Here to Stay? The Controversy Around Dolby ATMOS

[@aceedmond8053]

Fact is the recording industry lost a lot of power... a monopolistic kind of power... IMO atmos is a control move on their part to gain back that control they're missing on so many levels.

[@aceedmond8053]

Imagine 10 years from now they'll require something else.... and then something else.

[@SonicScoop]

There is probably some aspect of that going on. Though there is also some truth to it being an improvement over prior surround formats. It’s still surround though (now with better built in scalability) and the applicability for pure music playback is probably limited. -Justin

[@jan_07]

@@SonicScoopthis format is proprietary owned format. And that’s a problem. There’s Atmos, Sony’s 360, etc - all these are private formats. The drawbacks about these non-standard formats is that music production pros will be caught in the crossfires of the companies battling each other for spatial audio superiority. Make the format standard and publicly owned just like stereo, then we’ll start talking about an industry revolution

[@ramspencer5492]

Yeah. I don't think that's going to work though... There's already eats to get into it cheap. Critical levels and eq'ing on Good headphones.... Panning on the cheapest speaker setups. Soon there will be really inexpensive DAC Atmos outputs..... You'll be able to get your panning going for under $300

[@brianmclendon1647]

You are 100% correct, this is a power and money grab by the industry.

[@CraigFlowersMusic]

I like surround for tv and movies, but despite how impressive 7.1 (in my case) or whatnot is for music, I'm a 2.1 or 2.0 guy. There is something magical about a vivid soundstage. The whole room is involved, and the sound comes alive naturally rather than forcefully.

[@SonicScoop]

Interesting! I've never heard it put quite that way before. Thanks for sharing your take Craig. -Justin

[@zootook3422]

I think very few have ever heard what a 2.0 stereo system can provide in terms of soundstage when given the proper space and careful set up. Those making the effort and appreciating the qualities are only tiny fraction of all music listeners and they are called audiophiles and possibly nut cases. So how can one expect the general household to accomodate for 12 speakers. What I mean is that a fantastic sound experience has been available for years and years but most listeners just don't care or are not prepared to make the effort/sacrifice. Putting 10.000USD on a stereo set up would get you a spectacular system. And setting up 12 speakers poorly in room not really fit for the purpose will end up in a non-spectacular listening experience. I'm on the other hand is an audio nerd/bedroom producer and too curious not to invest in an Atmos production/listening set up. The return on investment will be my listening pleasure. Great podcast Justin!

[@SonicScoop]

Great points Craig! -Justin

[@dkpianist]

@@zootook3422 I imagine that speaker distance is far more criticial in an Atmos setup - the stereo setup problem times X. If the room isn't suited for it (and you're not glued to your chair, for that matter), phase and balance issues will only increase.

[@patrox247]

Why aren’t people talking about the most important aspect of what this really is? Dolby ATMOS is the first fully licensed format in which you don’t own your own music. “You will own nothing and be happy”.

[@qua7771]

It's for movies.

[@patrox247]

Correct. Dolby owns all rights to both the recording and playback medium and use of this material is subject to the Dolby licensing agreement. This business model of corporate ownership is not unique to the music industry. Corporations are trying to end private ownership in every industry. It does make me sad watching people agree to it.@@CraigScottFrost

[@keywestjimmy]

I get your point, however Dolby is the first to offer binaural AND stereo mixing potential. That's very cool. I too wish there was a competitor in this space.

[@marklholloway]

Nice review. The most ridiculous part of Atmos for music streaming services is the expectation mix engineers will spend $10-$60k on speakers for something that will be delivered on headphones at best. We should be mixing Atmos on purpose built headphones designed for music streaming. Reserve the $60k setups for film and post.

[@mrnelsonius5631]

I’m a writer/producer who’s been releasing music professionally the last 10 years. I have decent monitors, great headphones… and my final stage mix reference always involves stock earbuds. That’s how 98% of my audience is going to listen to it. ATMOS for all popular music is one of the most ridiculous ideas I’ve heard in my lifetime.

[@privacyhelp]

the problem is most mainstream music listeners only use crappy system like laptop speakers, tws earbuds, bluetooth headphones, and car audio. they dont use hifi system with high end amp/dac and speakers

[@dkpianist]

@@mrnelsonius5631 Stock earbuds or a mono boombox at a barbecue. That's the real word. That's where the music needs to work.

[@teashea1]

This is the best discussion I have seen about Atmos. I have posted this on gearspace and Audio Science Review.

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for the kind words, and for the share! Much obliged :-) -Justin

[@aleksamrkela831]

The way I see it, Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and related formats are a mainstay in film and television, but I am completely convinced that they will never go over well in the music business. You cannot accurately play back an Atmos audio file on headphones or any other binaural listening system, and the vast majority of listeners listen on binaural systems and aren't going to barf up thousands of dollars for something they neither understand nor care about.

[@DolbyAtmosMusicMixing]

Binaural encoding is a technology that is constantly being developed. As long as the master files are properly mixed in Dolby Atmos your music will be future proof. In the near future listening on headphones will be indistinguishable from listening to real speakers. The difference will be between the quality of headphones you are using, but that is also true for speakers. This is only the beginning of this format, so don't give up on it just yet :)

[@gregrodrigueziii8075]

@@DolbyAtmosMusicMixing Stereo ain't a proprietary format anymore, thats what happens before something becomes a standard. I have no problem with the atmos format, the format has real benefits. But lets face it, the real future of this is either the format becomes a niche and survives for long just like other film audio formats for cinema, or it becomes a none corporation owned format. Theres no future exist where it becomes the norm as stereo and Dolby still owns the format.

[@shaft9000]

@@DolbyAtmosMusicMixing real speakers reach both ears, binaural is discrete to each ear and if ever the twain shall meet...so what? when surround is 25+ yrs on and quad has existed before i was born, and nobody but film mixers use those systems with any regularity - how will "more immersive space" make songs or music any better than it already is or is not? It won't, of course. This isn't rocket science, it's econ 101.

[@DolbyAtmosMusicMixing]

​@@shaft9000 Stereo is discrete, binaural is not. The whole point is that it mimics real life, so sounds reach both ears as if coming from speakers in a room. There are millions of tracks already available mixed in Dolby Atmos and hundreds more being uploaded each day. Systems evolve.You were never able to listen to quad or discrete surround on headphones, sound bars or smart speakers. Now you can. It's not as good as listening on proper speakers in as teated room... yet, but it's constantly being upgraded and you'll be surprised of how far it will evolve. I mean it's not like people are listening to stereo mixes in studio conditions either. This time the problem is not with the consumer technology, but bad mixes created by people who don't know the technology. You're right, it won't make bad music any better, nothing will. But it will make great music even greater if done right. Trust me, I'm not just an engineer, but a music lover who has heard hundreds of excellent recordings mixed in Dolby Atmos sound way better than the stereo version. And mixing in this format is way more fun too :)

[@2kBofFun]

My Blu Ray collection has maybe 4-5 flics in Armos/X. All others are DTS-MA.

[@Alex.Scotti]

Thanks for your opinion on this Topic. I´m on the Atmos-Train since a while now and i´m one of the lucky ones who actually works in a Atmos capable facility on his 9-2-5 Job every day. We work for Video/Film. It is a stunning experience IF u have the Propper equipment to listen on. Binaural headphone mixes don't work for me at all (jet) and A Propper Mixed Rock Song still sounds better in Stereo i think. But that's just my humble opinion. We did some amassing sounding Classical Atmos Recordings and Mixes. Just like the first way you described. Mainly a Stereo mix with additional "Room" just like sitting actually AT the Concert. But the real Truth is. 95% of our customers don't care about Atmos. They like it but they don´t pay extra. A Atmos mix takes more time, so for us its more expensive and if the customer is not paying the extra cost its not worth it. It only really translates when listening on a Propper System in a Propper Room. And i don´t know ANYBODY who owns a Propper Atmos capable System in Privat. Does it Sound good?? Yes it does, if u meet the right requirements. But ...

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for the comment and the great nuanced take on it! -Justin

[@louderthangod]

I have a friend that installs super high end home theater systems in the Bay Area and his clients have no interest in Atmos for music, it’s just for watching movies and such. My car does a form of immersive audio which I still turn off most of the time because it usually sounds worse, thinner, distant, etc.I have Apple headphones that do immersive audio and it just doesn’t add anything useful in headphones and if they can’t get headphones that can recreate the experience then it’ll never succeed because headphones are the main way people listen to music now. I wish it was great but agree with you that it’s great for the theater but stereo will stay the standard for music.

[@Alex.Scotti]

@@louderthangod This is exactly my experience. I´m on the Atoms Train since 2017!! I couldn't believe it but its true. I double checked it. Its 6 Years now. I think we´ve been one of the first Atoms certified Studios in Germany. Yes, in the beginning you had to be "approved". I still think ATMOS for Video/Movie is amassing. But its not necessary for Music Production.

[@n.s.3812]

I mean, with "proper" meaning the tens to hundreds of thousands of dollar studios, than yes, most people don't have that. But plenty of people have Atmos systems that Atmos mixes sound incredible on. I'm one of them. My home theater, if you count *everything*, was probably close to 20k, but if we take out the turntable, DAC, r2r, all the other peripherals, and just boil it down to the speakers, preamp and amp, it was probably about... $8-10k. Atmos music sounds absolutely unreal on it, and I've been searching out Atmos music as hard as I can for at least 5 years now. Steven Wilson's mixes are unreal. And even if we're to say that system is out of reach for most (I don't think it is, I make like 50k/year), than I can attest that it even sounds fantastic on the Sony HT-A9 in my living room, or even on my dad's Nakamichi soundbar+satellites. I had the pleasure of listening to Sgt Pepper Atmos in a "proper setup" - obviously it was unreal and way better than my system. But even just the first time I heard it in my own theater room, I was floored enough that I can't get enough of it. It's not gimmicky like quad was, or like 5.1 mixes on SACD. It's genuinely unreal. The one caveat being it doesn't improve all music/certain albums and styles are more suited for it. But lots rock music can and does sound great (pink floyd, beatles, Steven Wilson, Yes, REM even, etc), Hans Zimmer's live is phenomenal. I don't disagree the industry is using it as a cash grab, but that also doesn't mean it doesn't sound fantastic when done right either

[@sub-jec-tiv]

You mean ‘proper’? With a small p?

[@peterpeper4837]

Great, clear complete and above all HONEST

[@TheBigBird92]

I work for a record label/music publisher and our bread and butter is getting music placed in film and tv. Roughly 70% of that is vintage music (most of which we only have 2 track for). No atmos talk as of yet.

[@MM4F]

Agreed, there is a lot of work now in upscaling.. which is a nightmare to do, especially when it’s real vintage eg. 2 track..

[@sankofa216]

I’ve been mixing since mono. Stereo was nice, and Atmos is awesome. It’s the most fun I’ve had ever.

[@ChristianIce]

P.S. let's talk about the encoder, which costs 400 dollars for the license, *every year.* That's a *TAX* you pay to exist as a sound engineer. That's *INSANE.*

[@2kBofFun]

Is there no open alternative. It is basically a whole bunch of streams with a 3D coordinate for the location. Can't be that hard to make a no-license clone. I bet Google has already a variant in its Webp video standard, another way of a company enforcing formats just by giving away everything free.

[@quantize]

@@2kBofFun no, Dolby have been running this scam for decades.

[@dkpianist]

You will own nothing, and you will be happy. If they could, they would make speakers that only play if you throw in a dime hourly. For both producers and consumers.

[@CarlKennedyMusic]

I am a retired rock music producer working in audio hardware design and manufacturing (consumer and pro). Having worked several decades climbing through the levels of music creation and now being on the hardware/delivery side I have a pretty good perspective on trends. I was working on the very earliest ProLogic releases as well as AC3/5.1 and so on. I am familiar with the hype and the reality. Most of those involved are and were very well-intended despite the failures of previous surround formats. This latest iteration is already quite different due to the size of the creation base. The obvious question everyone asks is “where will it be played?”. There is potential. Really. The most promising venue is new car audio. New higher-end vehicles are adopting immersive formats and spending the money to add audio channels and speakers to support Atmos. We all spend lots of time in cars and this is always a good place to deliver audio. No concern for managing the cost or aesthetic impact as the packaging has been done for us. This is a very viable market if auto manufacturers stay with it and they probably will because it’s something new to market their vehicles. Secondly, Atmos emulation in sound bars is already off to a hot start. Is it legitimate Atmos? Of course not. Is it more engaging to the average listener? Maybe, depending upon both the mix and the soundbar. Since there is so much back catalog content being remixed in Atmos, the audience may not struggle to find their favorite content and this is key. Lastly, younger audiences want anything that isn’t their parents generation. Gen Z is hungry to make their mark and leave the past to their parents and grandparents.

[@i.a.m-poornasrikarm]

✨ thanks for acknowledging ✨

[@mgratk]

It amazes me that in the 70s through 90s, maybe early 2000s, the average person had a much greater quality of listening experience than people do today, listening on laptop speakers, mono cheap bt speakers, tablets, etc. Back in the 80s I had a very nice boom box with detachable speakers, and it was big sound from big speakers. People also of course had home stereo systems. Even with bookshelf speakers you got a better experience than most bt speakers.

[@SonicScoop]

It's a mixed back, and kind of goes both ways. Sure, perhaps there are more opportunities today to listen on sub par playback devices. But at the same time, today's bottom of the barrel listening devices are MUCH better than the bottom of the barrel listening devices from the 70s through the 90s. No contest! And, if you're willing to spend a little bit, you can get much MUCH better speakers for an inflation adjusted $1000 today than you could back then. I hope that helps add some context to it. -Justin

[@DivioJP]

back in the 80's there was no bass.... 100 hz would be as low as most boom box or even hifi systems would go... try to listen to modern pop/dance production on an 80's boom box, there's nothing left of the bass which is nowadays a big part of the production

[@mgratk]

@@DivioJP Well it seems to have shifted to almost all the bass, all the time, enough to last to the death of the universe, which is too much bass for me.

[@Ruinwyn]

Atmos for labels and streaming services is a new tech they hope could boost sales. The "this is what you can get if you pay" hook. Unfortunately for them, the masses reached the point of diminishing returns long ago.

[@FadersAnd]

Talked to a label yesterday that said “we aren’t seeing a return on our atmos investment” and the declined to get this latest project in atmos

[@QualifiedSoundStudios]

Very balanced view and approach. I’ve just invested in Atmos, but I’m a composer and mixer trying to work in film and games, so maybe that will be useful. As for mixing in music, I’m fence sitting and there is no harm in watching and waiting to see how it all unfolds. Lucky, the investment wasn’t massive for me as I’ve built my studio over 15 years, so it was already close bar the speakers. But for me I got midrange speakers, Kali In5’s and In8’s, I couldn’t afford to get 8 Genelec’s to match my L & R’s 😅

[@StellarWorks2023]

Really appreciate the clarity and honesty, thank you 🙏🏾

[@DonRossMusic]

One other small point… It took over 30 years for stereo to get widely adopted by the listening public. It’s easy to forget that now because we’ve lived with it for a long time, but stereo was seen as a gimmick when it first came along.

[@TheBoomotang]

Surround sound has been around for over 30 years.

[@DonRossMusic]

@@TheBoomotang and the binaural version of this version of surround has only been around for a short time, and has only just started to be adopted by some of the tech companies. Give it time.

[@TheBoomotang]

@@DonRossMusic Which changes nothing for music consumers.

[@DonRossMusic]

@@TheBoomotang Sorry I don’t follow.

[@DonRossMusic]

@@TheBoomotang My point is that the music implementation of Atmos is still in early days, and it’s the first version of immersive audio to be widely available binaurally. Again, early days.

[@timlink7817]

As an end user who was very excited about multi-channel music, and especially Atmos on Apple music, I've found I'm back to turning it off and listening to stereo tracks that I've up-mixed to 3 channel. For some reason these music mixes don't like to use the center channel, and that's what I wanted most from it. So I choose the standard stereo tracks and use an up-mix that creates an excellent center. Another issue is that when I use Atmos mixes in 2 channel mode I hear weird artifacts. An example is Norah Jones song Cold Cold Heart. The bass at the beginning has a weird high frequency effect that I don't hear at all in the original mix. So "Spacial Audio" is turned off.

[@WillyJunior]

I honestly think 5.1 is still great if you want surround...

[@SeawellStudios]

I really enjoyed your takes here. Thanks for being willing to speak honestly on a subject that so few on KZbin seem to be willing to do. Much respect 👊🏼

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks so much for the kind words Seawell! I actually came across your take when I was looking around at others' opinions on this, and you were literally the only one I could find who made one of the key points I had been planning to make. Namely: How does it benefit the average artist? Where is their economic incentive to do it? I think you're the only other person on KZbin I've seen to make this point so far, which you did very well! (And you have the honor of doing it publicly before too :-) Thanks again for stopping by, and keep up the good work. You clearly have some great insights over there. Very best, -Justin

[@cucumberforest]

I am surprised why the possibilities of binaural elements applied directly in the stereo mix are not discussed more often. For pads, I always open a binaural panner in Logic. Also the reverb plugin from Hofa with „Binaural Spaces“ is perfect to add more real depth to the stereo mix. The best and cheapest way to achieve immersive audio for my listeners with headphones.

[@SonicScoop]

I’m sure those processors sound great! But the way your headphone listeners are experiencing them is ultimately as stereo audio. This means you don’t actually need Atmos to get the sound of those kind of processors into a stereo file. If the ultimate playback is out of two drivers, then it’s stereo :-) Hope that makes sense! -Justin

[@cucumberforest]

@@SonicScoop That's actually exactly what I wanted to say. I use binaural effects without atmos, in a stereo mix session.

[@SonicScoop]

Gotcha, now I understand! Yes, totally possible without Atmos. Thanks for the clarity, Justin

[@sub-jec-tiv]

Yep. Also increasingly, people who are really listening closely to music are listening in earphones not speakers. For many reasons including people increasingly living in cities in apartments with neighbors, listening while walking around, listening to their own music at work, etc. So absolutely, headphones are a completely legitimate way to focus the sound of a mix. I absolutely use both monitor speakers and different pairs of headphones while i mix. Not listening on a pair of Beats earphones while you mix, from time to time, as a reference, means you aren’t doing your job as well as you could, because a *significant* percentage of listeners are literally listening on those specific earphones.

[@joewhip9303]

Having extensive listening experience with it now, it can be phenomenal. It is great to have choices.

[@ytscksdabig1]

8:00 Great point. Sadly, I would only disagree to a slight degree in that, there are so many programmable and moldable people that just go along with whatever *is* popular, or what they are told is *good*

[@Gongtopia]

Atmos might be great, but few people beyond musicians and 'audiophiles' will care. Yes, it will be great for theaters and the film industry, but everyday consumers just won't care. Very few people sit still and just listen to music any more. More often, music is a background to their activities. "You mean I have to sit in one place to listen?" That will only happen for a film, and most people will be happy with their soundbar or 5.1 system at home.

[@SonicScoop]

A lot of truth there. Thanks for the comment. -Justin

[@chrisrevel2801]

Audiophiles are against it , they don t like this format for music and if they had to invest in atmos to get the same quality they get in their high end stereo systems it would cost them way too much

[@jamegumb7298]

You forgot pc. For something like GTFO, War Thunder, many other titles, benefit greatly from the back surround. I use just 2 front 2 back speakers with a phantom centre channel. It does better than any headphones. I can hear em creeping on me. I have played with an Atmos receiver and am liking the height component. It really does add something, and in my opinion it really needs to be fullrange just as the rest of the speakers. One thing I hate though is the lack of configuration. I mean especially for pc, you might have a large desk and no space to put anything rear, add wide stereo to the stereo, difficult to put front overhead in? Front stereo and front heights. A little flexible. I sincerely hope MPEG-H 3D Audio gets there. From what I read so far it requires no HDMI for transport meaning usb is in, you can have a reference decoder for your own use and DIY you just cannot sell it (I have tested the Ittiam decoder on Git it works but sadly only on arm), and is flexible placing speakers. Looks like the ticket. Now a simple solution where they sell the usb chip since XMOS doesn't play nice. That said pc has been regressing like crazy on the sound front. I could type out of copy paste a load of info here, but wavetracing and 128 channels dynamically allocated with a bunch of filters on each was no issue and could be done on a P400Mhz with a Sound blaster card. And here we are with Wow Atmos on headphones!. Ridiculous. And if you do want it outside the pc, Atmos as well as DTX demand and require encrypted transport allowed over HDMI only. The audio on pc is a mess. Dolby should just open source AC4 (part of Atmos but specifically not Atmos).

[@Jozephmusic]

I have friends that is absolutely not audiophiles, but have invested in a soundbar with satellites after being introduced to Atmos at my place. In my experience it’s so good that you want to sit down and listen. It may be a genre experience, some of the new classical music releases is just awesome in Atmos. If you have the possibility to listen to for example 2L s latest releases it’s really mind blowing how the immersive experience is. It’s so good you want to listen to the end 😊

[@jamegumb7298]

@@Jozephmusic I had a soundbar for a day and returned it. If a normal soundbar is a big compromise, for Atmos it is terrible. The upward firing speakers do not work well at all. The normal surround sound is no good either, a soundbar is for meh sdound because you really do not have room, bt why get Atmos for "standard" surround through a soundbar? The panning sound that has like 5 or 6 objects for sound? Nah, you get one for the height channels.

[@dimispath6224]

Thank you for your logical and honest opinion on Atmos. I couldn’t agree with that more it’s not for everyone it’s very specific.

[@errmable]

I was the same with gaming back in 99-00. I was playing so much that I would get home from work about 4-5pm, not eat dinner locked in the game hearing the birds chirping at 4-5am. I said to myself that this wasn't healthy and quit! I think I know who you were referring to when saying that a KZbinr mentioned folding down to stereo after. I also thought that was bad advice. I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and thought they might be telling us that the majority of people didn't care about how it sounds in stereo because they will be in headphones and the default device settings will be Spectral Audio!

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for making it I the end, and for the great comment! -Justin

[@donnydarko7624]

The space requirements for most dolby atmos setups eliminates many people who don't either live in a house, or who live in a live in a small house from being a potential customer as well.

[@stefanhansen5882]

Interesting. How about Sony 360 versus Atmos? Thanks!

[@AdrianGibby]

I have a question about using Dolby Atmos as a tool to look into a proof of concept for object oriented live music delivery in large live venues. The problem we are addressing is where the venue needs multiple speakers to provide the required SPL, detail can be lost. For example, many musicians report that, when playing large venues, they have to simplify some of their parts because the more complex elements of the music get lost in these performances. The assumption we are making is that the brain has difficulty in processing the multiple path lengths of the audio from the line arrays. The brain can handle multiple path lengths, and does so every time we are in a room. The assumption that we want to test is that the brain of the average audience member is not familiar with the multiple path lengths from a line array and has difficulty processing this information. This produces the result that clarity is lost on the audience. The solution would be to have single speakers for each performer. Then have multiple speakers in the venue, preferably at the walls of the venue where the audio for each performer is delayed by the path length from each performer to each loudspeaker. d&b audiotechnik have already been doing something similar to this for several years for theatre productions. We want to test our assumption. It is possible that this problem is due to different issues such as bad acoustics, for example. So rather than write our own code to test this, it would be good to use something like Dolby Atmos or Ambisonics to provide the calculations for delay for each object (performer) to each speaker. We would not need to use the ceiling speakers for this just the side and back speakers. The question is: can Dolby Atmos provide a condition where we can align the delays from each object to produce a coherent waveform from each loudspeaker in a live venue? Given that cinema theatres have different dimensions, does Dolby Atmos provide a way of dealing with these delay calculations? Or would we need to place our speakers in specified location? Which would not be a problem for us, we would just stick to the specified placements of the speakers. The main argument against using distributed speakers is that the many speakers will interfere with each other. It is possible that d&b audiotechnik has already proven this to be wrong, but it would be good to prove this ourselves for the case of live music with our loudspeakers, which have been designed with this issue in mind. The other questions we need to answer are, does the audience or performers care about being able to solve this problem? It’s better to find the answers to these questions by using someone else’s software rather than writing our own.

[@swd7901]

Sorry, I'm late to the game. I'm in the 1% who mainly listen to music via two high-quality monitors. I'm afraid I'll have to live with folded down Atmos mixes and not get mixes made for 2-channel stereo. I appreciate your point about starting with stereo mix and go from there.

[@theBullringLive]

I loved the old 60's stuff. The panning stuff was fun while token on a doobie but the stereo a lot of times was set so you could close your eyes and imagine being in a small club with the band setup on stage.Keyys on far left, bass on far right guitars left and right. Vocals center, drums paning following the kit. I can see atmos adding to that ATMOSphere.

[@JamieFoulds]

This was an excellent dive Justin. Thanks

[@SonicScoop]

Great to hear Jamie! Thanks for tuning in -Justin

[@MrDo2an]

Regarding music, Atmos is hype. Here are some of the arguments. 1) The stage is the most natural way of representing music content, and the stereo format is completely sufficient to reconstruct the stage. A human most natural way of perception is observing the content in front of us. If we hear something behind us, we turn our heads to see it in front of us. Our eyes follow our ears. That's why for thousands of years we didn't build concert halls or theaters where the audience is in the middle, and the stage is all around. I wouldn't like the music where the drums are above my head and the solo guitar is behind me. We don't go to the concert and turn our back to the stage to have the experience of "being immersed". 2) Most people in the world didn't adopt the proper stereo listening habit. They just don't care. They put speakers anywhere or sit anywhere, or they are just happy with the crapy mono sound of their smartphones and laptops - how can we expect they will adopt Atmos. 3) Atmos requires significantly more money. 4) Many people don't have adequate rooms to put the speakers in. 5) Binaural: listening on headphones for a longer time becomes uncomfortable; proper setup would require higher quality headphones and personally calibrated HRTF; and again, the argument no. 1...

[@SonicScoop]

A lot of good insights there, thanks for the comment. -Justin

[@tecnica-de-voz]

100%

[@Antibackgroundnoise]

When comparing 2-channel rendered movie with a 5.1 rendered movie, the different is quite something but when comparing 5.1 with an Atmos movie, the audio dispersion title might sound quite impressive but actually what little of the audio does decide to come out is actually quite minimal at best.

[@Nova_Afterglow]

best vid ive seen on this. im an edm producer and am just not really sold on atmos. clubs are not the place for atmos so it just doesnt seem worth it.

[@watchtheskies]

It's interesting technology, but I think it will be as comercially successful as curved TVs, nobody was asking for those either

[@garth448]

Im that guy yall, I want the atmos magic for all music. Taylor swift on a true 7.4.2 system is absolutely breathtaking. Im buckled in for this ride.

[@SonicScoop]

Glad you are digging it! -Justin

[@damienlewis7882]

There’s gonna be thousands of pmcs for sale in a few years.

[@morphedprod]

I think binaural rendering algorithms have and will improve moving forward. As resolution gets better, so will the experience.

[@soundsfromYYBY]

should you record vocals with dolby atmos on or just turn it on when its time for mixing?

[@theBullringLive]

Seems to me, the full blown atmos thing in homes won't really take off until we have in-wall speakers that have long lasting rechageable batteries and comunicate via wifi or some yet unknown wireless connectivity. I just don't see too many people wanting speakers and cables hanging all over their living room. For now, I think a 5.1 system that you can purchase at Costco or Amazon for under $1000 being the norm

[@louis-ferdinandfeline5078]

Fantastic breakdown

[@SonicScoop]

Much appreciated! Thanks for tuning in. -Justin

[@louis-ferdinandfeline5078]

@@SonicScoop New sub.

[@captainthunderbolt7541]

I get a lot from Atmos for games and movies, but when listening to a stereo mix music track with a good pair of headphones I find that I get more than enough spatial separation of instruments already. Atmos for music is fine too, but it feels optional.

[@StarskiYall]

People sure are resistant to moving forward to a new format. We’ve been on stereo for almost 100 years. Tv and video has updated formats and quality but as music we can’t move to a new format? I’ve experienced it and it’s amazing. All this being said, we’ll see if it sticks.

[@clivesilver463]

Writing this while listening to Gentle Giant in Atmos the album is freehand, it sounds fantastic when done right Atmos is a great way to listen to older recordings from lets say from the 70's to modern day, I have the equipment to get the full experience, 4 height 2 front 2 side 1 centre 2 subs, I upgraded my 5.1 system to a 8.1.2, The height speakers are placed close to the apex of the wall and ceiling two in front two behind, in other words a complete surround sound, yes it cost about £1000 for the upgrade, sound bars headphones and Apple spatial streaming are things I would steer clear of. To date I have only 12 Atmos recordings, in terms of quality and a fresh audio perspective that money was well invested, the problem is this they are trying to get to the mass market, you cannot get the same effect with pair of headphones you are getting something of a cheap gimmick. If anyone doubts Atmos then one album that is almost custom made for it is Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield its incredible, with everything in life do something the right way or forget it.

[@Bob.martens]

2.0 stereo still works for me.

[@jmalmsten]

Well, that was one of the most nuanced takes on this. And I will say that, while I love surround for movies and TV where you can focus on the visuals in front of me and feel the sound around me. For 99% of music listening, that is not applicable even for me. As usually it's just me with my in ear (probably unhealthy and deafening) headphones. And when I do hear music in surround... It's concert films and similar content where I sit down with my head and body in one direction throughout the experience. ... and that's back to the format of video with surround sound. I would be interested in trying out those kind of head tracking headphones as if it's not head tracked... Dolby atmos headphones literally is just expensive stereo. I still wouldn't get to feel the sound on my body (very underrated feature of non headphone listening) but it would make me consider using it to listen to surround sound when a full external speaker array is not possible. Maybe headtracked headphones should be paired with a belt device that can track the rotation of the body to negate the problematic aspects of turning around corners while commuting to and from work. But in a subtle way as you easily can probably end up with the auditory equivalent of VR motion sickness.

[@MrDubyadee1]

Remember 3D television - the latest iteration, not the one before that? I had to work to avoid buying one. I’ve tried various standards since the early 70’s. Stereo and then 4 channel and later 5.1 and then 7.1. Dolby 5.1, 7.1, etc. add something to some types of movies, but not to music. The movies I watch don’t need more than stereo with a center channel and a subwoofer. I don’t like comic book movies. For music, I’ve regressed back to mono. Yes, mono. I have Naim Cube’s placed around the house. They sound great. Everywhere I am I have a fulfilling volume - but not too loud or soft and I get the same sound everywhere. (I use Airplay from a Mac mini server.). Stereo is inferior for home use because you aren’t sitting in a concert hall or a theater facing the music source. You walking around eating, drinking and talking to friends. You might sit here or there. Do you want to be controlled by your speaker placement? I used to have Bose 901’s and they sounded great, but everything (including the listeners) had to be arranged around them. I love my Naim Cubes and you can keep your satellite speakers, etc.

[@ajschot]

i think it really depends and so on really small amount of music it will workor can add something.

[@DonRossMusic]

Very well done in terms of presenting various sides and points of view regarding the subject. The algorithm has been feeding me a lot of “Atmos hate” videos lately, and so many of them are filled with specious arguments, so it’s nice to hear you lay out the pros and cons so carefully. I’ve been mixing in a nicely equipped home Atmos studio for a little over a year now, and I really feel like my mixes are starting to sound pretty amazing through the multi speaker array, as well as through the right set of headphones. Even listening to them in 2.0 in my car can be surprisingly great. So, I agree with everything that you say about the revolutionary aspect of this particular form of immersive audio being the fold down and fold out aspect of it. That makes it unique, and much more accessible in terms of the consumer. The arguments against and in favour of the idea of consumer demand are relatively old-school, IMHO. I know that Apple, for example, has not hit a home run on every single one of its products, but the most successful ones, like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, all had no end of dissenters upon their launches. What everyone realized was that Apple managed to essentially create desire and demand for products that consumers didn’t even really think or know they needed or wanted necessarily. The iPad, for example, was the most quickly adopted new technology in the history of the human species. Kind of amazing. It’s still early days, and we are still going through the phase of the “early adopter.“ There’s no way to predict the future, but I am quite confident that the handy-dandy nature of Atmos, when, compared to every other immersive format, will make consumer adoption much quicker and easier. For example, despite the arguments that people make about people who just listen to music on their phone speakers, the truth is, that sales of headphones have gone through the roof in recent years. More and more of those, of course, are capable of playing Atmos playback, such as Apple AirPods, and Apple AirPods Max, as well as some of their Beats headphones. A huge number of people who are not necessarily audiophiles have bought into that ecosystem. There are 1.5 billion Apple products floating around the world right now, and the vast majority of the last several years’ worth of products are now capable of Atmos playback. More and more people are bound to discover it. I also think it’s important not to adopt the cynical attitude that anything is being forced on anyone. That takes the concept of agency away from the consumer. No one has to buy anything or adopt anything. I know people who live without televisions, without cell phones, without computers. I realize that’s more and more of the minority, but there are people who’ve decided to completely opt out. So, I think that people will listen to music in whatever way that they want to in the future, whether that’s supporting an artist directly by buying a vinyl or CD, or whether it’s streaming on one of the services in either stereo or Atmos. It’s a new technology and it needs time 😊

[@chrisrevel2801]

maybe not enough atmos love for the algo to feed you that type of videos ... with the current technology , if people discover atmos with airpods , they are going to think that stereo is superior .

[@DonRossMusic]

@@chrisrevel2801 I listen to all my studio mixes on AirPods Max. They’re starting to sound pretty amazing. It’s getting to the point where I like BOTH the stereo and the Atmos mixes. Both can sound good at the same time. 😃

[@DonRossMusic]

@@chrisrevel2801 There are also a lot of really informative and positive videos about Atmos. I try not to live in a feedback loop and I do check out videos that have negative things to say to so that I’m not just confirming my bias.

[@chrisrevel2801]

@@DonRossMusic seeing that there are more negative opinions isn"t a bias , it is just how reality curently is . Similar things happened with NFTs and the metaverse : a few positive opinions and the always funny " it is the inevitable future " argument while most people were negative ( also a lot of memes and jokes )

[@DonRossMusic]

@@chrisrevel2801 Time will tell. I’m ready to admit that I’ve been wrong before. 😃

[@paulmiller657]

ATMOS isn't something I'm going to bring into my life. I don't need it for my phone, car, or even in my home. All I need is stereo. I'd say there are thousands more like me.

[@BLACKSYNTH]

Most people are listening in knock off £15 air pods. They sign up or pay extra for atmos streaming and don’t actually even understand what it is. The stereo mixes of my favourite albums are they way it was intended to be heard. It’s part and parcel of the sound and the way I remember them and first fell in love with them. Almost should only be used for movies.

[@kennethdaniels]

From what I understand (so far) from watching the Scheps podcast, the unique thing about it - and the reason why it's not going away - is that well done Atmos can collapse down to all the other Dolby (like 5.1, etc) and easily collapse down to Stereo. (I know you said this right at the top) And with Atmos coming to cars, home theater and Apple Spatial audio... I doubt Atmos is going anywhere. Does that mean that all the kids will know they are listening to Atmos... probably not, especially on headphones (obviously), but again, I don't think Atmos is going anywhere, especially once the tech starts getting affordable. Anyway... that's my hot take.

[@chrisrevel2801]

NFTs and the metaverse weren't supposed to go anywhere as well ... a bunch of people and giant companies ( Meta ) pushing for something they were desperate to profit from wasn't enough , gaslighting people by saying that it is the future , it is inevitable and that is how young people will do things wasn't enough ...those things were ignored and mocked into oblivion ...

[@kennethdaniels]

@@chrisrevel2801 I don't think Andrew Scheps and other top mixers having a 4 hour in depth discussion on Scheps podcast are trying to gaslighting you. It's a discussion, sharing opinions and thoughts. Stereo isn't going anywhere and I haven't heard anyone say that it was.

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for sharing your take Kenneth!

[@chrisrevel2801]

@@kennethdanielsof course stereo will remain the standard , it is still the superior format for music , not even close . Schepps didn’t gaslight the audience but he has an interested in that format succeeding just like other famous engineers so he didn’t explain that atmos with the current technology does not translate well at all at the consumer level , atmos mixes sound ridiculously bad on headphones and sound bars

[@kennethdaniels]

@@SonicScoop "Yeaaaayeaahaaahh!!!"

[@kadiummusic]

Who the hell asked for this expensive gimmick? Everyday punters didn't, they are quite happy with compressed mono coming out of their phones and their Bluetooth devices. I have never heard a single person in the recording industry ever say.... "what we really need is another surround sound format?". Stereo works, END OF! Don't buy into the industry led hype, save your hard earned cash and kick it where it belongs... the scrapheap of audio waste with DAT, DCC, Quadraphonic etc. Nonsense! GRRRR!

[@SonicScoop]

As I say early in the episode, there seem to be two and only two allowable takes on this issue: Hype and Hate! :-) I'm trying to break that mold with this episode. But I definitely get where you are coming from. You're certainly not alone. -Justin

[@elanfrenkel8058]

I dunno man some of the atmos mixes on plain old headphones are pretty breathtaking. I was listening to some Miles Davis and it really felt like I was on the stage with the musicians. D Angelo was also really cool. There is just so much more separation of the instruments. I may be in the minority but I think atmos just gives us a better way to soundstage for headphones.

[@ksbav8r]

L

[@klc2578]

I tried Atmos on Apple Music and Tidal's 360RA yes it does make the sound better in sound quality vs original mix not immersive for me. And there's no on top sound from the headphones just better soundstage position.

[@buzzcrushtrendkill]

For movies at home, Atmos is great. But music, 2 channel stereo is all that's needed.

[@rays7805]

This was a good video. It was very good.

[@SonicScoop]

Glad to hear Ray, thanks for tuning in. -Justin

[@TheOtherKine]

It's great for movies, which is what it was designed for, but for straight 2-channel stereo music, it is not. There is controversy due to the music industry trying to re-mix music with it and then realising that most people listen to music on 2.0 stereo, so it gets mixed down anyway and doesn't work. But for movies with multi-channel surround and specifically using all those channels for dialogue, sound effects and music that can all swish around and move around, it's great when it's done properly

[@operasinger2126]

Very nice video, Justin!

[@ecowyatt]

What happens when you fold atmos into 2 speakers? You get stereo, and that’s how 99.9% of people are going to listen to music. This is an attempt at gatekeeping by the major labels because they’re upset that a kid can produce a hit record from their bedroom. Just another power move by the majors to try and stay relevant in a world where technology is progressing at a rate faster than them.

[@mikemeengs5720]

Great vid...thanks!

[@SonicScoop]

Glad you dug it! -Justin

[@DanielGlenTimms]

Dolby Atmos in cars is coming, which is big. The headphones experience will improve with technology, as well. I am digging my atmos mixing setup. It's fun and really opens creative possibilities. I think it is going to stick this time, ie. smart speakers, headphones, sound bars. Apple, Amazon and Tidal are all in. I think others will follow. After working in it for a short while, I am sold on it and I was very reluctant to even consider it. Now I am embracing it.

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for sharing your take. Are you using a 7.1.4 system, and what did it cost you to get up and running? -Justin

[@DanielGlenTimms]

@@SonicScoop Hi Justin, yes I have a 7.1.4 monitoring setup with a mix of Focals and Kali Audio. I think that is where people get caught up on the price. I spent time tuning my monitors to each other using the Dolby Renderer tools so they sound close to each other, as well as, timing and using a dB meter and it sounds great. A new software monitor controller by Ginger Audio, Ground Control Sphere, which is $400 that I am probably going to get looks great and appears to be a game changer, but my current setup using my console, two Heritage Audio Baby Rams and headphone distribution amp is workin well for monitor control. I am using Avid Carbon and adat-connected Focusrite converters for the outputs. It didn't cost that much to get it setup, and switching back to production mode on Carbon is easy and works well with Pro Tools.

[@SonicScoop]

Sounds like a good solution. Thanks for sharing your take. -Justin

[@Ein-Stuck]

Music caters to activity and film caters to a captive audience.

[@carlos-ni4hn]

Heyy justin at the end will the engineer jason chesse appear in this mix con 2023?i'm excited

[@SonicScoop]

We are still talking to him about it, but right now he looks to be a more likely candidate for 2024. Doing our best but can't promise it as of now for 2023. Apologies! -Justin

[@cceyxx]

Get a iPhone 12 mini or up, get the movie Upgrade, watch the intro stuff. That’s atmos turned spatial for you. I do agree that it is bullshit to force musicians to master in a format. Should be just encouraged. I don’t care if it’s older music without atmos or newer with, I listen to music because of music and not some formats.

[@teashea1]

Good video. There are substantial discussions about this on Gearspace an Audio Science Review. It seems that its use for music is not gong well. Many producers and musicians are quite disinterested in it. There are few home/individual music systems that utilize it and even fewer that are really compliant with the standards.

[@philippebeauplan9431]

To my knowledge Dolby Atmos is good for movies only not for music. Because I am still enjoying DVD Audio, specially that album from Grover Washington Jr. "Wine Light " and Sade "promise " in DTS music.

[@G_handle]

Good 1hr analysis, at this stage in the game. A couple of thoughts: A) I think Dolby Atmos has been around for over a decade now. It's been many years since I was first wrapping my head around it at NAB, and clarifying the difference between "Beds" and "Objects" which you didn't really get into. B) The way you talked about it conflates what was "Surround" with what we're now calling "Immersive". So now rather than a Stereo mix with Mono compatibility, you have Mono, Stereo, Binaural, Surround, and Immersive. However while that seems like a nightmare to many, in practice, as you touched on, a lot of people report finding it Easier. C) Rather than thinking about More Speakers, what ends up happening is No Speakers. Just a Three-Dimensional space with you inside and sound positioned anywhere. D) The most important distinction for Why is to think about going from Mono to Stereo. With a listening position perfectly triangulated between two speakers, the Mix Engineer creates and the Listener EXPERIENCES a psycho-acoustic Soundstage...in front of them. Now that Soundstage is All Around them. You're IMMERSED inside of the Soundstage. E) I obviously understand the monetary focus and obsession, money is real. But when you think of the music you love, and the experience it provides, as an Artist or a Listener, are you Simultaneously thinking about how much the speakers cost? The equipment should dissappear, or you have other problems IMHO. F) I think the most compelling difference between Dolby as a company vs everyone else in the space is that : The Producer has to encode, and the Consumer has to Decode the signal. Unlike Surround however, presumably in order for any end user device to have a Dolby stamp, it also has to "Map" the 3D space that that device is capable of reproducing. So if its a pair of Atmos Headphones, a Soundbar, or a Home Theater Receiver with any number of speakers, that system is "Calibrated" often with microphones in a very similar fashion to the studio control room. So in other words, Dolby is offering a Mix Translation system that has never really existed between the Studio and the Listener...on every playback system. G) If you go to Best Buy here in the US, nearly everything in the store that makes sound, has Atmos already. The Apple and Samsung phones in everyones pockets already have it. And at this point I think a critical mass has already reached a point where a Consumer Electronics manufacturer doesn't want to release their products Without the logo. So it's definitely here. Whether its here to stay, who knows. But unlike Betamax and VHS, or AC3 and DTS, I don't see any close competitor to Atmos. H) I believe at one point they weren't calling it "Immersive" but 3D Audio. And we all saw how 3D Video took off... So is it possible that Atmos flops? Absolutely. But I doubt it. I) You claimed that the industry cant make people want it (basically). Well Steve Jobs once said "Nobody needed an iPod till I told them they need an iPod". The move from standard definition to high definition televisions was more "wanted" that going from HD to UHD. But are you going to buy an HD TV for your living room? J) I dont love that a private company is setting an industry standard rather than say SMPTE or NAB, AES, some independent non corporate actor. But Dolby is bringing both Atmos and Dolby Vision, and both mean for us professionals that if widely adopted and successful, we only have 1 target to aim for rather that half a dozen that are incompatible like now. K) Finger to the wind, Dolby Atmos is the immediate future. Like it or not. And on net, I very much do.

[@chrisrevel2801]

distant future : maybe ... immediate future : no , that ship has already sailed and sunk ... Very very few people care ( even less than the metaverse ) and a lot those who have apple headtracking headphones deactivate dolby atmos to listen in stereo because it has a far superior sound on those devices . A new and much much better binaural is needed , we also need better equipment for the consumer to avoid having 11 speakers in an untreated room ... current soundbars are ok for movies , the sound you get at home is very far from being as good as the sound you get in a premium movie theater but it is enough ... atmos mixes made for music need to translate a lot better

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for the detailed comment. There is definitely some truth in there! If you were going to be doing surround sound, or “immersive” work, it is no question the best version of those formats that has been created so far! And for the many of the very reasons you specify. Object based audio is a big part in what makes translation and scaling to different sized systems better than ever before, and makes it potentially easier to mix in. As far as “immersive” versus “surround”… They basically mean the same thing :-) Adopting the new term is really more marketing than anything. Though smart marketing! The only significant difference is that the term “immersive” lumps binaural audio renders and head tracking technology in with surround sound, and the surround sound formats are now scalable and object based, which is great. But I will go to the grave arguing that binaural audio is just stereo with extra steps :-) And that head tracking is mostly irrelevant for music listening outside of VR visual contexts with wearable headsets. Not having to do a separate stereo mix of surround material is definitely neat! But for pure music listening, I think it is likely to remain sub-optimal compared to doing a separate stereo mix for the reasons specified late in this episode. Hope that helps! -Justin

[@G_handle]

SonicScoop Ahhhh....so I'm not just perceiving a tone or attitude, you are deliberately conflating Surround and Immersive and treating the distinction as a gimmick. Glad you cleared that up. Well my push back to your push back is: You are wrong. They are not the same, but different, for all the reasons I already stated, but you've made your position clear. Only thing I'd add is this for anyone trying to wrap their heads around Immersive: Just like with Stereo where if you send an identical signal to a Left and Right speaker (in an equilateral triangle withyour head, and at ear level), your brain perceives a "Phantom Center" as if there were a speaker in that position. And "Panning" is really adjusting the level difference between those two speakers, pushing and pulling that Phantom image between those two points, to the left or right in a Stereo configuration. Surround is basically the same with more speakers On The Same Horizontal Plane, and with some behind your head. That means that Surround Panning can wrap a Phantom Image around the Listener in a 360-degree RING at Ear Level. So to be clear, the sound stage is in Front with Stereo, and the sound stage is Around the listener with Surround. With Immersive, there are now also speakers Above the lister, so Not at Ear Level, which introduces a Vertical dimension. There are now Phantom Image positions between All Speakers and that allows the listener to be Immersed inside of a three dimensional dome of sound, hence the term Immersive. If you understand a Phantom Center, then you can understand Many Phantom Centers. What makes Dolby Atmos a preferred product for this New Immersive sound experience, is that thier system helps manage all those speakers and vastly different systems from creation to consumption. You don't need to know what system the end user is using, you mix to your system in your XYZ 3D space, and Dolby (in theory, and increasingly in practice) will map those decisions to the User's XYZ 3D space. Dolby is managing translations between Three-Dimensional spaces. I don't have any stock in Dolby, maybe I should. I'd prefer if a standards organization were doing this instead of a private company. But I'm glad it is happening. Maybe it will flop. But at least properly understood what it even is before you try to abort it. Again Atmos itself has been around for a decade, Immersive much longer. Many are just now joining the party and saying that the music sucks. Who's forcing you to stay? Go back to what you were doing yesterday. I'm actually shocked by how many Atmos Denyers there are now that think Q is the Music Industry Deep State, or whatever the hell conspiracy theorists think these days. This is just regular old Capitalism: New technology shift and a bunch of companies trying to corner and shape the market. Is Dolby "monopolizing" the market share, of course they are! Could that New Market not actually materialize, what else is new? But is the technology Real? And does the technology mean a new experience for Consumers and workflow for Producers if it is adopted (which looks likely)? Is this new experience Better or Worse than what we have? Is it worth the expense? Not all questions are created equal. And I'm not sure Anyone should be confidently offering answers for anyone else. We'll all soon see.

[@chrisrevel2801]

@@G_handle in regular old capitalism : what happens when the vast majority of consumers don't care about a product ? Adoption by consumers couldn't look more unlikely at the moment

[@G_handle]

Chris Revel I should really stop responding as we're all speculating, but... You ask what happens if And proclaim that it's unlikely that Let me wager this: my finger to the wind says it Is Likely to take and become the standard, relatively soon and for quite some time, maybe a decade. As our predictions are exactly opposite one another, one of us will be proven right and the other wrong. If I am wrong, I'll gladly admit to being dead wrong, without qualifications or weasel words to try and explain it away. I thought X, and I was wrong. Simple. How many others can do the same. Can you? To your first proposition, you seem to share with Justin a belief that the Demand side is leading the Supply side of the equation. I don't think the opposite necessarily, but I do think that Markets and Technological Paradigms are driven by forces greater than KZbin comment section opinions. And to be clear, my read is that many winds are clearly blowing in one direction, and many stakeholders are hoisting thier sails to catch that wind and sail in that direction. Can the winds change direction or just stop blowing, of course they can. But even if Atmos doesn't "take", I posit that Immersive is a destination that many people will still head towards. And even if the Vast majority of people never take to Atmos, that doesn't mean it won't be available for a massive minority. How many people listen to music triangulated between two speakers in an acoustically treated and Calibrated environment now? One more thought for the discussion: The fact that the Same Dolby Vision/Atmos system is headed to consumer's home theaters means that potentially more people than Ever will actually experience music in a Calibrated environment than ever before. 5.1 for Video and Audio were different. Atmos is the same for A&V. And again, we will see.

[@personalfreedom2700]

Our brain has only 2 preamps … we ultimately will only hear stereo….atmos reminds me of the hype around 3D televisions, it sold a bunch of products to high end users and no one else uses it… atmos is good for home cinemas or commercial cinemas and nothing else really… outside of headphone users, most people play songs in mono on Bluetooth speakers or 2 speaker hifis or even on their phones which will only be heard by the brain in mono…so the main consumer concern should be making our stereo mixes to sound good in mono with recording methods like mid side recording that sound great in stereo and also mono because it accommodates phase cancellation when hearing that mix to mono by playing it on a phone or Bluetooth speaker… and to manage this phase cancellation impact on an atmos mix is stupidly complex and compromised when it comes to phase issues, and likely to cause more problems then solve for both the producers and the listeners

[@dodgingrain3695]

Pretty sure making people want what they don't want/need is what advertising is designed for.

[@sickmessiah]

Heavy guitar in atmos that works in stereo is hard in atmos … but I’m starting to figure it out.

[@summerfazed]

It plays by default on Apple Music iPhone and sounds horrible like all wrong with quiet vocals and phasey. I'm ditching it after only 2 songs released. Apple only 10% of my streams. I was a believer that it would help getting my song get playlist placement on Apple Music rock playlists.

[@BosleyBeats]

Listening to a stereo foldown versus native stereo is not the same sonic profile. You get a wider sound with various layers of richer tonality in the binaural mix through the fold down algo. Currently producing music natively in Atmos and have experimented with native stereo production versus Atmos via the foldown binaural mix. It’s a night and day difference for how the sonic bandwidth is averaged and distributed at the stereo level. 🤷🏾‍♂️

[@surfersilver6610]

7:24 "Atmos is being pushed DOWN...." there's a META pun in there.

[@Misano-Red]

Would never touch ATMOS with an 18ft bargepole for my music. And until I lose that WOW factor in my 9:1 Speakercraft speakers/Yamaha Av cinema surround, I'm not tempted to change. If it ain't broken, why fix it?

[@seenuhello1]

Are you sure speaker technology is more advanced today than it was 10 or 20 years ago? I mean Yamaha has been selling the HS8 monitor since 2013, and it's still a top-selling model.

[@SonicScoop]

Yes, I think there are much better performing models available at that price today than when those Yamahas came out. Sony still make the MDR 7506s even though headphones are objectively better today than back then. Sometimes familiarity beats raw specs and technical improvement. I’m not saying people “shouldn’t” buy those things. They may work very well for some people! But you’re right that the biggest improvements occurred in the past 40 years rather than the past 20. -Justin

[@patrickmalone9380]

How can 2 speaker headphones work in object bassed surround

[@shan5445]

VR would be good in Atmos imagine a first person shooter you can be guided by a voice this way or you hear shooting coming from down the corridor.

[@popsarocker]

And then there's the camp that's pragmatic. Stereo is still the most successful "immersive" format ever. Atmos or any other surround format for that matter still performs best when being distributed to sophisticated and well positioned (>2) speaker arrays. Atmos promises down mixes that translate to sound bars, cell phones, laptops and headphones. I have yet to hear such a down mix that's any better (and not worse) than a well executed stereo mix. So perhaps a rule of thumb: how good a mix sounds (read: meets the mix engineer's expectations for quality) is inversely proportional to how accurately the speakers and listening environment matches the one used during production... I say "production" and not "mix" because I'd like to point out to anyone who thinks binaural is a fair way to down mix, that binaural is highly dependent on a specific HRTF. Record using your own head and shoulders and you'll get a very good personalized recording. It won't however translate to a substantial number of other people without a lot of tech sitting in between. This is way VR is not a widely adopted tech. And as many others have pointed out the extra tech is the hinderance. The pragmatist in me says that the format is really interesting in terms of the creative possibilities when listened to using multi speaker installs, but it's a dead end in terms of actual distribution. Most folks will be listening on systems completely unlike what it's mixed on and hence are getting a sub par version. A second rule of thumb: down mixing is mostly about logos and license fees. lol

[@bluematrix5001]

Playback systems in stereo can barely be compatible in sound, mixers look for the perfect speaker for translation in stereo as a lifetime goal and learn how to have their stereo mix to translate for that Dolby atmos is a disaster, different systems, acoustic environments, obviously extremely different speakers positioning, inverse polarity of speakers and the combinations of all the things I mentioned, atmos may stay for movies and perhaps for TV, music i doubt it! Un less there is an atmos system with 2 speakers that bécanos mainstream Technology …. Too many speakers make it a disaster and very non practical to be a very popular mainstream Medium

[@psyphonyxaudio]

Depends on the producer ... same as anything else.

[@npdtprocess]

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[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

Can't understand how there is even controversy. VR, AR, Metaverse, games, cinema, apple spacial and now binaural headphone renders. These things aren't going away, they will only get more immersive and common place. Audio is moving along in tandem with the visual side of this. Object based audio is how audio should be. Once you fully understand the concept there is no going back. If you ever experience Atmos you can't unhear it, it is a much more emotional experience than stereo, it's like the emotional experience you have at a concert or if you play in a band. You don't even need to spend a lot of money to set up a Atmos Studio, you can do it cheaply with the same entry level gear as stereo, I did it it's easy. People are addicted to outrage nowadays, honestly it's quite a pathetic way to live.

[@SonicScoop]

For sure, if you are working in a format where surround sound is important, Atmos is the best ever format for that. The scalability is awesome and the workflow is great. And in a proper listening environment it can sound super inspiring! Whether or not that’s relevant for music only releases is a different story… I definitely agree that rage is not the healthiest response. Ultimately, I think people who are annoyed with it are more mad about the marketing amd the possible barriers to entry in music than they are about the technology. -Justin

[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

@@SonicScoop if you have no expectations of success with your music then it is probably not relevant. But if you want to have your music synced in movies, or get chosen for a video game, or future proof for all the immersive formats that will be invented for our virtual worlds. Basically if you have aspirations of being very successful with your music then Atmos should be another thing on your list, just like a music video and promotion and advertising funnels etc. So it really depends upon your goals more than anything. Personally I try to succeed in any endeavour I put my energy in, but that's just me 😉

[@andreborges2881]

​@@NoQualmsTheArtist Flying cars, food-pills and wireless energy should be all the rage nowadays, but it turns out they created more problems than they solved for much ado. Cost, avaliability, marketability, and MANY other things go on the equation of "why didn't Betamax win over VHS, if it was EVIDENTLY the superior media" shit over the years. It seems evident to me that you do not understand the full equation, as neither do I or anyone I know personally, at least. Truth be told, you seem a bit up your own arse, so I'll just leave this here: do not be prepotent as to conflate what other people believe to be success/"the right thing to do" with theirs being the wrong opinion if it is contrary to yours. You may well happen to end up being on the "Betamax" team.

[@DonRossMusic]

I mix in Atmos. I love it. I do think it’s the future (although of course I may end up dead wrong. I’ve been wrong before. 😉) There’s nothing absolute about it. Stereo is glorious. I love vinyl records. I like CDs just fine. It’s basically a matter of: Do you like good sound, or do you like good sound done in a different way? It’s all good sound, and as long as it serves the music, then life is beautiful.

[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

@@DonRossMusic the present doesn't negate the past and nostalgia is a potent emotion. At the same time the past doesn't negate the future and progess is a beautiful thing. I will always love my favourite albums but I also embrace the evolution of technology.

[@buildaboom]

Important to note that a lot of the Atmos back-catalog mixing is being done for sync purposes. A lot of these old songs that are getting atmos remixes are also getting revitalized stems with the process so that brand new mixes can be made for sync. There’s value in “Atmos Mixing” that goes beyond the casual playback, as of now at least

[@PacificNatureTV]

new mixes that generally sound like overcompressed shit

[@IvoMusicOfficial]

#WeLoveSTEREO

[@ProbablyTooLoud]

There was never any consumer level demand for ATMOS. Forcing a new format down everyone’s throat is an unwise business plan.

[@BILLY-px3hw]

I am still trying to make my stereo mix sound good in mono, Atmos is not practical for the everyday consumer, Atmos is awesome for movie sound tracks & dialogue, it is not natural to listen to live music in Atmos I don't want to listen to the Rolling Stones with Keith standing behind me while Mick is singing on the other side of the room.

[@operasinger2126]

I don't even have a living room in my studio apartment.

[@grantbrown3647]

Why does Dolby Atmos recommend at least 7.1.4 for music?

[@tiffanyflanagan1892]

The stereo mixes sound better on my hifi headphones. I can take somebody who listens to Atmos on earbuds and put the stereo mix on with my Audeze or Focals, and they’ll comment about how “immersive” the expensive headphones are. The imaging is more pinpointed and precise on stereo, and every headphone does soundstage differently, so a lot of the panning decisions sound weird on atmos. That and headphone drivers aren’t made to handle the work of 6 or 8 speakers. Airpods can barely handle imaging in stereo. You also can’t get average listeners to even pay for quality audio playback in the first place, so they don’t care about this kind of nuanced listening. My friends think hifi is neat, but they aren’t gonna drop the kind of money I will for it.

[@jklappenbach]

It will be niche for quite some time, perhaps a long time. Reproduction with only two speakers can be... interesting, but it's not an order of magnitude above normal encoding. But for home systems that have 5.1 capable speaker systems? Ever seen a blockbuster movie on a home movie system with 5.1? It's amazing. So, why wouldn't we want to have the same support for music that we have for movies? So, the format will grow with the numbers of people who have 5.1 systems. It will be niche, because not only are 5.1 systems expensive, they have a real estate demand on a house or apartment. A lot of people can't afford it, and even if they could, they probably don't have the room for it. So, it will be like VR. It's NEVER going away, but it's not going to be for everyone.

[@studiovinden]

#AtmosGuerillaMixing Good and well balanced stuff as always, I like your take! It's world of guessing at this point and I wish more people would see Atmos for what it is, a potentially very cool audio format, not another reason to beat down on each other just because they have another opinion. Here are some notes I took to complement your video which I also get into more detail on in my own KZbin channel. I made a decision a couple of months ago to approach this in a slightly irreverent way, I was very annoyed by the take Dolby took when they talked about how the room should be licensed by them and set up according to their rules and recommendations. There are so many great mixes made in studios with ok monitors in ok rooms by super creative people. So why shouldn't that be the case also for Atmos? The room and speakers and the technical setup and alignment are of course important but don't let that stop you, it's not that difficult! A lot of us are essentially glorified hobbyists, making 10 % of our income from music production, we have the luxury of approaching this in a different way - maybe close to the Dave Fridmann way of exploration of this new format and having fun rather than relying on it to put food on the table. Atmos is often discussed from the major studio perspective but in a home studio context (which I'll go out on a limb and say is not getting smaller as music is devalued in today's streaming reality) different considerations come into play If you have the equipment to, say, record a band, chances are your interface already has the outputs you need. Of course you need to buy speakers but the approach I like (so far) is to mix a song in stereo to get the sounds in a familiar environment and then at 2/3 into the mix, I transfer the mix as stems into an Atmos session and it becomes more placement and fine tuning at that point, I like the idea of "Big Stereo" rather than a completely different take on the mix. It's a lot of fun and this approach also enables you to (and many will not agree with me on this) focus your speaker investment on the front speakers that really matter, buying C, LSide and RSide that match your existing speaker setup! By doing this, I expanded my stereo mix room to Atmos for a little over $1000! :D My biggest gripe with all this is that Atmos is sold as the final audio format that everything should be in. I don't believe this is true because the binaural mixdown and soundbar experience is not very good (IMO, but many seem to agree) so 99% of consumers won't ever experience the thrill of actual speaker Atmos (which can be pretty amazing!). I hope that it will sort itself out, either by improving the binaural experience greatly or by consumers realizing the lack of quality and staying in stereo, thereby forcing the services to keep true stereo mixes (i.e. NOT the 2.0 Atmos mixdown) on their services. That said, there are a lot of home cinema guys who'll gladly expand their setup with a few ceiling speakers, they're in for a blast! But it has to be easier to play back Atmos music, the Apple TV cannot be the only way to get Tidal into a receiver but hopefully that's only a matter of time. Final rant, the Apple Spatial vs Dolby situation, where the Apple version sounds different and doesn't take the binaural settings into consideration is a true shit show, they need to agree on something there. And big ups to Tidal for doing the only decent thing, IMO.by having both a stereo and an Atmos version (if available) and considering them different releases. I can decide which version I want to listen to at any given moment.

[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

I did a similar thing, but it cost me $0 as I sold equipment that I wasn't using anymore to fund my Atmos upgrade. It doesn't take much. An adat extension and 9 more speakers. I use KRK Classic 8 for mains and KRK Classic 5 for the rest. They are cheap. Behringer ADA8200 to expand my interface. Sonarworks multichannel to tune and time align the room. Done. Not every stereo mix is amazing so why do people expect every Atmos/Binaural mix to be amazing, that just makes no sense and is no fault of the format. Also it is actually a misconception that Apple disregards the binaural settings. They generate their Spacial version from the DD+ JOC created from the ADM BWF. This is like an MP3 created from a wav file. This is to reduce the file size for streaming. A DD+ JOC file does not contain any binaural metadata. Apple doesn't disregard it, it doesn't exist in the first place. They would need to use an AC4 IMS to keep the binaural metadata, which they will have to pay Dolby a lot of money to use many times in many products with each new upgraded version of Spacial, which Apple will never do. Spacial is actually a brilliant format and because it's Apple and they're really pushing it it'll keep getting better and better. Every complaint about Atmos is purely generated by ignorance of the format and can be answered by a little bit of research. Object based audio is intuitive and the way audio should be, it's not going anywhere.

[@studiovinden]

@@NoQualmsTheArtist I, for one, am quite excited and positive regarding the format but I fear you read too much into my comments. First, regarding binaural mixes, I don't expect all mixes to be amazing, I would expect the binaural version to be better than the stereo sometimes. And this is not what I find when I level match and compare stereo vs. binaural, binaural is almost always worse, IMO. I have had amazing experiences with true binaural recordings so I don't think I have any major issue with externalizing the audio, I believe the algorithm needs much improvement. Unfortunately it's quite difficult listening to commercial releases in speakers, so I'm only guessing that the speaker mixes are much better than the binaural mixdowns. But who knows? Your explanation of how Apple handles binaural meta data (by not using the AC4 IMS I maintain that they disregard it) is of course correct but still a shit show to me. The binaural meta data set by the engineer makes quite a difference. Apple spatial disregards my explicit settings and applies their own spatial encoding. I find it highly problematic that we don't have a single solution for headphone listening to Atmos songs, don't you agree? I really don't care if Dolby or Apple wins the fight but I'm hoping for a single binaural format. ✌️

[@SonicScoop]

Thanks for sharing your take! Very interesting perspective on it. -Justin

[@NoQualmsTheArtist]

@@studiovinden just like aif, wav, flac. There will never be 1 binaural type in fact there will probably be more and more types as companies experiment with new products. But the ADM BWF will always be the master which is why Atmos is such a great format. Your prayers might just be answered very soon. Sony are about to release a true Atmos pair of headphones, not binaural but actual Atmos. Hopefully it is the start of a better direction in consumer goods.

[@studiovinden]

@@NoQualmsTheArtist Hmm, not sure if I follow you. The AIF, WAV and FLAC are just different different encodings of the same PCM data, no? Give that they encode the same original file, all the formats will sound the same, just like a compressed data file will be identical after decompression, regardless of if 7zip, ZIP or RAR was used. Why would anyone want different binaural interpretations depending on which service the song is played back on? The format needs to be singular, I'll embrace the binaural enhancements and technologies but I'd rather they implement them as a option on playback, like choosing to buy the Sony headphone you mention, or activating Apple Spatial as an option on your Apple device. What I'm really excited about is the concept of personal HRTF's but haven't tried it yet.

[@8bitlucifer579]

I normally don't comment on videos but have to say that there's a way for commercial supporters of atmos can fool the average consumer in to thinking atmos is better. I friend of mine had the privilege to listen to an atmos system and told me that the atmos mix sounded louder and the average consumer doesn't know the difference between louder and better. That's why I think they can possible fool the average consumer into thinking they need it, but I hope not.

[@N8oRMusic]

I'm gonna start uploading all my music in mono to Spotify

[@tedbahas]

Thanks for the nuanced version of this topic. Atmos is going nowhere because it is playback system agnostic. Earbuds.. headphones, 2.0, 2.1,5.1 etc is all supported. This really simplifies and standardizes delivery. It also makes it super flexible for streaming services. As you mentioned it makes it very flexible for delivery. This is the polar opposite of the surround formats of the past. Also the various fold downs are way better than in the past. Sadly there isn’t the industry best practices in place yet for mixing in this format yet. There are lots of interesting things happening around it. I embrace it personally. I am excited to see what the professional music community does with it long term. I’m sure there was a time when the same conversations came up between mono and stereo formats. Thanks for this video!

[@TouchwoodTV]

People said the exact same things about pro tools 20 years ago ...

[@songtheory2111]

The "how to mix in surround" part of this video (37:20) sums up the pointlessness of music in surround. If you go for the stereo mix +, is it really worth it? All this expense, hassle, time, just to add a little extra ambiance? Let's be honest for the real reason choose this approach: It's not because people think this is the way to exploit surround to it's fullest, it's because they're scared that the listener won't be in an optimum listening position, or the system won't be set up correctly, so that it'll just sound wonky, wrong and distracting. People go on the assumption that at least everybody has their stereo speakers set up correctly, so Stereo + is the safest choice. So let's rename "stereo +" to "Careful surround". Alternatively, if you go for full-fat surround with all the bells and whistles, you open yourself up to all the problems intimated to above. I've got a real nice 5.1 system for movies, and it always amazes me how careful the movie mixes are in 5.1. The only thing you ever get in the rear speakers is ambiance and some sound effects like a car passing. They will NEVER EVER put something important exclusively there, like some dialogue that should be coming from behind the camera. This shows that the people in the movie industry have been bitten too many times by these problems and always go for the stereo + (plus centre) version. Obviously in a movie theatre it's a little different, it's a tightly controlled environment, but let's be honest, that's not the environment people will be listening to Atmos music in. So the natural conclusion to all this that in the long run, Atmos mixes will trend towards Stereo +. So is it all worth it? Every minute creative people need to spend worrying about this BS is a minute they could have spent creating! And that could lead me into a whole other rant about how technology has been destroying music since June 1980, but i'll save that for another time!

[@SonicScoop]

Yeah, you’re definitely onto something with a lot of this! Thanks for the comment. -Justin