Is Dolby Atmos the Future of Music or a Complicated Fad?

[Newman]

The same guy who declared the Versa Dynamics turntable the best source in audio. Over any digital playback.

If he said that, it wasn't in his review. Perhaps you thought when he wrote 'disc' with some ambiguity he meant all discs, analog + digital. I think a careful reading will clarify that he means analog disc unless he specifies digital.

Anyhoo, it's probably moot, because I doubt the audio reviewer has been born who doesn't regret some of his proclamations in the heat of enthusiasm for certain new products. But when he looks back in sadness at where the industry has led its hobbyist members, and where it hasn't taken them...that oversight is likely to be more considered.

cheers

 

[jhwalker]

No I wouldnt.

I cant stand mono (so would have been an early stereo adopter) and it would be/was obvious to audiophiles of the era that stereo was a quantum leap forward in sound reproduction.

And looking at it cost wise, its broadly 2x more than mono so the ROI is high.

Also stereo was an industry wide initiative so I could adopt it safe in the knowledge that new stereo albums from genres/artists I like would be in abundance going forward****

Now compare this 2x increment to what I need ,especially in terms of amps and speakers, to go from stereo to atmos (note I am limiting the discussion to big arsed systems and not headphone cause I dont use headphones for serious listening)

I havent kept up with this but I think a typical Atmos install is 7.1.4 (so 12 speakers/amp channels). So moving from stereo to Atmos, via my crude calc is 6x the cost from stereo (compared to 2x for mono to stereo).

So the impact in terms of sound reproduction had better be huge for a decent ROI.

And thats ignoring my original point of what source material, that I like, be available for me to enjoy?

Peter


**** there are quite a large number of Jazz albums recorded before 1957 that were originally released in mono that were re-released later in stereo.. so its easy to compare mono to stereo and stereo wins every time for me

... as multichannel "wins" for me

 

[Sal1950]

Just checked: The total straight line flight distance from Chicago, IL to Wellington, New Zealand is 8,348 miles. This is equivalent to 13 436 kilometers or 7,255 nautical miles.

You have my sympathies. I was lucky enough (music wise) to have spent the first 60 years of my life living in inner city Chicago. One of the most celebrated Chicago Blues clubs was just a short 5 minute walk from my house and I've been blessed
with having seen just about every major blues artist (and many not so "major") on numerous occasions.
That's something I really miss since my retirement and move to Florida, even now living close to the
large city of Orlando, finding any live blues acts is hard to come by. Combine that with the fact that
blues is a bit of a dying genre, so nope, you probably won't see much new or remastered Blues albums being done in
multich of any type. The good news is that all those old recordings can be upsampled with the various surround
formats using the AVR's built in software in the way of Dolby Surround, DTS X, Auro-3D, etc; to good effect.

BTW, I did recently see Kenny Wayne Shepherd live here, great blues guitar work. Also his The Traveler album was released on BluRay in Atmos, 5.1, and hi rez stereo formats. Plus his "Trouble Is" album was remastered for its 25 year anniversary, again on BluRay with Atmos, 5.1, and hi rez stereo mixes. Both are fantastic sounding releases.

Taylor Who ???

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

If he said that, it wasn't in his review. Perhaps you thought when he wrote 'disc' with some ambiguity he meant all discs, analog + digital. I think a careful reading will clarify that he means analog disc unless he specifies digital.

Anyhoo, it's probably moot, because I doubt the audio reviewer has been born who doesn't regret some of his proclamations in the heat of enthusiasm for certain new products. But when he looks back in sadness at where the industry has led its hobbyist members, and where it hasn't taken them...that oversight is likely to be more considered.

cheers

“In short, this player is giving me by far the best sound from analog discs that I have ever had, and has forced me to revise my feelings about CD relative to LP reproduction. I recently became aware that, during the three weeks I have been using this player, I have not played a single CD. Whether this is because I now prefer LP sound or is simply because my entire LP collection (which contains a lot of unsurpassed performances that may never be on CD) has suddenly been revitalized, is something I'm not prepared to declare because I haven't made up my own mind yet.”

Fair enough. After living with the Versa Dynamics table for a three weeks he wasn’t *sure* yet if he PREFERED vinyl over CD. He was still deciding if it was the medium or the particular records he had in his collection.

How do you think this lines up with Sal’s opinions of vinyl playback?

We haven’t even touched on JGH’s takes on various amplifiers and preamps. And let’s not forget that he found each CD player to sound different from one another. I wonder how that flies in this neck of the woods?

 

[Robin L]

And let’s not forget that he found each CD player to sound different from one another. I wonder how that flies in this neck of the woods?

Just my opinion, but to these ears the earliest CD players did sound different from each other and some sounded deficient compared to good LP replay. I wouldn't say that about the CD player I'm now using, but the CD players I heard back in the late 1980s seemed to lack resolution. Those CD players were budget models, but I really didn't hear CD players catch up with what I was hearing from good analog until the mid 1990s.

 

[Newman]

“In short, this player is giving me by far the best sound from analog discs that I have ever had, and has forced me to revise my feelings about CD relative to LP reproduction. I recently became aware that, during the three weeks I have been using this player, I have not played a single CD. Whether this is because I now prefer LP sound or is simply because my entire LP collection (which contains a lot of unsurpassed performances that may never be on CD) has suddenly been revitalized, is something I'm not prepared to declare because I haven't made up my own mind yet.”

Fair enough. After living with the Versa Dynamics table for a three weeks he wasn’t *sure* yet if he PREFERED vinyl over CD. He was still deciding if it was the medium or the particular records he had in his collection.

How do you think this lines up with Sal’s opinions of vinyl playback?

We haven’t even touched on JGH’s takes on various amplifiers and preamps. And let’s not forget that he found each CD player to sound different from one another. I wonder how that flies in this neck of the woods?

Like I said, it all goes into the file named Subjective Comments In The Excitement Of The Review That One Might Regret In The Fullness Of Time. Probably comes with the job.

I’m not going to endorse every subjective comment JGH ever wrote, nor refrain from all criticism of his approach. I simply don’t endorse subjective reviewing as if it was all in the sound waves. JGH included.

But I do think his retrospective oversight of the hifi media industry playing the customer for a fool and denying for decades audio progress in areas like digital v analogue and stereo v multichannel, were well-considered comments, and I doubt that he would have put them into the above-mentioned Regret File.

cheers

 

[MattHooper]

Basically: Someone can be right about some things, wrong about others.

This is why I personally don't simply ignore everything a reviewer says just because he says certain things I disagree with. Instead, I will take what I find to be useful, and discard the rest, rather than labelling everything that reviewers says as "useless because he got these other things wrong."

 

[Guermantes]

Since Jan 2024 Apple pay 10% more royalties per play to artists for music available in Atmos. They say it is not only in order to promote higher quality sound for their customers to enjoy, but also in consideration of the costs of making an Atmos mix.

It won’t take long for artists to respond accordingly. You can expect to see widespread adoption. Artists are nothing if not desperate for revenue, none more than your "non-mainstream genre" artists.

Apple also say that more than 80% of songs to have charted on the platform’s Global Daily Top 100 in the past year are available in Spatial Audio. So I think we can safely say it’s on the rise…big time. And the non-mainstream-genre artists will be as motivated as any.

It would be interesting to know the stats on consumption of the Spatial Audio versions of that 80% and what sort of systems they were played on. Home cinema, headphones, soundbars, in-car, 2-channel stereo?

https://mixmag.net/read/apple-music-royalties-spatial-audio-rise-10-percent-dolby-atmos-news

This article from Production Expert argues that Dolby Atmos doesn't necessarily translate correctly to a binaural mix on Apple Music due to limitations in the codec and actual playback equipment:

6 - The Problem​

Hopefully, by now, you get the idea of the major problems we are facing to create a Dolby Atmos music mix. The actual mix available on the streaming services is different from what we monitor during the mix. So be aware of the following points:

• Mixing and monitoring on a proper speaker setup (7.1.4 or higher) in your studio is recommended and a good idea for accurate spatial positioning of your signals. However, virtually none of the end consumers actually have such a listening environment. Check out my other article, Can You Mix Dolby Atmos On Headphones?
• The common speaker playback solutions for Dolby Atmos for the end consumer are smart speakers and soundbars. However, the Dolby Atmos mixing environment has no option to monitor on those systems. Besides that fact, most studio acoustics are not even suitable for playing back these speakers that rely on room/ceiling reflections.
• To guarantee that your mix sounds good in the environment most users listen to (headphones), you have to check and monitor with headphones in Binaural Mode and make necessary adjustments with the Binaural Render Modes. However, as we have seen, that metadata is only used on streaming services that support the AC4-IMS codec (Tidal, Amazon) but not the DD+JOC codec (Apple Music).
• Apple and their "Spatial Audio" engine make it impossible to monitor your mix in the studio the way it is listened to by their 72 million subscribers.

And another article from this site argues that since the majority of Atmos listening is likely to be on headphones, mixing engineers should probably be doing that too:

3 - User Experience​

Now let's look at how the end consumer listens to the Dolby Atmos content. It is estimated that 80% of music is listened to over headphones. Applying that to Dolby Atmos music consumption, you could end with 80% of headphone listening (in binaural mode), maybe 19% listen for some sort of speaker virtualization (smart speaker, soundbar, etc.) and maybe 1% over a dedicated 7.1.4 system. That 1% might be only 0.1% because most people with a 7.1.4 speaker setup are sound engineers in their studio and some home theater enthusiasts.

So instead of asking if we "can" mix Atmos over headphones, shouldn't the question rather be whether we "should" mix Atmos over headphones? Who do we serve when we monitor over a speaker system that virtually nobody has? Shouldn't we create our Dolby Atmos mix closer to "real-world listening conditions"? So, how about this answer?

Answer 3: Yes, we should mix in Dolby Atmos using headphones because that is how consumers are listening to it.

 

[levimax]

Would you be fighting against stereo when it came along?

Early Stereo, ESPECIALLY the early conversions from mono, but even "dedicated" stereo mixes, left a lot to be desired. For a lot of music during the "early stereo" period the mono mixes can be preferred by many.

It would be interesting to know the stats on consumption of the Spatial Audio versions of that 80% and what sort of systems they were played on. Home cinema, headphones, soundbars, in-car, 2-channel stereo?

https://mixmag.net/read/apple-music-royalties-spatial-audio-rise-10-percent-dolby-atmos-news

This article from Production Expert argues that Dolby Atmos doesn't necessarily translate correctly to a binaural mix on Apple Music due to limitations in the codec and actual playback equipment:

Sounds like some big companies jumping on a marketing bandwagon in order to further their monopoly position(s) at the expense of consumers and consumer choice and to add insult to injury they are not even doing a very good job of executing the remix of the music! Typical Monopoly behavior and the reason I avoid monopolies whenever possible (sometime it is not possible).

 

[pseudoid]

Typical Monopoly behavior and the reason I avoid monopolies whenever possible (sometime it is not possible).

This statement qualifies you for a membership in the Atmos=Fad club.

[OT: I had to look-up the difference between 'not possible' and impossible (CD format?).]

 

[-Matt-]

This article from Production Expert argues that Dolby Atmos doesn't necessarily translate correctly to a binaural mix on Apple Music due to limitations in the codec and actual playback equipment:

Well, if you read the part that you quoted carefully it actually states that the problem is that Apple's spatial audio format does not support the metadata properly. (A problem with the Apple Music workflow and codec, not a problem with Atmos).

• To guarantee that your mix sounds good in the environment most users listen to (headphones), you have to check and monitor with headphones in Binaural Mode and make necessary adjustments with the Binaural Render Modes. However, as we have seen, that metadata is only used on streaming services that support the AC4-IMS codec (Tidal, Amazon) but not the DD+JOC codec (Apple Music).
• Apple and their "Spatial Audio" engine make it impossible to monitor your mix in the studio the way it is listened to by their 72 million subscribers.

 

[levimax]

[OT: I had to look-up the difference between 'not possible' and impossible (CD format?).]

Is there any difference? I believe they are interchangeable in English.

 

[Dogen]

As a fan of well-executed multichannel music, I’m very happy to see Atmos out there. Who would have guessed that surround-sound music would be easily streamed to consumers? I’m less convinced of Atmos’s value for headphones, but in my humble 5.1 system, some Atmos mixes sound great.

Now, a bad Atmos mix will sound…bad. But when it’s done well, like “Court and Spark” or Kraftwerk 3D, this is a fantastic and unexpected gift.

 

[levimax]

Well, if you read the part that you quoted carefully it actually states that the problem is that Apple's spatial audio format does not support the metadata properly. (A problem with the Apple Music workflow and codec, not a problem with Atmos).

That is the part I read, Apple is trying to increase it's "near monopoly power" in the music distribution business by using Atmos and not even doing it correctly. If Dolby was really serious about "helping MC music move forward" they would insist Apple do Atmos correctly but since Apple is helping cement Dolby's monopoly they are willing to sell out their flagship product.

 

[-Matt-]

That is the part I read, Apple is trying to increase it's "near monopoly power" in the music distribution business by using Atmos and not even doing it correctly. If Dolby was really serious about "helping MC music move forward" they would insist Apple do Atmos correctly but since Apple is helping cement Dolby's monopoly they are willing to sell out their flagship product.

That article was dated November 2021 so there is a good chance things have improved since then.

 

[robh36062]

The only time I can see it as appropriate is in recreating a live stadium experience where there can be a lot going on over your head. Other than that? Typically the artist isn't the one in the balcony.

Rob

 

[Guermantes]

Well, if you read the part that you quoted carefully it actually states that the problem is that Apple's spatial audio format does not support the metadata properly. (A problem with the Apple Music workflow and codec, not a problem with Atmos).

Yes, that was what I was trying to say: it's a codec issue on Apple's end. But this is an issue precisely because so much of the listening is probably on headphones.

That article was dated November 2021 so there is a good chance things have improved since then.

EDIT: Ah, it seems that Apple Music does have some binauralisation technology in its Spatial Audio renderer, but I wonder if it works well enough across different (non-Apple) headphones?

This plugin claims to use the Apple binaural renderer:

Binaural Renderer for Apple Music - hear your 7.1.4 session in Spatial

Binaural Renderer for Apple Music guarantees 100% accuracy when referencing immersive audio content for Apple Music.

audiomovers.com

 

[Sal1950]

But I do think his retrospective oversight of the hifi media industry playing the customer for a fool and denying for decades audio progress in areas like digital v analogue and stereo v multichannel, were well-considered comments, and I doubt that he would have put them into the above-mentioned Regret File.

The part people have either forgotten or just weren't around for is that when Gordon started Stereophile in 1962, audio was a VERY different landscape. All the available gear of the day had major audible failings and the differences between them was mostly easy to hear for the trained ear. Also the measurement gear and techniques were very crude by todays standards. So yes, back then the subjective reviewing approach had major value. LP lathes had horrid problems with both speed consistency and noise and all the rest and the reverse was true of the playback rigs. High distortion tube pre-amps and power amps ruled the day and every one of them DID sound very different, etc, etc, etc.
Then over the next few decades audio technology was making major advances. Digital recording and playback burst on the scene making "all else is gaslight" changes to the old "norm". Solid State gear was being perfected and by the 1990s we had a fully transparent path from the microphones output to the amplifiers out. This situation put the subjective reviewing community's into a panic and this is closely revealed in Gordons change of perspective that he writes about in the 45 year retrospective. Subjective reviewing went from a valued tool, to voodoo magic witch-doctors, shaking their Tice Clocks, CD greening pens, magic dot's and all the rest to try and explain that which they really couldn't hear any more. LOL

 

[Sal1950]

The only time I can see it as appropriate is in recreating a live stadium experience where there can be a lot going on over your head. Other than that? Typically the artist isn't the one in the balcony.

Rob

Your locked into a very narrow view of what the artistry of music production can be.
Stage forward with ambiance is the old paradigm of engineering.

 

[pseudoid]

"I think there has been too much focus on "purity" for too long."

Bring on the ambience and immersive experiences!
link: https://www.stereophile.com/content/assessing-sonic-illusions