speaker channels and not just left and right, it wouldn’t make sense for you to then be able to mess with the position of the audio yourself. Most things you’ll listen to in the car aren’t in Atmos format though, so even Tidal MQA (HiFI master quality but not Atmos) format isn’t a multi-channel mix or front biased and you can position it however you like in the controls. I think most of the “the audio system doesn’t sound good” complaints are because they’re listening to Spotify or other services in normal resolution, and because the speakers/amps are higher quality it actually exposes the defects in lower quality streaming resolutions, such as poor dynamic range, poor depth of sound stage, aliasing, etc. Either that or the system software glitched and isn’t playing all speakers correctly and you need to do a reboot!

 

[hmp10]

Am I the only one that thinks the speakers aren’t that great?

Lucid is the first car brand that has licensed the use of Dolby Atmos, and Dolby engineers worked closely with Lucid on the sound system. I'm just speculating here, but I doubt if Dolby would have allowed the first use of its system in a car with only so-so speakers. To have owners and reviewers first exposed to the Atmos technology in a car with substandard audio hardware would have been colossally stupid on Dolby's part.

I have had multiple audio gremlins in my car: bass periodically dropping completely out, ear-splitting bursts of white noise from a rear speaker, and the soundstage becoming unstable. However, these gremlins invariably disappear with a software reboot.

As with so many other aspects of the car, the sound system seems to me a case of very good hardware brought low by sorry software engineering. When and whether the fixes will come? I'm still hopeful but less and less convinced as the months roll on.

All this said, on the days the audio system in the car is fully sorted I have had several passengers comment -- without prodding -- on how good the sound system is. Oddly enough, the only other vehicle we've had in which that happened was a 2011 Honda Odyssey Elite minivan with Honda's premium system. Maybe it was something about the interior volume of that car, but the clarity, tonal balance, and soundstage in that car was amazing. Our 2018 Odyssey Elite does not hold a candle to it -- in part because, as in our Lucid, the soundstage sometimes collapses into the front speakers. (But with the Honda, it has to go to the dealer for a software reset. At least the Lucid will reboot at home.)

 

[borski]

Lucid is the first car brand that has licensed the use of Dolby Atmos, and Dolby engineers worked closely with Lucid on the sound system. I'm just speculating here, but I doubt if Dolby would have allowed the first use of its system in a car with only so-so speakers. To have owners and reviewers first exposed to the Atmos technology in a car with substandard audio hardware would have been colossally stupid on Dolby's part.

I have had multiple audio gremlins in my car: bass periodically dropping completely out, ear-splitting bursts of white noise from a rear speaker, and the soundstage becoming unstable. However, these gremlins invariably disappear with a software reboot.

As with so many other aspects of the car, the sound system seems to me a case of very good hardware brought low by sorry software engineering. When and whether the fixes will come? I'm still hopeful but less and less convinced as the months roll on.

All this said, on the days the audio system in the car is fully sorted I have had several passengers comment -- without prodding -- on how good the sound system is. Oddly enough, the only other vehicle we've had in which that happened was a 2011 Honda Odyssey Elite minivan with Honda's premium system. Maybe it was something about the interior volume of that car, but the clarity, tonal balance, and soundstage in that car was amazing. Our 2018 Odyssey Elite does not hold a candle to it -- in part because, as in our Lucid, the soundstage sometimes collapses into the front speakers. (But with the Honda, it has to go to the dealer for a software reset. At least the Lucid will reboot at home.)

Keep the faith. Fixes are coming.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Lucid is the first car brand that has licensed the use of Dolby Atmos, and Dolby engineers worked closely with Lucid on the sound system. I'm just speculating here, but I doubt if Dolby would have allowed the first use of its system in a car with only so-so speakers. To have owners and reviewers first exposed to the Atmos technology in a car with substandard audio hardware would have been colossally stupid on Dolby's part.

Dolby Atmos uses a proprietary codec that's pretty expensive to license, and to put their name on the system requires that the system be inspected and calibrated by someone from the Dolby team. This is basically how you achieve some level of standardization across a wide assortment of listening environments, and that calibration (if it's anything like a film mixing studio's calibration) involves the Dolby rep being physically present and running the un-encoded digital output through their hardware which then encodes it into Dolby format and then goes to your digital-to-analog converter of choice and plays back through the speaker array. A variety of speakers are allowed but they must meet certain standards (I'm not sure what those exact standards are but film mix studios use everything from JBL to Genelec to Focal to Meyer to Dynaudio). I don't think Dolby would allow Tidal to stream Atmos if it didn't meet certain specifications, and you are correct that they definitely wouldn't have put Atmos into the Lucid if the vehicle's hardware did a poor job of reproducing Atmos mixes. The funny thing about all this is Atmos is primarily a cinema format, but it's exciting to see music try to incorporate it more and more. I think so far film scores do a better job of giving you an "Atmos" experience in the car than music mixes, but some of the Atmos mixes have fun with recording artists (The Doors Riders on the Storm Atmos Mix is fun, feels like you're in the actual studio with them). If you want to nerd out further about what Atmos is, here's a video from Dolby aimed more at content creators, and you can really see why having 21 speakers in the car working with Atmos is a big deal.

 

[Brad Carlson]

Dolby Atmos is licensed to Tidal, not Lucid. There is no sound field, no software processing of the audio. All you get is equalizer, balance and volume. That’s pretty pitiful. That’s not a $130k car. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are Bose speakers. You bring in Harmon Kardon to put in the speakers and tune it to the car with software processing. Lucid cut out a lot of things to get this car out.