AppleTV "X" Owners & Discussion Thread

[StereoNET]

Thanks to @powerav for the heads up on this.

 

 

Interesting. Anyone know more about this than what the website reveals?

https://appletvx.com/

 

Not cheap at USD$2500 though.

 

Some measurements are provided: https://appletvx.com/TheMagic.htm

Would like to hear some real world feedback but doubt we know anyone that's tested one yet.

Wonder if they'll supply one for us to get a @Clarity Calibration review ...

[BugPowderDust]

Looks like a Frankenstein version. I'd be very dubious personally.

[Godot]

From the linked website:

 

“I am not detailing this here as this is proprietary and magical in its results.”

 

Oh oh, belief in magic required. 

[powerav]

The improvement in sound over HDMI for dolby atmos music would be magical i would suspect but yes at US $2500 a bit pricey.

[Guest]

While I have little knowledge on streaming video platform specifications, I do know that they are very lossy and also variable depending on bandwidth available (either downstream or at "cloud HQ"). There is nothing a downstream device can do to 'improve' this, surely?

I imagine the audio stream is the same? 

 

But what about running Plex or Emby with uncompressed local content? That's a test I'd like to do against my Zidoo.

[powerav]

All I know is that Candle in the Wind from the new Atmos mix of Yellow Brick Road sounds sensational on Apple TV in atmos, would be incredible if that was drastically improved, I have emailed the creator of Apple TVx so hopefully he joins the conversation.

[Snoopy8]

55 minutes ago, powerav said:

The improvement in sound over HDMI for dolby atmos music would be magical i would suspect but yes at US $2500 a bit pricey.

If the source is local and in Dolby TrueHD as an example, then SQ will improve.  But if streamed with Dolby Digital Plus (which is Apple Spatial Audio), no difference to your current box.

 

I do not have Apple Music, but consistently, streamed Atmos movies sound worse than my own media.  And until Apple introduces its own technology to stream Spatial Audio at higher resolutions, it will not be as good.

[powerav]

@Snoopy8 Yes Snoop I do understand all this but to me some of the Apple Music atmos music is magical and it’s getting better all the time, I think it’s a pretty great time to be alive wheh I can just sit down turn on myHT system and stream a Steven Wilson mix of The Who, Who’s Next.

[Lil Caesar]

Streaming of dolby atmos content across all online platforms is currently capped, as Snoopy8 has implied - due to the use of the dolby digital plus container for this purpose.   We're basically receiving no more than a 1.5 mb/s stream which our processers then unravel to as many channels as you've chosen to deploy.  Whilst I agree there are some good surround sound music mixes available now, most still leave a lot to be desired.

[Snoopy8]

14 minutes ago, powerav said:

@Snoopy8 Yes Snoop I do understand all this but to me some of the Apple Music atmos music is magical and it’s getting better all the time, I think it’s a pretty great time to be alive wheh I can just sit down turn on myHT system and stream a Steven Wilson mix of The Who, Who’s Next.

I know you are enjoying it, but there is no need to buy this new box, because it will sound the same as your current box. That was what I was intending to get across.

 

10 minutes ago, Lil Caesar said:

We're basically receiving no more than a 1.5 mb/s stream which our processers then unravel to as many channels as you've chosen to deploy.  

You are optimistic!  

 

Dolby Atmos audio in Dolby Digital Plus is typically encoded at bitrates between 384 and 768 kbps.

https://developer.dolby.com/technology/dolby-audio/dolby-digital-plus

[Hi-Fi Whipped]

The old saying "you can't polish a turd" comes to mind.

 

I love my Apple TV and its used every day to stream online content, but no point spending another $3500 making it better when most of what passes through it is compromised audio and video.

 

Plus I think there would be better, more cost effective and higher quality ways to stream local content than the Apple TV so again a waste of hard earned.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Hi-Fi Whipped said:

The old saying "you can't polish a turd" comes to mind.

 

I love my Apple TV and its used every day to stream online content, but no point spending another $3500 making it better when most of what passes through it is compromised audio and video.

 

Plus I think there would be better, more cost effective and higher quality ways to stream local content than the Apple TV so again a waste of hard earned.

 

I think you might be right. Good advice. Garbage in = Garbage out.

[rantan]

19 minutes ago, Marc said:

Garbage in = Garbage out.

 

This applies to everything in audio. A universal truth.

[powerav]

I just received an email from Chris at Apple TV X and hopefully he will join the conversation tomorrow but basically he stated that while the main goal of modifying the apple TV was for audio performance the improvement in video performance was a very welcomed surprise.

[Xymox]

HOWDY !

 

Indeed I came to join the post... I have 200 of the AppleTV X installed. 4 this week. I have a list of reviewers using them.

 

I am a serious engineer. I go way back. Lots of press coverage and reviews. See my first post in the first post area.

 

I was quite surprized by the improvement in sound/picture. I have HDMI analyzers and a ton of gear. What I do is simple. I vastly clean up the HDMI signal. Its a HUGE mess with nearly constant loss and retransmission. While ultimately, yes, the bytes are reassembled, the amount of jitter across 3 or 4 channels with tons of sources of noise like amplitude and phase noise is just stunning. Its crazy that HDMI works at all. Ever devcie, every cable, how you bend the cable, all these things affect the analog aspects of the HDMI signal. HDMI is best looked at as a analog system that conveys digital data.

 

No one more surprized then I was when I was forced into modding a ATV box that the pic and sound was dramatically better. In fact it seemed impossible. But after TONS of blind AB and endless ABs by others VS Oppos, Kaleidescape and all the streaming devices its become really clear over the last year in hundreds of systems, that it REALLY does look and sound way better. As a SMPTE member for decades, I have been debating doing some studies because I don't understand a measurable metric that correlates with what everybody has seen/heard.

 

In simple terms, I make the HDMI signal that comes from the ATVX reference level for levels, clock, ultra low noise and jitter levels only seen on HDMI test equipment. The HDMI signal is better then what you get from any other device. It turns out HDMI SUX. But you guys knew that. We all have for a long time. I addressed that..

 

Everyone who makes HDMI gear just copy/pastes the "reference" from a datasheet. They dont use better voltage regulation or more accurate clocks. They literally copy/paste the least expensive known working "reference" design. Its not a design that is best, it is a design that is cheap and works. I go in and use lab grade low phase noise clocks, insanely low noise power regulation that is super accurate. I apply this to ALL the systems inside a ATV. So I make the voltages to the CPU/RAM/Ethernet chip super accurate along with super low noise. This vastly lowers the noise on the CPU buses and makes all the systems much lower in jitter. The entire platform is addressed and treated like its a HDMI lab grade signal generator.

 

The cost... Yes I am sorry about the cost. I am not making a lot of money.  The parts are expensive. I dont use parts that are used in retail like products. I use the most expensive parts because they have the best specs. I also have to send out the ATV board and have it reworked. Thats expense. Each one takes me 6 hours to mod. The linear is not expensive, but, I have to mod that too so it will do sensing and noise cancellation along with a precision regulator. Its just expensive..

 

On my Whats Best Forum thread that has a lot of owners who have posted, I also posted DIY stuff that anyone could do that will really help. Its a long thread now after a year. For some reason I can't link to Whats Best.. Go there and look up "Im playing with something new" by Xymox

 

What I don't understand about people  that complain about price are fine paying big $ for a Modded Oppo or HUGE $ for a Kaleidescape. TVs are more money then the ATVX. So I am often mystified why people freak out at the price. Its a high end source device that can literally play anything. No limits like BluRay or Kaleidescape. Its even OK for playing music with a good DAC. You can do remote desktop. Its got tons of apps.. Its just WAY more functional then a Oppo or Kaleidescape.

 

Bit rate is a subject that comes up a lot VS BluRay and Kaleidescape. I GET that.. But.. Direct blind ABs with many many people have proved out that Bitrate is NOT the be all end all to pic/sound quality.

 

I am not after more sales. I have plenty by word of mouth and various reviewers and calibrators. I am posting because I was invited to.

 

Save me some posting effort and be sure to review who I am and my credentials and also please post responsibly rather then just bashing a product without researching what your going to post. I am deep technically, so tech questions are great. I FULLY get it seems impossible that it can be a lot better. There is a gap in our understanding of how HDMI jitter is perceived and this is not well studied.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Xymox
Forgot link to my first post here and to fix broken link.

[Snoopy8]

@Xymox  thank you for confirming my subjective observations, with technical knowledge and experience, that better HDMI delivers better quality pictures and sound. 

 

Would not expect mass market products to have better HDMI, but surely some high end vendors will be pushing this hard?  But we hardly hear anything...

[Hi-Fi Whipped]

@Xymox thanks for chiming in, your post well displays you know your dots and dashes!

 

You certainly made the right choice in what product to pimp, the ATV is a device that is built for the future of content streaming as you have noted so you should only see continual growth in your business.

 

Everyone evaluates value subject to the value of their systems and it’s nice to know there’s an upgrade path in the future if I my system or user habits justify it.

[Guest]

So tempted ... the ATV in my media room gets used daily. 

 

23 hours ago, Marc said:

While I have little knowledge on streaming video platform specifications, I do know that they are very lossy and also variable depending on bandwidth available (either downstream or at "cloud HQ"). There is nothing a downstream device can do to 'improve' this, surely?

I imagine the audio stream is the same? 

 

But what about running Plex or Emby with uncompressed local content? That's a test I'd like to do against my Zidoo.

 

@Xymox thanks for your input. Could you add comment to my questions above? Would one see any improvement in "internet streamed" services? Have you put an ATV X up against say a dedicated and highly regarded player such as Zidoo with local content? If so, what app do you use on the ATV X for local content?

 

Very tempted, but the price is a sticky point without a way to see/hear one first. I'm sure it's justified and I'm all for people getting a return on their costs + RnD. 

[davewantsmoore]

On 4/10/2023 at 3:45 PM, Marc said:

There is nothing a downstream device can do to 'improve' this, surely?

Not about "improving" ... but about not harming it.

Audio compressed by most/many lossy codecs is most transparent ... so it is no different to "lossless" audio.   You don't want your playback equipment hurt the audio.

 

2 hours ago, Marc said:

I'm sure it's justified and I'm all for people getting a return on their costs + RnD. 

Yep. 

If it takes only 10 or 20 hours to make one of these, then the cost is very justified.

 

I'd be very interested to observe the results too.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, davewantsmoore said:

Not about "improving" ... but about not harming it.

 

 

Very good point 

[davewantsmoore]

7 hours ago, Xymox said:

questions

How does error (jitter) in HDMI signal end up getting through to the video output?

[betty boop]

On 4/10/2023 at 4:13 PM, Lil Caesar said:

Streaming of dolby atmos content across all online platforms is currently capped, as Snoopy8 has implied - due to the use of the dolby digital plus container for this purpose.   We're basically receiving no more than a 1.5 mb/s stream which our processers then unravel to as many channels as you've chosen to deploy.  Whilst I agree there are some good surround sound music mixes available now, most still leave a lot to be desired.

agree there totally...dolby atmos audio off streaming sources is pretty limited really ...no comparison vs the 4k uhd discs ...

[Xymox]

WOW... A really good set of questions without haters. I am impressed with Stereonet !  I was a $650 / mo vendor over at AVS Forum and I eventually left there because of the insane haters there that had zero idea what they were talking about. There were a few great people there, but, OMG, the insanity postings required all my time to counter.

 

I am VERY happy to cover all the questions posed here. All good ones. Its 7am here in the states and I have some stuff I gotta go do.. Once I am done I will come back and cover all this in depth.

 

So far, out of 200+ sold, I have never had one returned or anyone question if it made a difference. Its not subtle. Technically WHY this is is a REALLY good question. What I know for sure is its quite visible and audible. I understand the sound improvements as I vastly lower measurable audio jitter. The picture quality improvements are another matter. There are no studies of how jitter can affect the visual system. Maybe not even jitter. I DONT KNOW. But there is no denying the affect. SOmething is happening that recovered bit values alone dont explain.

 

I will cover more of my toughts on all this once I am done with my day.

17 minutes ago, betty boop said:

agree there totally...dolby atmos audio off streaming sources is pretty limited really ...no comparison vs the 4k uhd discs ...

 

You would think that huh ? I sure did...  But you would be very surprized how close you can get. Bit rate alone is not the determining factor.. ALSO keep in mind your Oppo, even modded, uses a std copy/paste HDMI design. So my ATVX has a far better HDMI signal..  I will talk about my experence in 2 post houses using high end grading systems and using 100 Mbps files. I have 2 colorists using my ATVX now. I have explored bit rate really in depth as it was kinda mind bending for everyone that low bit rates actually looked/sounded way better then anyone in the professional realm thought possible.

 

More later..

[Xymox]

13 hours ago, Marc said:

So tempted ... the ATV in my media room gets used daily. 

 

 

@Xymox thanks for your input. Could you add comment to my questions above? Would one see any improvement in "internet streamed" services? Have you put an ATV X up against say a dedicated and highly regarded player such as Zidoo with local content? If so, what app do you use on the ATV X for local content?

 

Very tempted, but the price is a sticky point without a way to see/hear one first. I'm sure it's justified and I'm all for people getting a return on their costs + RnD. 

 

Yes I am sorry about the price. I do wish I could do it cheaper. If you guys are handy with things like this and like DIY, you can pull out the crappy power supply in the A2169, put some caps in and then use a 12V linear. While not on the same level as what I am doing, it will immd show you it can be better. I started there and then decided to max everything out that I could think of and that resulted in a TON of mods like a better clock, better regulators, remote sensing DC supply and a list of stuff. Everything I did improved it and I got carried away. The clients I had at the time who were doing betas told me "YOU MUST SELL THIS".. and after i spent 2 months sending them new ones that were even better about once a week.. They eventually stopped me and used the classic line "Shoot the engineer and ship the product".. It was fascinating that EVERYTHING I did was visible/audible. This made little sense as bit rate was terrible and streaming was junk, HDMI is "lossless".. It made NO sense to me technically, yet, there is was looking and sounding stunning and i had clients going crazy over it. . So I just kept dropping in new parts and doing different things and then sending them out to my beta guys to AB.. Each time everyone reported BIG improvements..  As all my clients were super high end guys, where $2500 is the price of 1 interconnect, $2500 was a reasonable target. Oppos and Kscapes were more money. A big OLED is more money. So I picked parts and figured out labor that i could use based on this target. Turned out it was more then I expected once I got into production for real as well.

 

So.. I am sorry about cost.. From my exploits tho, simply adding some caps and using a linear will produce a nice boost. Its still ANNOYING to take them apart and do the work. Plus a linear can be a bit pricey. So making a lesser one makes no sense for me as i would still have to charge for the linear and the labor. It would still end up being expensive.

 

Local content streaming.. Because its HDMI, I don't recommend using it as a high end music streamer.. Music streaming is a different animal if your going to do it seriously.  High end DACs and renderers like you mention are going to be better then using a device that is HDMI. As I mentioned, HDMI SUX.. even after i clean it up. So using a USB connection to a DAC or doing a all in one roon/DAC system will be a bunch better. DOing a streaming/local player where ethernet and wifi is involved is why i made a Switch X and Wifi X. These are newer devices and they are in reviewers hands now.  i have tho already sold 22 of them and everyone is very happy and they have replaced a bunch of different "audio" switches. My exploration of wifi turned out to be interesting too. You dont want to put a access point and anything wifi right next to high end audio gear. I have a vid on my Wifi X page talking about why.

 

THAT SAID.... I have guys using the ATVX as a music source. I have one guy using it with a Wadex DAC. This is despite my complaints that he should not use it for music. He has the ATVX hooked directly to a big Sony A90J as the only video source he needs and then optical from the TV to the Wadex. WHich of course I had technical complaints about.. BUT.. He says its great. NOT as good as his playing local content via his Taiko then USB to the Wadex, but he says for casual use its great because of the music selection Apple music has handy, plus you can add apps like Tidal.

 

A lot of clients are high end 2 channels guys who also have a TV between their 2 high end speakers. They do not use surround processors and set the ATV to "change format" and go 2ch..  These guys have $500,000 in 2 ch rigs. Doing this with a normal ATV is HORRENDOUS as it just sounds flat, nasty, undimensional, compressed and just sorta TV.. But,, for some reason I dont fully follow,, the modded ATVX has crazy imaging, remarkable musicality, insane detail I would have never believed was present in streaming sources.. What always come to mind for me was The Return Of The Jedi.. Doing this with a super high end 2 channel system was INCREDIBLE. I forgot what scene I was in, but, there was this lone, distant, french horn.. OMG.. It was 15 feet behind the screen in a huge space dripping with emotion.. It was just mind blowing.. I never thought high quality sound could come from a streaming source, but, OMFG there it was.. Things like Disney+, Paramont+, even Youtube, can produce sound and pic that are so close to Oppo and KScape my clients with all 3, never use the Oppo or Kscape any more. Too much hassle with discs or highh prices to get movies from KScape and the ATVX is close enough. PLUS there are sometimes newer transfers on streaming. Most of my clients have redone thier systems and gotten down to just the ATVX.. The ATVX also has apps for local cable TV companies here in the US. So you can get all your cable TV and DVR material on the ATV from the Cable Co app.

 

YES you can play local content.. NOW FAIR WARNING its hard to play illegal content tho. Its also a bit limited in CODECS. All my content that I use is legit streaming. So I don't know too much about all that. VLC tho does play remote content off my Qnap at high bitrates. i have some 100Mbps test clips I got from some post house buddies.. I know there are other apps that can also play local content.

 

Where I see high bit rate content is mostly from my post house clients that use Adobe Frame.IO.. This is a professional tool used by a lot of people making current series and movies. Yea that material played on seriously calibrated displays is crazy good..

 

I will talk more about high bit rate thru the ATV in a separate post. In short tho, bit rate is needed when things are in motion and changing a lot. So super high bit rates don't make for a better picture like you might think. In fact action scenes you can clearly see high bit rates as it translates to more resolution of everything in motion. Compression has gotten pretty good and it was quite surprising to me, and post house guys, how good it really looks.

 

Give me some more time and i will cover other questions.  Working a forum thread is time consuming and I am pretty busy making product.

 

This was this week.. I hand make each one, so its all labor intensive. More posting shortly...

 

 

[Xymox]

11 hours ago, davewantsmoore said:

How does error (jitter) in HDMI signal end up getting through to the video output?

 

Yea,, that is a doozy huh ? GOOD QUESTION...

 

Put another way, how does jitter on the HDMI affect the picture and sound. Bits are bits and its all decoded and put back together after all the slicing and dicing of the TDMS of HDMI.

 

I do not have a conclusive answer to this. I can relate what i have measured and some of my pursuits to figure it out. What i know of sure using countless blind ABs is there is a 100% where a person can pick out the ATV vs a ATVX. Its not subtle. So W T F is going on ?!?!.. Really it deserves some serious study. I have had a lot of talk with some SMPTE friends, who have them, and they want to do some work to figure this out. The guess is that the human perceptual model is lacking. IE the eye/brain is picking up something we do not yet know to measure for. This happened in audio when digital audio first appeared. It was PERFECT. Bits were exactly the same, the freq response was near perfect, ultra low distortion.. Everything we could measure showed it was perfect.. BUT.. The human auditory model was lacking... Once a ton of AB and research was done audio jitter was identified as easily discernible by a human. Tons of studies have since confirmed this. I think something is going on like this on HDMI and SOMEHOW its getting all the way to the pixels displayed.

 

How can that be..  Well.. A HDMI source is the source for the clock. The HDMI sink chip is locked to this source clock. It has to be. Because the data is so fast these is little, if any buffer.. There is no reclocking as that would require insane fast chips, and no one sees a reason to reclock HDMI. So the jitteer, phase noise, ends up propagating down the line. Its easily measurable on the output of the HDMI chip. Garbarge in / garbarge out.  This continues down the chain as all the video chips and processing must relay on this clock which is locked on the source device signal. Every display handles things differently. But normally a frame buffer is someplace and this sorta fills from the bitstream of bits. This is eventually clocked out to the actual display driver. Again everything has to sync up with the incoming signal..

 

I measured frame jitter using a panasonic plasma TV hooked to a ATV and inducing HDMI jitter. The Panasonic is good because it has almost no processing and its pixels are very fast. SO I measured the periodicy of frames. IE how exactly each frame was delivered in time. It turns out that whole frames kinda studder because of HDMI jitter. Its subtle, but present. This is because the sink device of HDMI must lock to the HDMI signal and if this signal has jitter then this travels all the way thru everything and becomes measurable on the screen output.

 

Now is this what we are seeing ? Who knows..

 

Its kinda beyond what kind of science i want to do. It would require a lab and a serious study to work it all out and serious people to work out how it translates to the human model.

 

Chip makers and compression models all relay on a std human model. If there is a incomplete understanding of things then the model is lacking and so people making chips and doing compression math produce products that are not best. Like Digital audio discovered back in the day.

 

There are a bunch of other things i have investigated.. The above is my best guess. How that jitter affects other things in the chain, or how it affects different types of display systems is unknown for me. I also considered how noise itself can affect things. So the retransmission of packets because of noise on a HDMI link.. Retransmission has weird affects. Mostly resulting in jitter. But these high frequencies leak into gear and this RF mess can affect other systems in the display process. There are tons of noise sources that end up in HDMI. Lots of grounding issues, chassis noise, other RF signals.. How all this can affect the decoding process is a open question.

 

SO.. In short,,, hahahaha.. I dont know.. I do know something IS occurring that we do not yet know to measure for. Lots of people have seen this. Changing HDMI cables creats differences. People mod Oppos and see/hear  differences.. Something is going on.

 

So the ATVX has a insanely good HDMI source signal. WAY better then should be needed for any application. This has somehow resulted in a picture and sound improvement. This is heard and seen by 3rd party reviewers. Like David Robinson founder/editor of Positive Feedback. His passions also extend to medium format photography. https://positive-feedback.com/audio-discourse/xtreme-projectors-hotrodded-apple-tv-4k-video-streamer/