Play Dolby Atmos tracks in Surreal Sound Pro

[Andretex]

I'd you'd like some Atmos playlists, see here:

Atmos playlist Megashare

A thread to share playlists to get the best out of SSP. Previous reference Thread 'Song Recommendations to get the best out of the Air sound system!' https://lucidowners.com/threads/song-recommendations-to-get-the-best-out-of-the-air-sound-system.1736/ Will try my best to keep it updated as...

lucidowners.com

Thank you, Neurio.

@Bunnylebowski I agree. Tidal needs to do some work on the search feature.

 

[Volund]

Not only is search limited, Tidal itself has far few songs in my genres than I prefer. I use a mixture of Spotify and Tidal.

 

[Andretex]

Not only is search limited, Tidal itself has far few songs in my genres than I prefer. I use a mixture of Spotify and Tidal.

How to you compare the sound quality in the car between songs in Spotify vs Tidal? I don't have spotify.

 

[Tâm]

How to you compare the sound quality in the car between songs in Spotify vs Tidal? I don't have spotify.

I don't know about actual hearing comparisons but for the specs:

The best Tidal can do is 9,216 kbps.

Amazon: 850kbps

Spotify: 320 kbps (highest Mp3 quality but trained ears would say poorer than CD quality.)

 

[Tâm]

How to you compare the sound quality in the car between songs in Spotify vs Tidal? I don't have spotify.

Amazon Ultra HD 3,730 kbps

 

[Babyrocko1908]

Ok I tested it out with a couple songs. Here is my summary.

Tidal song quality is better than music thru Apple car play or SiriusXM (in car).
Tidal Dolby Atmos is best quality but really because it feels more spatial or 3d as the speakers move with the music or play selected instruments. But the same song in Atmos vs just Hifi is same quality in terms of base, crispness, etc… Just that atmos puts you in the center of it.

On my Ipad, I searched Colby atoms and pressed favorite on a bunch of albums. In the car I can see these albums in my collection. For now I am happy and prefer Tidal.

Not quite to my ear. When I play Max/Master's tracks vs Atmos tracks, there's a drop off to my ear.

 

[Lucken]

Amazon Ultra HD 3,730 kbps

I never realized that the term ‘Ultra HD‘ applied to audio too. I’ve always been very familiar with video and the term UHD (4K) as it applied to video resolution, but never heard it apply to audio. I guess I’ve always been more of a video than an audio guy, although I certainly appreciate good audio (at least as much as my age permits ).

 

[Tâm]

I never realized that the term ‘Ultra HD‘ applied to audio too. I’ve always been very familiar with video and the term UHD (4K) as it applied to video resolution, but never heard it apply to audio. I guess I’ve always been more of a video than an audio guy, although I certainly appreciate good audio (at least as much as my age permits ).

I think It's a made up name in Amazon Music to diffentiate the quality:

SD/HD/Ultra HD

 

[Volund]

How to you compare the sound quality in the car between songs in Spotify vs Tidal? I don't have spotify.

Quality of Spotify isn't there, but I don't have Spotify for good quality, I have it so I can listen to the tracks I actually want to listen to.
Many of my favorites are not on Tidal.

 

[Tesla2Lucid]

Just wanted to say thank you to @Bunnylebowski for this thread & surprised I have not seen @Babyrocko1908 nor @julianevjourney comment as they are huge Atmos Lucid proponents on Twitter/X.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

I don't know about actual hearing comparisons but for the specs:

The best Tidal can do is 9,216 kbps.

Amazon: 850kbps

Spotify: 320 kbps (highest Mp3 quality but trained ears would say poorer than CD quality.)

FYI, Atmos mixes are 764kbps mp4, but that’s because it has to pack a minimum of 12 discreet channels worth of quality audio into a file. Also Dolby are masters of audio compression, being one the early companies to pioneer multichannel audio compression before mp3 was a format, so they’ve become good at making things sound “lossless”.

 

[kurious]

OK my 90-day SSP trial is in its last 30 days so I started the Tidal trial, found ~50 atmos tracks there, sampled in my Air... clouds parted, angels sang, this is truly excellent. I'm now hoping Lucid eventually responds to my request (week before last) to price my SSP upgrade from $4,500 down to the current going rate of $2,900 to keep the SSP they gave me. The customer care so far has been excellent, but this question has gone a long time with zero response on four channels: Lucid web form, phone call, text to my original DA, voicemail to my original DA... I think the sales VP is hand-wringing about policy, precedent, devaluing the upgrade.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

OK my 90-day SSP trial is in its last 30 days so I started the Tidal trial, found ~50 atmos tracks there, sampled in my Air... clouds parted, angels sang, this is truly excellent. I'm now hoping Lucid eventually responds to my request (week before last) to price my SSP upgrade from $4,500 down to the current going rate of $2,900 to keep the SSP they gave me. The customer care so far has been excellent, but this question has gone a long time with zero response on four channels: Lucid web form, phone call, text to my original DA, voicemail to my original DA... I think the sales VP is hand-wringing about policy, precedent, devaluing the upgrade.

Ah this is a self made problem by automakers with software enabled/disabled features, I guess the money people didn’t think this one through. My assumption is that if you took delivery on the day of or after they’d lowered the price, then you should get the discount rate. If you took delivery before then then you should not. For example if I bought a car at $8k off MSRP and then a month later the dealer lowered their price on the same model another $2K, I wouldn’t go back to the dealer and say “give me two thousand dollars”. If however the dealer said “your car won’t be delivered for 2 months” and then one month later they lowered the price but you didn’t have your car yet, then it’s reasonable to request the price of the car/features at whatever it is at the time of delivery. Make sense?

To follow the same logic, your free EA charging, which has a pre-determined value, didn’t start the moment you signed the purchase agreement, it started the day you took delivery. So the same should apply with any other value assigned feature of the car.

 

[Raddog]

Hoping someone can help me. I have the Tidal HiFi Plus account and can get the system to play in Atmos when I use the app, but when I play Atmos tracks from Tidal or Amazon Music using Alexa it doesn’t play n Atmos. They are the right tracks, but they don’t sound as good and the balance setting is not greyed out. Am I missing a setting somewhere or does anyone know why Alexa’s streaming level seems to be limited?

 

[Babyrocko1908]

Hoping someone can help me. I have the Tidal HiFi Plus account and can get the system to play in Atmos when I use the app, but when I play Atmos tracks from Tidal or Amazon Music using Alexa it doesn’t play n Atmos. They are the right tracks, but they don’t sound as good and the balance setting is not greyed out. Am I missing a setting somewhere or does anyone know why Alexa’s streaming level seems to be limited?

Atmos tracks are only compatible with Tidal for now. If the car isn't playing the Tidal Atmos tracks, are you sure you have SSPRO and not just regular SS? It's been reported that the car will not play Atmos tracks if the SSPRO software in the car isn't enabled.

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Hoping someone can help me. I have the Tidal HiFi Plus account and can get the system to play in Atmos when I use the app, but when I play Atmos tracks from Tidal or Amazon Music using Alexa it doesn’t play n Atmos. They are the right tracks, but they don’t sound as good and the balance setting is not greyed out. Am I missing a setting somewhere or does anyone know why Alexa’s streaming level seems to be limited?

By app, you mean the Tidal app in the car? To confirm you’re playing Atmos correctly, play these two tracks in the car’s native Tidal app (not in CarPlay or Bluetooth!) and make sure in applications settings in the car that Tidal is set to the highest resolution setting.

Dolby Labs - Channel ID 7.1.4 (Ltf:Rtf:Ltr:Rtr)

Listen to Channel ID 7.1.4 (Ltf:Rtf:Ltr:Rtr) on TIDAL

tidal.com

https://tidal.com/track/275058835

For Atmos tracks, in the car it will say Dolby Atmos next to the name if it’s the Atmos mix and it will be hilighted, however if it says Atmos but is greyed out then something else is wrong. Since you say you’re playing Atmos tracks from Amazon music this makes me think you’re either doing that either over CarPlay or Bluetooth, neither of which can play Atmos in the car, or any other car. The car does not have an Amazon music native app, although it will play Amazon music tracks by voice command with Alexa but it’s very difficult to get it to search for any Atmos track via voice.

 

[Raddog]

By app, you mean the Tidal app in the car? To confirm you’re playing Atmos correctly, play these two tracks in the car’s native Tidal app (not in CarPlay or Bluetooth!) and make sure in applications settings in the car that Tidal is set to the highest resolution setting.

Dolby Labs - Channel ID 7.1.4 (Ltf:Rtf:Ltr:Rtr)

Listen to Channel ID 7.1.4 (Ltf:Rtf:Ltr:Rtr) on TIDAL

tidal.com

https://tidal.com/track/275058835

For Atmos tracks, in the car it will say Dolby Atmos next to the name if it’s the Atmos mix and it will be hilighted, however if it says Atmos but is greyed out then something else is wrong. Since you say you’re playing Atmos tracks from Amazon music this makes me think you’re either doing that either over CarPlay or Bluetooth, neither of which can play Atmos in the car, or any other car. The car does not have an Amazon music native app, although it will play Amazon music tracks by voice command with Alexa but it’s very difficult to get it to search for any Atmos track via voice.

Correct. The Tidal app in the car. My Tidal settings in the car are shown in the first pic. Within the car’s Tidal app, if I play an Atmos track like When Doves Cry (Atmos Mix) it is obvious from the sound that it is playing Atmos. The screen also shows it’s playing Atmos and the balance in settings is greyed out showing it’s playing right (pics 2 and 3). If I then say ‘Alexa play When Doves Cry (Atmos Mix) on Tidal’, she does it but it the sound goes to basic 2ch, the screen doesn’t show Atmos and the balance in settings is now adjustable (pics4 and 5). Do you get a different result when you command Alexa to play an Atmos song through Tidal? [Not positive the pics will be in the order I uploaded them or not, so I apologize if the ref numbers are off, but I think you’ll find the one I mean for each reference]

 

[Bunnylebowski]

Oh yeah this is just because Alexa isn’t very good at executing specific inputs like that even though you said Atmos mix, and likely isn’t searching for the Atmos version even though you told it to, possibly because of Tidal sometimes using parenthesis in the title for (Atmos Mix). It’s annoying. I’ve been able to use Alexa to successfully play an Atmos mix a couple times but not too often and gave up on trying to find the best way to get it to work. It may also be searching Amazon Music for it instead of Tidal even though you said search in Tidal. While Tidal has the best overall audio quality to my ears, I do wish they could make Apple Music a native app in the car so we could have access to their Atmos library. I love the audio system in the car and like Tidal, but it is rather convoluted in terms of what you need to do to actually search for and play back Atmos music. Right now the situation is “Here’s this amazing feature but you can only use it if you pay $25/month and only with one streaming service and you have to turn on these settings in the car and your Tidal account and you have to search only by typing it into the car or preferably your phone then manually adding it to a playlist….THEN you can hear the music”.

 

[Volund]

Oh yeah this is just because Alexa isn’t very good at executing specific inputs like that even though you said Atmos mix, and likely isn’t searching for the Atmos version even though you told it to, possibly because of Tidal sometimes using parenthesis in the title for (Atmos Mix). It’s annoying. I’ve been able to use Alexa to successfully play an Atmos mix a couple times but not too often and gave up on trying to find the best way to get it to work. It may also be searching Amazon Music for it instead of Tidal even though you said search in Tidal. While Tidal has the best overall audio quality to my ears, I do wish they could make Apple Music a native app in the car so we could have access to their Atmos library. I love the audio system in the car and like Tidal, but it is rather convoluted in terms of what you need to do to actually search for and play back Atmos music. Right now the situation is “Here’s this amazing feature but you can only use it if you pay $25/month and only with one streaming service and you have to turn on these settings in the car and your Tidal account and you have to search only by typing it into the car or preferably your phone then manually adding it to a playlist….THEN you can hear the music”.

I wish Tidal had cross connect the way Spotify does. I can connect the Lucid to Spotify, then control everything about Spotify from my phone app.

For Tidal, you're stuck in the Lucid UI which is rather limited.

 

[Raddog]

Oh yeah this is just because Alexa isn’t very good at executing specific inputs like that even though you said Atmos mix, and likely isn’t searching for the Atmos version even though you told it to, possibly because of Tidal sometimes using parenthesis in the title for (Atmos Mix). It’s annoying. I’ve been able to use Alexa to successfully play an Atmos mix a couple times but not too often and gave up on trying to find the best way to get it to work. It may also be searching Amazon Music for it instead of Tidal even though you said search in Tidal. While Tidal has the best overall audio quality to my ears, I do wish they could make Apple Music a native app in the car so we could have access to their Atmos library. I love the audio system in the car and like Tidal, but it is rather convoluted in terms of what you need to do to actually search for and play back Atmos music. Right now the situation is “Here’s this amazing feature but you can only use it if you pay $25/month and only with one streaming service and you have to turn on these settings in the car and your Tidal account and you have to search only by typing it into the car or preferably your phone then manually adding it to a playlist….THEN you can hear the music”.

As Tidal doesn’t have a non Atmos version of that track and the Tidal icon is showing when I asked for it through Alexa, it seems more probable the Alexa software is limiting the download level similar to what happens when you try to use Bluetooth or other methods. There was talk of Alexa supporting larger file sizes so how was that verified and can anyone show an example of getting Atmos to play (Atmos is lit / balance is greyed out) using Alexa?