Mixing music for surround formats & compatibility

[sm5]

For an artist/producer/mixer – the conundrum is – do you create an immersive mix that sounds great on speakers – or play it safe and try to make it sound best on what 99% of the listeners will listen on: stereo or headphones?

Besides having spatial audio default on Apple Music: the binaural render from Apple is different than the Atmos renderer and can change in the future- so mixing in immersive audio means you're essentially mixing for a moving target for headphones/stereo. I've heard some Atmos songs where when downmixed to stereo major vocal parts have simply disappeared (possibly phasing canceling things out and no one checking?)

A separate stereo and surround mix might work: for example - Peter Gabriel - i/o. (admittedly lacks much in the center like many surround albums) The downside though is if someone first comes upon the surround album and listens to it on headphones not knowing it is meant for speakers - they may think it sounds not so great and pass over it. It's easy to have a okay surround mix sound good on multiple speakers as it's not as easy to discern things when there's so many things playing and obviously every room/placement will be a large different: but getting a great stereo mix could fall apart easily if things are downmixed by changing algorithms to stereo: where it's easier to notice specific mix decisions unlike surround.

My suggestion would be to incorporate a way to have a separate high quality bounced stereo mix + separate immersive mix in the same file or at least have the software default to stereo if the OS is set to headphones/stereo and if it’s 4+ channels - then have that be the only time the immersive speaker mix will play. Head tracking shouldn't be needed for music or tv or film mixes.

A positive for immersive mixes is they can have dynamic range and have loudness requirements unlike stereo which is oftentimes brick-wall limited.

 

[chelgrian]

If Dolby were going to change anything they would have done it by now.

Frankly Atmos is proprietary and horribly compromised on the delivery side. It deserves to die and be replaced by Eclipsa audio.

 

[napfkuchen]

So there will be Samsung TVs and soundbars? Brilliant.

Overall, the current distribution platform for Atmos/spatial audio leans mixers to create mediocre mixes made to sound just decent on both headphones and stereo speakers and 7.1.4 speaker setups instead of two separate amazing mixes unfortunately.

I'd suggest that current mixers think about two separate albums for stereo/spatial - and going all out on the immersive version unless things change to make things easier for mixers on the distribution side.

Steven Wilson said in an interview that he always starts with a stereo mix and expands it. My favourite ATMOS tracks also are quite enjoyable on my stereo headphones and also as stereo upmixed by Auro3D. So you don't need separate mixes. What you need is one good mix, many spatial audio tracks show this.
But there is certainly a wide range of possible results depending on the source material, the time available for the mix, the experience and creativity of the sound engineer, and the expectations of the listener.
Eclipsa Audio is again a half-hearted standard that is primarily aimed at saving license fees and not at providing a better listening experience. A revolution in surround sound is unlikely to be achieved with TVs and soundbars. When it comes to distribution, ATMOS on Blu Ray hardly plays a role, especially for music. The same certainly applies to Amazon Music and Tidal. Spatial Audio is currently being pushed forward by Apple alone and will continue depending on their decision.

 

[chelgrian]

So there will be Samsung TVs and soundbars? Brilliant.

Steven Wilson said in an interview that he always starts with a stereo mix and expands it. My favourite ATMOS tracks also are quite enjoyable on my stereo headphones and also as stereo upmixed by Auro3D. So you don't need separate mixes. What you need is one good mix, many spatial audio tracks show this.
But there is certainly a wide range of possible results depending on the source material, the time available for the mix, the experience and creativity of the sound engineer, and the expectations of the listener.
Eclipsa Audio is again a half-hearted standard that is primarily aimed at saving license fees and not at providing a better listening experience. A revolution in surround sound is unlikely to be achieved with TVs and soundbars. When it comes to distribution, ATMOS on Blu Ray hardly plays a role, especially for music. The same certainly applies to Amazon Music and Tidal. Spatial Audio is currently being pushed forward by Apple alone and will continue depending on their decision.

If you think Eclipsa is half hearted you clearly have not read IAMF specifications.

 

[sm5]

The Eclipsa Plugin is out:

https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/06/introducing-open-source-daw-plugin-for-eclipsa-audio.html

Also:
THX Spatial Audio+
https://www.thx.com/blog/thx-announ...io-platform-for-laptops-headphones-soundbars/

 

[DVDdoug]

Most DVDs & Blu-Ray's have a stereo track and a surround track.

For music, stereo is still "the standard" so a surround track would be secondary. With movies, it's the other way around and stereo is usually secondary.

 

[sm5]

Yes, it's still "the standard" ... but when Apple defaults to the spatial mix of every song - even on stereo speakers or headphones: that's an issue, as it makes surround>downmixed the primary track for music.

Overall, some issues could be fixed by Apple defaulting stereo speakers/headphones to the stereo track and if there's many outputs for speakers: defaulting to the Surround mix instead of always the surround mix.

Film downmixes to stereo shouldn't cause as many issues simply as they are mostly center channel mono dialogue plus ambience/effects anyways and you're watching something on screen so it's more forgiving for the downmix.

Also on Windows: the new Spatial Audio in the Apple Music App is nice to have, though the level match settings for spatial mixes and stereo mixes is way off compared to the version on Apple computers: so if you're listening to songs in surround ... and it goes to a stereo track it is quite a lot louder unlike on mac. It's quite a jump in volume, so I'm hesitant of listening with spatial audio turned on in Windows. Hopefully this is fixed in an update. It also requires an HDMI receiver to playback Atmos rather than 5.1 unlike Apple which you can simply use any interface.

Requiring a receiver/decoder is another issue: Stereo you can play back on anything. Even 5.1/7.1 tracks films you can usually play on a PC/MAC (well maybe not from many streaming services unfortunately! - but at least dvd/blu-rays) - but Atmos/Spatial audio requires essentially an expensive "dongle" aka receiver/decoder with usually bad quality just to listen to it on anything besides an Apple Mac in the Apple Music app. It also causes headaches with interoperability with HDMI standards obsoleting older receivers. If it could be simply decoded like 5.1/7.1 without a receiver or like Apple Music on Macs: it would also make things for everyone so much easier.

 

[chelgrian]

Yes, it's still "the standard" ... but when Apple defaults to the spatial mix of every song - even on stereo speakers or headphones: that's an issue, as it makes surround>downmixed the primary track for music.

Overall, some issues could be fixed by Apple defaulting stereo speakers/headphones to the stereo track and if there's many outputs for speakers: defaulting to the Surround mix instead of always the surround mix.

Film downmixes to stereo shouldn't cause as many issues simply as they are mostly center channel mono dialogue plus ambience/effects anyways and you're watching something on screen so it's more forgiving for the downmix.

Also on Windows: the new Spatial Audio in the Apple Music App is nice to have, though the level match settings for spatial mixes and stereo mixes is way off compared to the version on Apple computers: so if you're listening to songs in surround ... and it goes to a stereo track it is quite a lot louder unlike on mac. It's quite a jump in volume, so I'm hesitant of listening with spatial audio turned on in Windows. Hopefully this is fixed in an update. It also requires an HDMI receiver to playback Atmos rather than 5.1 unlike Apple which you can simply use any interface.

Requiring a receiver/decoder is another issue: Stereo you can play back on anything. Even 5.1/7.1 tracks films you can usually play on a PC/MAC (well maybe not from many streaming services unfortunately! - but at least dvd/blu-rays) - but Atmos/Spatial audio requires essentially an expensive "dongle" aka receiver/decoder with usually bad quality just to listen to it on anything besides an Apple Mac in the Apple Music app. It also causes headaches with interoperability with HDMI standards obsoleting older receivers. If it could be simply decoded like 5.1/7.1 without a receiver or like Apple Music on Macs: it would also make things for everyone so much easier.

I’m afraid you have to blame Dolby for most of that there is no good technical reason it’s simply to protect revenue from licenses from hardware manufacturers.

Being open Eclipsa doesn’t have artificial restrictions on cross coding or implementation so I expect most music to move to that in short order since the streamers have ADM file and and simply re-encode to a different delivery format.