It’s the clash of the Titans: on one side, Sony, with its well-stocked record company, wants to impose its 360 Reality Audio spatial audio format; on the other, Dolby, creator of the Dolby Atmos format for cinema, Blu-ray, UHD and streaming.
Which of the two formats will dominate?
But before we look at these two formats, there are three others:
DTS, with its DTS-X version for spatial sound.
DTS offered 5.1 multichannel sound on CD media in the 90s, but failed to make a breakthrough. Today, DTS is mainly present on Blu-ray with the Lossless HD Master Audio version, which offers 7.1 in 24-bit 96 kHz. It is therefore not a competitor to Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 RA for the broadcasting of spatial music.
Another format, MPEG-H, is more advanced for video broadcasting.
But it is above all the basic encoding of the Sony 360RA. So, when we speak of 360RA decoding, it’s actually MPEG-H decoding that’s used.
AURO3D is also another format. The Auro3d is not an audio object-oriented system, but it does offer the option of overhead speakers (as in 7.1.4).
It’s a format that’s still not widely used, and is no longer present today, with a few rare exceptions (2l.no).
Let’s start by comparing Dolby Atmos and the Sony 360RA in terms of format, operation, creation and distribution.
As far as quality is concerned, we’ll look at the broadcast format.
For Dolby Atmos, there are 3 broadcast formats: Dolby Digital Plus, used above all for streaming music, with a bit rate of 768kbits/s; Dolby AC-4, with a bit rate of 128kbits/s for binaural broadcasting; and on blu-ray audio media, or on sale online, Dolby Digital TrueHD Atmos, which is a Lossless format often with more than 5000 kbits/s.
The Master ADM format is exceptionally available, as on albums produced by 2l.no, but requires special software such as the Dolby Renderer for playback.
For the Sony 360RA, it is broadcast in 3 MPEG-H formats: 7.1.4 at 670kbits/s or 1067kbits/s, or 22.2 at 1600kbits/s. This is a different compression algorithm from Dolby Digital Plus, and causes fewer artifacts than Dolby Digital Plus (see the album Thrillers or l’Emprise de Mylène Farmer, available in both formats).
There is no broadcast in Lossless format.
With its Lossless format, Dolby Atmos is the first.
Using Dolby Atmos is very simple: there are numerous home cinema amplifiers and preamplifiers, sound bars… It’s a widespread format that owes its success to its use in films.
For Sony 360RA, few amplifiers or preamplifiers are equipped with an MPEG-H decoder, often only available on top-of-the-range models, which reduces adoption of the format.
In terms of usage, Dolby Atmos is in the lead.
As far as broadcasting is concerned, after Deezer abandoned 360RA over a year ago, it was Tidal that abandoned support for Sony 360RA this summer 2024.
This leaves only Amazon Music to offer this format Sony 360RA.
Tidal and Apple Music are Dolby Atmos-only, and Amazon also broadcasts Dolby Atmos.
There’s hardly any music edited in 360RA anymore, and Dolby Atmos is totally dominating spatial sound.
By not simplifying access to 360RA production tools, Sony has reproduced the same phenomenon as with SACD.
Dolby, on the other hand, has enabled integration with all the major DAW software such as Cubase, Protools, Nuendo, Resolve…
The year 2024 was therefore a turning point in this format war.
Dolby Atmos is now the big winner, completely dominating this sector.
Both of these choices spout overly hyped claptrap – claiming XY surround from stereo speakers, headphones and mobile phones (lol) – resulting in more and more preposterous (7.4.1 etc) simulated disappointments.
Stereo speakers produce a natural XY surround sound from the environment your in (usually the walls!) unless your listening in a vacuum…