I think there are far more questions than answers in using Dolby Atmos for music recording, especially in the classical music arena, Gene.
Dolby Atmos is a movie sound medium. It is object based, and primarily designed to produce a realistic rendition of moving objects in a 3D environment.
In a music recording, opera excepted, then the location of the sounds are almost always essentially static. So the intent is to more realistically preserve and reproduce the audio characteristics of the venue, creating a more realistic spatial environment.
At the current time, there are problems related to the unsatisfactory Dolby specs for the streaming of musical programs.
I have posted about this recently.
Another problem, is that appropriate microphone arrangements are far from settled practice. I, and others, think to do this probably means going back to relatively "hair shirt" co-incident microphone techniques. It seems intuitive that if you place microphones here there and everywhere, you will not produce a realistic rendition of space. It seems that an extended form of the old Decca Tree microphone arrangement is gaining popularity. This is the center omni and two fairly closely spaced cardioids either side, hung above the front of the players. There are various additions of upward, backward and downward facing mics to modify the technique for Atmos recordings.
As I mentioned previously, the stringent Dolby Atmos streaming specs, currently imposes severe limitations for using streaming as a good way of distributing Atmos music streams. This needs to change. So the only way to really evaluate this arena now is via Dolby Blu-ray audio only discs. There are precious few of these.
Then we get to the absurdity of means of reproducing this. I especially site Atmos sound bars, Atmos Alexa speakers and nonsense of this nature.
The next issue is a lack of honesty and transparency. The BPO have recently offered Dolby Atmos concerts. The results in my room have been far less than stellar. I now find that these recordings are actually two channel stereo, up mixed in some fashion. All I can tell you is that the Dolby Digital upmixer is far superior to what the BPO is using. As far as I'm concerned that makes the BPO Atmos stream pointless, and a massive downgrade from their excellent loss less stereo stream.
I note that some BD and streaming offerings, are from recordings before this Atmos object based system was even thought of!
I find these trends highly disturbing, and likely to really set genuine progress back.
I personally do not think it is settled that the object based Dolby Atmos system is the best route to "spatial/immersive" audio, or whatever you want to call it.
One thing I do know, it that strict coincident mic techniques do give an excellent sense of space via the Dolby Digital upmixer, including remarkable lateral and rear localization. I site the Scott Brothers Duo and their excellent organ recordings. Also this last season of BBC broadcasts of this last Prom season from the RAH, using the Decca Tree, were superb.
To end this I have just ordered my first Audio Only Blu-Ray Atmos disc, on the DGG label. I think it is the genuine article, but I can't be certain. A stereo CD is also included, so I will be able to compare the Atmos disc, with the CD via the DD upmixer. If it does not convince on this rig, it won't on anything. I will of course give a full report on this in due time.