Thraktor
"[✄]. [✄]. [✄]. [✄]." -Microsoft
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Atmos support isn't ruled out. The APE is just a mixer, from the point of view of the mixer, 5.1.2 and 7.1 are the same number of audio channels. Both Lucid Motors and NIO offer in-cabin Dolby Atmos, and it's using Orin to do so, with the same APE as Drake.
I doubt it will show up, just because of license costs, but the hardware doesn't rule it out.
I've wondered whether Nintendo could effectively just roll their own spatial audio solution instead of using Atmos or DTS:X. The main point of Atmos in a home setup (aside from just being a way to up-sell people to new AV gear) is that it allows audio to be transmitted in a way which is agnostic to any specific speaker setup, and can be downmixed to whatever setup the end-user has.
From the point of view of a games console, though, where you're already creating the audio mix in real time, you could skip the Atmos step and just mix directly to whatever speaker setup the user has configured. They could create an API for Atmos-like spatial audio for developers, and then downmix to a fixed-channel LPCM signal before sending to the AV receiver or other audio hardware. From both a developer and user point of view it would be no different to Atmos, but would arguably be more flexible and allow for higher quality (as the audio would be uncompressed through the entire signal path).
One issue is that I'm not sure how good the support is for higher channel count LPCM audio on AV receivers. HDMI 2.0 added support for 32 audio channels (up from 8 on previous versions), but I don't know if any AV receivers actually support more than 7.1 audio via LPCM. Of course AVRs capable of driving more than 7 speakers are a relatively niche part of the market in the first place, but they're also the only part of the market than meaningfully benefits from Atmos anyway.
Also, I'm not sure if the APE in Drake is the same as the one in Orin. It has changed in one respect, supporting the new CBB error-reporting fabric. It's possible that's the only thing they've changed, and functionality is identical, but it's also possible this was added alongside other changes to the hardware.