There's a sort of irony there about using a cell phone to stream a "satellite radio" app, lol. Potentially no satellites involved in the actual transmission of data, aside from whatever the local cell towers use.
There's precedent. Several years ago we had a flavor of DirecTV -- I forget what they called it -- that was simply streaming TV over Internet, not satellite. So not that "direct". It was at various times called DirecTV Something-or-other and AT&T Something-or-other, in which order I don't recall, I just remember it started out great and got incrementally crappier and more expensive about every six months until we finally dropped it.
It's good for high-noise environments.re: sound quality. Way back when CDs were new I was in a record store with a friend and a sales limpet was pushing their new CDs pretty hard.
(Mr. Limpet, to me) "You should really give them a try, the sonics [sic] are amazing and you'll even replace your vinyl with CDs."
(Friend, to Limpet) "You should probably hear the **** he listens to first."
TL;DR: Low-fi music doesn't care about your choice of media
Remastering of what into Atmos? Atmos is almost entirely for movies/theater due to it being mostly elevation channels (overhead). Not sure how much good it would do for music aside from maybe when watching/listening to a live version of a concert and you could get some reverb from the concert hall via Atmos.
It's part of their spatial audio shtick. So, instead of a really good stereo rendition, it is now a 3D surround sound experience. As an example, the imaging of the band members left-right, and some instruments are heard from a height, etc. I've heard some where it wasn't obviously Atmos, and one that was over the top (Boom - Tiesto & Sevenn). Most are just subtle enhancements (Drive - R.E.M.) to stereo - avoiding being gimmicky.
Interesting. Seems like what AVRs do with certain sound modes where it will turn a stereo source into a surround sound playback, or add 7.1 channels to a 5.1 channel source. Mostly just a party trick since things like Atmos and Auro 3D audio have to be encoded as such on the audio bed layers because it is "object based" in movies so that a train rushing by on the screen follows a particular channel path across the room. I suppose a software algorithm could just say "take these high frequencies and play the from the height channels" to make the audio more immersive, but it would probably make the sound engineers who mastered the original music track claw their ears off, lol.
Well, quite the contrary (at least on R.E.M Automatic for the People):
www.masteringthemix.com
Complete the worse-is-better experience:re: sound quality. Way back when CDs were new I was in a record store with a friend and a sales limpet was pushing their new CDs pretty hard.
(Mr. Limpet, to me) "You should really give them a try, the sonics [sic] are amazing and you'll even replace your vinyl with CDs."
(Friend, to Limpet) "You should probably hear the **** he listens to first."
TL;DR: Low-fi music doesn't care about your choice of media
Nauga,
recorded through a suitcase in a bus station bathroom