Question Why is streaming sound quality so bad compared to a disc? Is there anyway of making it sound better?

[R2D2]

On Apple TV for example I have to turn the volume right up for it to sound ok still not great though. If everything is going streaming surely there is a way to improve the sound quality? Can you Stream DTS:X? Dolby Atmos you have to turn the volume right up. Most of the music concerts I have bought on Apple are Dolby 5.1 I would like a higher quality than that, is it possible?

 

[Messiah]

Personally I find streaming to be pretty good but I don't use Apple TV so I am not sure why you need such a volume increase (is that compared to Blu-Ray?).

The amount of bandwidth needed to stream HD/4K picture AND uncompressed audio for several channels is high so streaming services do compress it considerably.

The following article shows Blu-Ray runs up to 128mbps compared to streaming at 17mbps so I'm not surprised streaming services will look/sound inferior.

I watched a 4K Blu-ray for the first time in years – and was left disappointed

The good, the bad and the disappointing when it comes to 4K discs vs 4K streaming

www.whathifi.com

 

[davidf]

Because it's all based on Dolby Digital, something Laserdisc and DVD was using 30 years ago. Even Dolby Atmos used Dolby Digital as a base layer.

As for picture, modern, digitally shot films can look good because they're such clean digital captures, but can be a bit of a different story with movies shot on film, especially older ones. Either way, streaming is highly compressed compared to UHD discs and even Blu-ray Discs.

 

[davidf]

Personally I find streaming to be pretty good but I don't use Apple TV so I am not sure why you need such a volume increase (is that compared to Blu-Ray?).

The amount of bandwidth needed to stream HD/4K picture AND uncompressed audio for several channels is high so streaming services do compress it considerably.

The following article shows Blu-Ray runs up to 128mbps compared to streaming at 17mbps so I'm not surprised streaming services will look/sound inferior.

I watched a 4K Blu-ray for the first time in years – and was left disappointed

The good, the bad and the disappointing when it comes to 4K discs vs 4K streaming

www.whathifi.com

Not sure what player he has (I skimmed the piece), but my old Panasonic BD65 is painfully slow, but it's over 20 years old, and my Sony BDP-5000ES isn't exactly zippy. My Sony X800m2 is fine.

 

[abacus]

As mentioned it is all down to bandwidth, which cost company's a lot of money. (There is no technical reason why they cant be as good as physical disc)

Bill