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Dolby cannibalizes the audio world and nobody says anything

JeffS7444

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Yes, for Apple music ATMOS is mandatory and for Amazon music it is Sony 360. As it is once a war of companies, it is not only for the music.
Ignoring the cost of hardware such as speakers, roughly how much $ does software, certification and licensing for Atmos and 360Reality cost?
 

abdo123

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What?



Also, What?



De facto, MP3 was never really proprietary, as regardless of legality in any given jurisdiction, there were plenty of free encoders and decoders.



And no, because more importantly with MP3 if your actually cared about licensing anyone could always kick a few bucks to Fraunhofer or whoever and get official codecs.

Wake me when Dolby starts selling stand alone decoders you can easily insert into your playback chain of choice and you are no longer limited to approved "apps" and hardware.

I don't want to engage in this discussion any further, we're all entitled to our opinions and as a consumer my experience with Atmos has been positive and therefor i'm biased.

I want Atmos to stay. frankly forever. Saying that they don't care about atmos because people will end up listening to their mix on their cellphones did not really help me in anyway. If these people are pissed by atmos, then it's a win-win situation for me.

If you want a different perspective on what Atmos does well in music, check this video:

 

Everett T

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Hi.

It's my first post in the forum, hopefully it will help.

Dolby and Apple have been pushing "space music" for some time. Although I have nothing against the format, if against companies. Well, music, in its creative process, It was completely free, to be created, but now with Dolby sticking its nose in, now you have to follow very specific criteria, as well as recording, mixing, (I don't include mastering, because Dolby has made it clear that its format does not need to be mastered).

I give an example, AS A STUDIO OWNER,BEFORE I COULD USE ANY SOFTWARE OR HARDWARE I WANTED, NOW I HAVE TO STOP USING HARDWARE TO GO DIRECTLY TO ITB.BEFORE I JUST PRESSED BOUNCE AND I HAD A WAV FILE, NOW I HAVE TO BUY A PLUGIN FROM DOLBY TO BE ABLE TO RENDER THE AUDIO. NOW I HAD TO BUY 14 SPEAKERS, 2 PLUGINS, PAY DOLBY FOR THE FUCKING CERTIFICATION AND EVERYTHING FOR PEOPLE ENDS UP BY CONSUMING THE MIX ON YOUR CELL PHONE AND WITH HEADPHONES. AND THIS DOES NOT ONLY AFFECT THE CREATORS, ALSO THE CONSUMERS, THEY HAVE STARTED TO THINK HOW MUCH THE PRICE OF A SIMPLE DAC WOULD RISE FOR THE DOLBY CERTIFICATION OR HOW MUCH WOULD A HIGH QUALITY DAC WITH 14 CHANNELS TO DECODE ATMOS.I KNOW THAT THE POST IS A LITTLE LONG, BUT IT IS SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO ME, I WAIT FOR YOUR OPINIONS.
I'm confused, are you forced to move to atmos or can you just stay with DD? I have atmos capabilities in more software, I'm just not ever gonna mix anything that way, heck I barely mix dolby anything.
 
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NestorM

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Ignoring the cost of hardware such as speakers, roughly how much $ does software, certification and licensing for Atmos and 360Reality cost?
Software you need 2 PLUGINS, the production suite that costs 300 USD and the mastering suite that costs 1,300 USD, the latter only runs on Mac and has to be dedicated only for this purpose. Certification does not "cost", but specifications must be met at least 1200 cubic meters, background noise of -20db, DISTORTION del. 5% at 100 db, and other criteria. And Sony 360 is not yet Available, only in your own studios.Available, only in your own studios.
 
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NestorM

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I'm confused, are you forced to move to atmos or can you just stay with DD? I have atmos capabilities in more software, I'm just not ever gonna mix anything that way, heck I barely mix dolby anyth
When all the hype started I was motivated and started doing the jump. But when I had to adjust prices due to investment and labor time. My clients did not hesitate to tell me what it was Too expensive to pay for such a production. Some did not hesitate to show me their account statements on distrokid and a song with 100,000 streams generated barely 1500 USD in 6 months and They divided it between 4 members. That was when I decided to get off the train.
 
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NestorM

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I don't want to engage in this discussion any further, we're all entitled to our opinions and as a consumer my experience with Atmos has been positive and therefor i'm biased.

I want Atmos to stay. frankly forever. Saying that they don't care about atmos because people will end up listening to their mix on their cellphones did not really help me in anyway. If these people are pissed by atmos, then it's a win-win situation for me.

If you want a different perspective on what Atmos does well in music, check this video:

All technological advances are good, there is no doubt about that. But have a little empathy.
As a consumer we always want better and cheaper things, no matter how they are manufactured.It doesn't matter that an African child works in tantalum mines as long as he can have my new iPhone.

The problem here is for the CREATORS, to whom the platforms pay very little and create a song At ATMOS it costs a lot. You have to put food on the table and Dolby, Apple and Amazon are the hungriest ones.
 

escksu

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For those who ask for a short answer. "Stereo does not belong to anyone, not companies or individuals, anyone can create and reproduce stereo" ATMOS is owned by Dolby and they decide what, where and how you listen to music. That is not a future I want to live in.

Most of the people will still be using stereo even 50yrs from now. So you don't have to worry about Dolby or any company controlling the market. Most of the folks today aren't even interested in having multiple speakers. The "biggest" upgrade most will have is just a simple sound bar from brands like samsung, philips etc.... Hifi is a very very niche market and its not going to change.
 

escksu

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Regardless of whether the technology makes for a better experience, I take some amount of issue with proprietary standards and formats which are owned by a single corporation.

I would say, its not really possible. Dolby has been in the audio industry (esp. for cinematic sound) for a very long time. No doubt they will continue to dominate cinematic audio for a long long time to come.

However, they are not going to dominate the music industry. REgardless of technology, most people will simply go and purchase additional gear just because of new audio formats.

Just think about this, how many pple are still listening audio directly from the TV today? Its not going to change.
 

Taddpole

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The various Dolby noise reductions were ubiquitous during the cassette era. Everyone coped
 

ZolaIII

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you're really barking on the wrong tree here.

Atmos is actually welcomed here (well i speak for myself) because it pushes the mixers to make mixes for everyone. from cellphone speaker to 16-channel Home theaters with no compromises at all to either consumer.

I don't want people like you (no offense) to mix for headphones and cellphone speakers only. Stereo already died years ago, most mixes are mono with some phase stuff happening in stereo to sound good on boomboxes and the likes.

All in all, with the amount of complete dog-shit that the music industry devolved into since the CD became mainstream i don't trust the industry one bit anymore to manage and regulate itself. make loudness normalization mandatory on every streaming service and adopt dolby Atmos fully.
You do know Atmos is actually a object pined DSP? Music is stereo (which won't change) and you still need only a DAW, pair of speakers and single headphones to do a mixing and that it translates good to everything.
I don't like patent trolls and the Dolby is by far the biggest one.
Answer is simple! Use standards that are widely adopted or proposed as such and open sourced.
For example the EBU R128 loudness normalization efficiently put the end to loudness wars which took so many casualties in so much music we loved and you have open source libs to implement it on anything.
I just hope music creation software will follow the path taken by game creation tool's where you have open source and free of charge use for personal use and even commercial to the success rated by sales. As the Unreal Engine creators stated "If you love something, make it free". Which I doubt Dolby will ever done but that makes it only worser for them.
 

abdo123

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For example the EBU R128 loudness normalization efficiently put the end to loudness wars which took so many casualties in so much music we loved and you have open source libs to implement it on anything.
This is really far from reality, only Youtube forces loudness normalization and radios are still running haywire.
 

ZolaIII

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This is really far from reality, only Youtube forces loudness normalization and radios are still running haywire.
Nope it has a rather wide adoption by streaming services¹ but that's not the point, point is you, me or anyone else can easily implement it for any needs it cold have.

See about streaming adoption and how it's implemented:
 

abdo123

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Nope it has a rather wide adoption by streaming services¹ but that's not the point, point is you, me or anyone else can easily implement it for any needs it cold have.

See about streaming adoption and how it's implemented:
out of all of these services only Youtube makes sure that loudness normalization is enabled as default and mandatory.
 

ZolaIII

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out of all of these services only Youtube makes sure that loudness normalization is enabled as default and mandatory.
For streaming if its done it's done a priory (before) not afterwards (on device).
Please read the "Adoption and aftermath" section and see enlistings at the bottom of it.
 

abdo123

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For streaming if its done it's done a priory (before) not afterwards (on device).
Please read the "Adoption and aftermath" section and see enlistings at the bottom of it.
I did, and the text implies that loudness normalization is active by default and enforced by the streaming services when that is not the case except for Youtube.
 

ZolaIII

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I did, and the text implies that loudness normalization is active by default and enforced by the streaming services when that is not the case except for Youtube.
Implementation is not mandatory nor it could be enforced. Attached as meta data or altered in any way it still never the less is based on same. We can argue how that's bad or not great (partial and not mandatory) but it's pre done on anything which will go to ether in EU for quite some time.
 

abdo123

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Implementation is not mandatory nor it could be enforced.
Ofcourse it can be enforced. if the EU can force apple to implement USB Type-C then they can force them to implement the EBU R 128 on their streaming service.

I'm not perfectly comprehending your argument to be honest, hitting 'stats for nerds' button on most music video clips on Youtube will show you that the majority of mainstream music is still compressed and is still normalized during playback to -14 LUFS. the loudness war is not over, and until all streaming services enforce it like Youtube did no significant change will actually happen.
 

Yasuo

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There's always this war, regardless the industry. The winning format/hardware/technology etc it's not always the best. As long as there's no monopoly there's not much to worry. Usually the Pareto principle applies here and to slightly rephrase that 80% of the music is bad anyway -obviously just my opinion.
 
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