I have no doubt that a real space with full Dolby capability can transform a song into something amazing.
The big problem is that the majority don’t have this setup at home.
A very well treated Dolby room can easily cost 100K.
I agree! I started to setup my room in 5.1 surround before I could know that everything was gonna go to Atmos. Unfortunately, the dimensions of my room and size of the speakers are such that it would be impossible to add additional side speakers to 7 channels and my ceiling is too low to add any there. I already like the sound of the surround so much, that I would really like to do it though.
But at the same time I know, it is not trivial to set such a room up correctly! My surround setup works for me sitting at exactly in the middle. I just have to lean back a little with my chair and suddenly the illusion of a room between the surrounds and left and right doesn't properly work any longer. The sound that should appear to surround me now shifts to the back. And that is a room I spent thousands of bucks and hundreds of hours in to make it sound good!
I know that I could only get a more flexible room for critical surround listening in a room with high ceilings and at least 30 square meter dimension. Add to that the same amount spent in acoustic preparation, only that it will be more due to the size of the room. And then we easily have that 100k room. Not speaking of the cost of renting the place when you live in a big city like I do. In such a room the cost of the speakers are the least thing to worry about!
The average Joe neither has the size of room nor the knowledge or equipment or even will to set up such a listening environment. The only people who might are either home cinema nerds with good resources and a large home (probably not in a large city) or extremely rich people who just want the best. I have tested Spatial Audio on extremely good headphones with many Atmos mixes and I mostly prefer normal stereo maybe with a little crossfeed added.
As long as these things stay as they are, I don't see how Atmos would become an important factor for music for the masses. That being said, I very much enjoy that Apple Music is pushing towards Atmos, as that gives me a lot of music to listen to on my 5.1 surround setup.
@Dietz As I know you are an actual mixing engineer and surely know how difficult it is to set up a proper surround listening environment: what kind of consumer Atmos system are you talking about? And could you set it put in a 20 square meter living room? I have seen some home surround systems. People sit on a couch against the back wall of the room, the surround channels right next to them, left, center and right plus the LFE set about 3,5m in front of them. Would you really call that surround? That is IMO not even worth it for 5.1 ...