Observations HiRes - Audio source quality limits for Lucid Stereo System

[Bunnylebowski]

The way Atmos is presented in the car is an issue that would occur with Atmos in any car, as Atmos is mixed with the engineer in the dead center position, whereas the driver is always going to be off to the left so while the mix will sound good, and to my ears it’s definitely superior to all sound bar systems that also have discreet speakers for surrounds and height, bit inferior to discreet passive Atmos home theater setups. I still think on many albums the placement of the surrounds and heights is outstanding in the car though, like all of Kraftwerk’s 3D album is amazing, as is The Doors Riders on the Storm. Atmos does not allow speaker balance adjustment without their special workstation software so it wouldn’t make sense for the Lucid to have that as it would override the audio engineer’s mix.

 

[ccarroz]

The way Atmos is presented in the car is an issue that would occur with Atmos in any car, as Atmos is mixed with the engineer in the dead center position, whereas the driver is always going to be off to the left so while the mix will sound good, and to my ears it’s definitely superior to all sound bar systems that also have discreet speakers for surrounds and height, bit inferior to discreet passive Atmos home theater setups. I still think on many albums the placement of the surrounds and heights is outstanding in the car though, like all of Kraftwerk’s 3D album is amazing, as is The Doors Riders on the Storm. Atmos does not allow speaker balance adjustment without their special workstation software so it wouldn’t make sense for the Lucid to have that as it would override the audio engineer’s mix.

Totally get what you are saying and why, however Atmos was designed to kind of dove this problem. Surround music has been a thing since the 80s, but has never been able to take off for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was always there was one good spot to sit in the room to hear the effect. Where Atmos is object based and will recalculate on the fly based off where it knows your speakers are and where you tell it your seat spots are. Then if you feel that to your ears you want to hear more or less of something you can change the distance of the speaker or level to match your preference. Our problem is they're placing the seat position in five seats and they don't give us a way to change the distance or level of what we have. In our case, I'm assuming and I haven't had a chance to test it out. The back seat center is probably going to be the best spot to be. But I will tell you there's a lot of effects and of the mix that we completely do not hear in the front seat compared to at home. It's cool and really fun and to some degree we're always going to be at the mercy of the person doing the mix. But while in this car it's cool man. There's some stuff at home that's straight up magical or at least magical to my ears. I think polestar is trying to solve this problem by putting speakers in the headrest. I have not heard it and don't really know. However, it would be really nice if we could adjust these settings to match our ears and for the front seat where we sit when we drive. Versus making sure every seat has a good sound experience. To your credit, what I would like to have is probably completely different than the average consumer and what they need. But for me that's into this type of stuff and have multiple setups in the house supporting Atmos. I wish I had more control. If I could get shell access to this head unit, it'd probably be super easy to figure out and change to fit my needs /desires.

 

[Cosmo Cruz]

Thanks for your posts folk. To my 70-something ears the Atmos is fantastic. I used to be a home hi-fi hobbyist but made the mistake of getting my hearing tested. Oops. Guess I was imagining how good my systems were?

Nope. There is something more than the numbers happening. If you are sitting in the back seat of the Lucid and it's 2AM and your listening to bit-rate... you're doing it wrong.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Totally get what you are saying and why, however Atmos was designed to kind of dove this problem. Surround music has been a thing since the 80s, but has never been able to take off for a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones was always there was one good spot to sit in the room to hear the effect. Where Atmos is object based and will recalculate on the fly based off where it knows your speakers are and where you tell it your seat spots are. Then if you feel that to your ears you want to hear more or less of something you can change the distance of the speaker or level to match your preference. Our problem is they're placing the seat position in five seats and they don't give us a way to change the distance or level of what we have. In our case, I'm assuming and I haven't had a chance to test it out. The back seat center is probably going to be the best spot to be. But I will tell you there's a lot of effects and of the mix that we completely do not hear in the front seat compared to at home. It's cool and really fun and to some degree we're always going to be at the mercy of the person doing the mix. But while in this car it's cool man. There's some stuff at home that's straight up magical or at least magical to my ears. I think polestar is trying to solve this problem by putting speakers in the headrest. I have not heard it and don't really know. However, it would be really nice if we could adjust these settings to match our ears and for the front seat where we sit when we drive. Versus making sure every seat has a good sound experience. To your credit, what I would like to have is probably completely different than the average consumer and what they need. But for me that's into this type of stuff and have multiple setups in the house supporting Atmos. I wish I had more control. If I could get shell access to this head unit, it'd probably be super easy to figure out and change to fit my needs /desires.

Yeah it’s an interesting dilemma. You’re absolutely correct the best listening position is in the middle of the backseat, it’s pretty remarkable. Are you 100% certain you’re playing back Tidal HiFi Max with Atmos turned on in your phone app and not just the highest resolution set in the car? To my ear there’s some things that sound better in the car than on my home Atmos setup (the 11.1.4 Samsung Q990) but admittedly that’s not audiophile level. Make sure your phone has these settings:

 

[ccarroz]

Yeah it’s an interesting dilemma. You’re absolutely correct the best listening position is in the middle of the backseat, it’s pretty remarkable. Are you 100% certain you’re playing back Tidal HiFi Max with Atmos turned on in your phone app and not just the highest resolution set in the car? To my ear there’s some things that sound better in the car than on my home Atmos setup (the 11.1.4 Samsung Q990) but admittedly that’s not audiophile level. Make sure your phone has these settings:

My phone does not support Atmos but wifi and cellular is set to max. What gets to us in the car app is probably 320k m4a vs tidals max. The Atmos files are compressed dd+ vs THD versions for sure. Although got what the car system can put out, DD+ should be more than enough(home is the same format btw) I just wish I could have done of the same controls to bring up what I want to hear like I can at home. Also, to be clear, I fully acknowledge that the things I like to hear is probably not the things that the most consumers want to hear and that that sound in what an individual likes or prefer is very subjective. So I'm definitely not saying my way is the way everyone else should experience things, as a personal preference, I like to be able to control what I can and can't do versus someone telling me what is best. I'll get in fights with whiskey snaps all the time about putting my whiskey over the rocks. It's what I like. It's what I enjoy. Everyone should prefer what they like versus someone else's opinion. However, the one caveat all throw out there is usually we have to prefer our wife's opinion... But that's a separate issue.

 

[ccarroz]

Tidal has two lossless play options. m4a 32 bits at 44100 and flac at the same. On a track that is under 3 minutes the m4a is 37.1 MB while the flac is 23MB(or at least that is what VLC is showing me, but it also see the hi_res_lossless file as flac, so it might be off since I know its a m4a file). I think what we are getting in the car under high is 320k m4a file. The same track 6.47 mb in size. I'll put them on a USB stick to test out and see if I can hear the difference. I would be surprised if the car can read the m4a lossless file as my decks can not read the file at all. I'll also see if I can rip a Atmos true HD sound file and see how it does with that as well(I doubt I will be able to get this to work though). I wish this car allowed us to edit the seat location or the speaker distance for Atmos music. To my ears it sounds like this was set up to support all seats vs the front, with the net result being the front completely overpowering anything coming out the rear and thus we miss a lot of the mix. I feel like there is a lot of the mix that we do not hear at all vs my set up at home.

VLC was lying to me. This is what we can get from tidal. I put these on a USB stick and to my ears could not tell a big difference. The car could not play the original m2ts file and also the converted m2ts file to flac. I probably need to take the flac file and see what it plays as in the house, but I am sure its some level of AC3 playback....

 

[MGRMLN]

I can. Most people definitely can’t.

But I use the native app for Atmos constantly, because honestly I like the “tricks.” I wish CarPlay could do Atmos.

Same. I am an ardent audiophile but set more modest expectations for in vehicle audio vs my home systems.
That said, while SSP is pretty good, it's cannot match the volume and specifically bass performance of a Naim, Burmester or higher end B&O systems in other cars, especially in stereo.
I also like the audio engineering tricks of Atmos tracks. But even those are quite variable given it's relatively new. Some well engineered tracks sound super cool with effects bouncing all over the cabin. The recently mentioned Kinescopes 2 is chock full of them! Others sound kinda flat and hardly worth the effort. I've also noticed a substantial difference in channel volumes on some tracks too.

 

[ccarroz]

Same. I am an ardent audiophile but set more modest expectations for in vehicle audio vs my home systems.
That said, while SSP is pretty good, it's cannot match the volume and specifically bass performance of a Naim, Burmester or higher end B&O systems in other cars, especially in stereo.
I also like the audio engineering tricks of Atmos tracks. But even those are quite variable given it's relatively new. Some well engineered tracks sound super cool with effects bouncing all over the cabin. The recently mentioned Kinescopes 2 is chock full of them! Others sound kinda flat and hardly worth the effort. I've also noticed a substantial difference in channel volumes on some tracks too.

I think there is a good deal of tuning that needs to happen in the car before the effects of Atmos is truly brought out. I feel like there are sounds that are just about gone or faint to the point it throws the mix off. A quick and dirty example of where the problem is isolated is in the first 10 seconds of track The Perfect Kiss by New Order. The effect of the rear panning is almost lost and that is with no other sound being played. If other sounds were present at the same time, the effect would be drowned out and lost. Play the same track at home and everything is perfectly audible(both in a 5.1.2 setup in my office where my seating placement to where the speakers are is less then optimal kind of like in the car and a 5.1.4 setup). At home there is a lot more present in the tracks that make the format exciting and I feel a lot of that is lost in the car. Admittedly, what does and does not sound good to a individual is largely subjective, I could put a strong argument that when parts of the music are all but missing, the problem is more systemic than what my ears like.