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Spatial Audio -- warning from a producer/engineer

valerianf

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All depend of the type of music.
If it is a concert with a stage the recording may want to reproduce a stereo sound coming from the front.
But if it is club music or a concert in a famous venue where the accoustic is special (room treatment or reflection) then a Dolby Atmos recording using many microphones will be a must.
I always found that stereo recording is very limited as it reduces the soundstage.
Let us hope that future Dolby Atmos oriented recording will show the difference.
 

Kal Rubinson

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If it is a concert with a stage the recording may want to reproduce a stereo sound coming from the front.
I cannot imagine a recording at any performance venue which would not benefit from multichannel/immersive recording, even one in open air. Every venue influences the sound heard live and that is what should be conveyed to the home listener. Otherwise, the home room sound will dominate.
 

Geoffkait

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A big shout out :p to the guys and gals who recorded Grateful Dead live concerts on their Nakamichi recorders up near the stage with those weird looking 8 foot tall poles with two microphones mounted on top. These recordings became “audience” tapes. The distance between the two microphones L and R is about the width of a human head. Mono binaural! Horray!!
 

Darwin

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That Marvin Gaye demo is just horrible. I don't know where to start. Sounds like yet another frequency based chopping up along with heavy attack filtering and a dull sound, almost like a Dolby processing on a non-dolby analog tape from years gone by. I mean, does anyone think that is an improvment??

And let's play the spatial demos a bit louder and tell the sheep all the wonderful things they are hearing. :facepalm:

All the more reason to stay away from anything other than the original recordings, preferably on CD as your own personal 'masters'.
Yeah because all CDs have great mastering. This is a lot of the sky is falling. Meanwhile I'm loving spatial audio and atmos music from multiple sources.
 
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A

Ata

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Fwiw I found Peter Gregson’s “Patina” to sound great in Atmos, as well as stereo. Recommended if you are into strings or synths.
 

Katji

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I see they've been implementing it on more platforms lately, quite quickly.
 

MattHooper

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I cannot imagine a recording at any performance venue which would not benefit from multichannel/immersive recording, even one in open air. Every venue influences the sound heard live and that is what should be conveyed to the home listener. Otherwise, the home room sound will dominate.

Some might like a little room sound domination, though :)
 

Jim Matthews

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Can you explain why?
Filthy Archisexuals.
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Snoochers

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Are atmos albums downloadable ? Is there a way for me to play them on my receiver without an Apple TV? I have Apple Music but I think I need an Apple TV, which is stupid
 

Tom C

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Are atmos albums downloadable ? Is there a way for me to play them on my receiver without an Apple TV? I have Apple Music but I think I need an Apple TV, which is stupid
I believe multichannel out is only available via HDMI from Apple TV or full-on MacOS. So, no iPhone, iPad, or iPod will do it. Apple TV or used Mac Mini are probably the cheapest options
 

Snoochers

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I believe multichannel out is only available via HDMI from Apple TV or full-on MacOS. So, no iPhone, iPad, or iPod will do it. Apple TV or used Mac Mini are probably the cheapest options
I’m not even sure a Mac can do it? Apple website doesn’t mention it.
 

MattHooper

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Can you explain why?

Well I guess it depends on exactly what we would mean by "room dominate." But if I take it to be adding some room reflectivity to the sound, so the recorded sound gets a little more mixed with the room sound (than, say, you are probably advocating for), it could produce a bit more "live" believable character for some people.

I play with acoustics for both my 2 channel and surround sound and sometimes prefer to get a bit more reflectivity for such results, on both formats.
 

sarumbear

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I have heard some Atmos mixes which were indeed an improvement. However, most are not. And I would like to steer you toward this demo from Apple to get a sense of their mindset


In the rush to make content for Apple, labels are jamming this crap out with little QC and -again- almost no input from artists. This format has real potential but if they continue to try and tell us that shit like this ‘new’ version of ‘What’s Going On’ is better than then original, then it will be seen as a counterfeit and a fraud, and will go the way of the Home Pod. I know how you feel about catalog being remixed and this has potential to be a worst case scenario.”
1- Dolby Atmos encoding on Apple Music is not the same Atmos metadata encoding used in films. According to Dolby documents, Atmos metadata is decoded only on Dolby TrueHD or Dolby Digital Plus sound tracks, which is multi-channel whereas Apple Atmos is stereo. I am not sure if Apple Atmos will decode to Atmos on a home theatre amplifier. Maybe someone who has a modern AVR and an Atmos setup can test this?

2- You may want to read the replies Lefsetz received about the post you linked.
 

Kal Rubinson

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Well I guess it depends on exactly what we would mean by "room dominate." But if I take it to be adding some room reflectivity to the sound, so the recorded sound gets a little more mixed with the room sound (than, say, you are probably advocating for), it could produce a bit more "live" believable character for some people.

I play with acoustics for both my 2 channel and surround sound and sometimes prefer to get a bit more reflectivity for such results, on both formats.
I can understand that as advisable for 2 channel but I am not certain that it is necessary or advisable for multichannel. OTOH, it is practically unavoidable, even with DSP.
 

DeLub

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whereas Apple Atmos is stereo.
Can you explain what you mean with this? When listening on headphones it is clearly downmixed to two channels, but on my 5.1 system it plays like any atmos movie soundtrack over all channels.
 

polmuaddib

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Dolby Atmos on Tidal is discrete multichannel, not stereo. I checked now on my apple TV. There is a Dolby Atmos test track 7.1.4. which you can use to check.
Tidal has an issue where Atmos tracks are around 20db more quiet then stereo tracks which is a big problem. But maybe they fixed it by now... I'll have to check when I have more time.
 
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