The Problem With Dolby Atmos… is that it is the subject of too many threads in too many forums. Some new and even some older music consisting mostly of electronic instrument effects can sound amazing mixed for Dolby Atmos. Many older pop and rock albums newly mixed for Dolby Atmos sound like s#%t and nothing I’ve listened to in a multichannel format sounds better than my old DTS CD of Steely Dan’s Gaucho album. So much for progress.
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The Problem With Dolby Atmos
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This is what I wrote, and you can read it as many times as you need:
Hint: the above doesn't mean that the "a single isolated instrument" is completely lonely in the full 180-degree area behind the listening position. It only means that it appears quite isolated when pretty much everything else in the mix is somewhere at the front stage, but the mix can at the same time contain another "a single isolated instrument" in another part of the full 180-degree area behind the listening position, and also that appears quite isolated from pretty much everything else in the mix that is somewhere at the front stage. And when it comes to the front stage, I don't think the front stage in an Atmos mix is limited to a "basic stereo front stage"; it can reach far outside the positions of the front speakers.
So no, I didn't describe "a single instrument in the rear and a basic stereo front stage" as you want to put it.
And below, I described the same phenomenon with "a single isolated instrument" that will appear quite isolated from the rest of the instrumentation in a surround mix. And yes, I describe 3 separate examples of "a single isolated instrument": first the tom drums, then the synth, and lastly an acoustic guitar.
I hope that you get what I meant now.
Do you think there's too many threads in too many forums discussing the imaging properties/mixing styles of Stereo on it's jillions of releases ???
If you're not interested, just ignore them, easy peasy.
Speaking of older recordings, the Deutsche Grammophon Atmos reissue of Von Karajan's mid-1970's recordings of the Beethoven symphonies is in my listening a fabulous mix and gorgeous sound. It is 9.1.6 which gives a truly immersive quality, like you are sitting in the concert hall where these were recorded. Give it a try, even if you don't usually care for classical music!
Thank you for your thoughts. I personally liked the mix overall, and the way that Harrison conceptualized each track differently, agree with your comments on the three tracks mentioned, and believe that there is room in this world for a variety of points of view, and where expressed thoughtfully, as you have, provides some insight into different ways of listening.
Maybe give some of the more radical tracks another listen (Find a Job, Warning Sign ...)
Oh dear, now you've done it.
Anyway I sometimes wonder how/why Greg Penny managed to almost unerringly hit his Elton John surround mixes out of the park, why virually every Eliot Scheiner mix I hear just seems 'right' to me, how Ken Scott did two different mixes of Ziggy Stardust that are both superb...but Steve Wilson's...not so much? Pretty inconsistent? His best sounding surround mix to my ears is of his own prog opus, The Raven Who Refused to Sing.
I hope it's clear by now that this thread was malformed from the beginning...there isn;t a 'problem' inherent to Atmos. 'Problems' generally are not the formats, but are the aesthetic choices the makers make, whether it's the music itself, the mixing, or the mastering..
Have you ever heard someone do a mix like that? In 50+ years of surround music listening I've never heard one.
THere's the old Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds of Fire quad mix where the drums are always in the rear channels, except for one circular pan.
I really dislike that choice.
Same for Jeff Beck's guitar being put in rear channels on some of his quad tracks.
The Steely Dan Gaucho DTS-CD stands up very well as a lossy compression scheme with only a roughly 882 kbit/s data rate. It was an excellent choice for squeezing 5.1 channels discrete on a regular CD. Though the mix on the DTS-CD and the SACD/DVD-A was slightly remastered by Elliot Scheiner it's hard to hear any differences based on the lossy vs lossless. A fun inventive mix on both.
Q&A: Elliot Scheiner on Madeleine Peyroux’s Let’s Walk, remixing Steely Dan in 5.1 Surround Sound, and more! | IAA
In an in-depth conversation with the 5.1 mix-master, we delve deep into his work with Madeleine Peyroux, Steely Dan, The Eagles, Beck, and other great artists.
immersiveaudioalbum.com
Thats not the issue he was speaking of, anyhow dead issue
He said / no I didn't blah blah blah.
Yea yea, we know, you hate Steven. Funny how your opinion is in such a minority.
How many artists or labels have ask to to do some remastering? LOL
Give it a frickin break.
Oh dear, now you've done it.
Anyway I sometimes wonder how/why Greg Penny managed to almost unerringly hit his Elton John surround mixes out of the park, why virually every Eliot Scheiner mix I hear just seems 'right' to me, how Ken Scott did two different mixes of Ziggy Stardust that are both superb...but Steve Wilson's...not so much? Pretty inconsistent? His best sounding surround mix to my ears is of his own prog opus, The Raven Who Refused to Sing.
I hope it's clear by now that this thread was malformed from the beginning...there isn;t a 'problem' inherent to Atmos. 'Problems' generally are not the formats, but are the aesthetic choices the makers make, whether it's the music itself, the mixing, or the mastering..
I think I need to listen to that Raven Who Refused to Sing album tomorrow, as I’ve really tried to find out why some people love his Atmos mixes. I find them okay, but not remarkable in any way.
@Sal1950, can you go into detail what it is you like so much with Steven Wilson’s Atmos mixes, I do seriously want to know why you think he stands above most other Atmos mixing engineers?
In general he does very aggressive mixes with very active use of all surround channels, how much detail do you need?
Beyond that there are any number of engineers doing excellent surround mixing. Sure. Is he currently the most popular choice in the industry for Atmos remastering, Yes, I didn't make it that way. Is his name one of the quickest and easiest references when discussing modern Atmos mixing, yes.
OTOH I never called him some kind of God and if you care to do more homework go back and find the albums I've mentioned as having Reference Quality mixing.
I doubt you'll find me listing a Wilson mix, Yello, yes, Soord yes, Boris, yes.
The bottom line is Krabbly just trying to find a way for the boy to bust my balls, but he continually misses. ROTFLMAO
Which one of Steven Wilson's Atmos mixes do you find the very best, except for the Raven album Krabapple mentioned? I want to listen to them tomorrow and see what I think about them.
P.S. Just for the correct terminology, I'm quite sure Steven Wilson makes original Atmos mixes, and not any remasterings of existing Atmos productions.
Newman
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I don't know. I just happen to be listening to Hand Cannot Erase right now.
Yes - Close To The Edge is a great remaster.
I'm done talking about Steven, you either enjoy his mixing style or you don't.
Newman
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You seem to have trouble grasping the concept of analogy.Sorry, but this is one of the most extreme generalizations I have ever read in this forum, and it probably tells more about you as a person than it does of anyone who just happens to prefer a more realistic presentation of a sound mix.
As an example, a single isolated instrument mixed to a position somewhere behind the listening position while pretty much everything else in the mix is somewhere at the front stage, will simply just make that lonely instrument sound detached from the rest of the music mix.
Just because I find that type of mixing mostly geared towards “a circus-attending” type of crowd, it doesn't mean I’m unadventurous, is afraid of traveling, or don't want to experience other cultures.
People like to kid themselves that personal preferences only occur for reasons unique to the individual. "My unique, infinitely complex tapestry." In fact, the reasons can usually be classified and generalised. This reality seems offensive and demeaning to some, and they rush to close down any discussion of generic reasons.It simply means I don't share the same taste in how some music mixes are done.
One of the highly general reasons for a preference to arise is in opposition to relative newness. One's conditioning creates a preference for the conditioned state. Is this too hard? Do you think, as per your words above, that my raising this point says more about me as a person than about conditioned states? That would be a base error in judgement.
Toole himself has discussed this very same psychological generalisation in his book. Recorded music listeners became conditioned to mono reproduction and resisted stereo as less preferred. Then the next generation of listeners became conditioned to stereo and, when multichannel arrived, resisted it as less preferred. Some of the conditioned are better than others are, at creating inner states of open-mindedness towards new experiences that don't fit within their conditioning. But it doesn't seem to be a majority, which means new paradigms, like stereo in the 50s and spatial more recently, have an uphill battle among the conditioned. We may just have to wait for the stuck-in-conditioning generation to die off and a new generation of unconditioned to replace them. Meantime, some of us will be more open than others to the new creative expressions enabled by new modes.
cheers
I always enjoy Wilson's Atmos remixes of XTC (Big Express, Skylarking, Drums & Wires, and soon, Psurroundabout Ride); those are studio creations with quite a lot of rear and top middle/back activity, imaginative mixes for imaginative albums.
His Atmos mix of Grateful Dead Europe '72 (streaming only at this time) goes the other way, it recreates a concert sound with very precise and accurate positions for the instruments (E '72 is primarily concert performances with studio overdubs.) He does interesting mixing of vocals, sometimes using the center, sometimes the front heights with L/R and wides, all varying and appropriate for the particular songs. I wish Rhino would release this one on blu ray.
The Who - Who Are You is a very fine Atmos realization that creates a great soundstage using the front wides extensively for vocals (as is also true with the XTC albums). Steve Wilson seems to have an affinity to placing vocals hard panned left and right into the wides and top front so that the vocals seem to hover in the center front of the guitar bass drums (in L/C/R primarily with considerable use of side surrounds for keyboards and reinforcement from the rears and heights)
We don't have to speculate about Wilson's approach. In the liner notes for Who Are You Wilson explains:
"For the Who Are You Atmos mix, with a rock band like The Who my thoughts are that it doesn't make much sense to be too gimmicky and have stuff moving around much, so generally speaking the instruments are placed around the listener and stay where they are for the duration of the song (though sometimes the arpeggiating synths are in motion). In that sense the mix aims to give you a sense of being placed amongst the musicians in the studio as they perform."
Steve Wilson - Excerpted from the liner notes to Who Are You Polydor 6587056/SDE 48
I am not entirely convinced that anything you've said has much to do with Goat's dislike of isolated instruments coming from behind him. It has nothing to do with mono vs stereo vs surround preferences, and everything to do with a complete lack of realism. Instruments do not come from behind you when you listen to a band, and neither does a band perform that way.You seem to have trouble grasping the concept of analogy.
People like to kid themselves that personal preferences only occur for reasons unique to the individual. "My unique, infinitely complex tapestry." In fact, the reasons can usually be classified and generalised. This reality seems offensive and demeaning to some, and they rush to close down any discussion of generic reasons.
One of the highly general reasons for a preference to arise is in opposition to relative newness. One's conditioning creates a preference for the conditioned state. Is this too hard? Do you think, as per your words above, that my raising this point says more about me as a person than about conditioned states? That would be a base error in judgement.
Toole himself has discussed this very same psychological generalisation in his book. Recorded music listeners became conditioned to mono reproduction and resisted stereo as less preferred. Then the next generation of listeners became conditioned to stereo and, when multichannel arrived, resisted it as less preferred. Some of the conditioned are better than others are, at creating inner states of open-mindedness towards new experiences that don't fit within their conditioning. But it doesn't seem to be a majority, which means new paradigms, like stereo in the 50s and spatial more recently, have an uphill battle among the conditioned. We may just have to wait for the stuck-in-conditioning generation to die off and a new generation of unconditioned to replace them. Meantime, some of us will be more open than others to the new creative expressions enabled by new modes.
cheers
If people enjoy that kind of "creativity" then that's fine.
Newman
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TBH I was picking up more references by goat to his personal likes and dislikes, ie preferences, than...
...that he actually meant realism. Which moves the argument from the subjective to the objective. And since he gave your post a 'like', you might be right.
However, calling it realism is an even bigger error, and I will explain.
The perfect segue into my continuation point, thank you.
When musicians perform in public, they are very strictly constrained by the situation. There are relatively few of them, and they are the object of desire and attention for a large number of people in an audience, sometimes an extremely numerous audience. There is little alternative than to plant the musicians in a spot, often a safe spot, but also a spot whereby they can communicate to one another when playing, and spread the audience out from that point. In a hall, the audience is spread in a long block fronting the stage where the musicians play. In an arena, the audience, being even more numerous, needs to be spread in a gigantic circle around the musicians assembled on a relatively tiny stage, and the perceived angle of the musical source can actually approach a point source. To call this state of affairs realism strikes me as overreach.
Getting used to this necessary but strict constraint is a matter of conditioning. Nothing more. It is simply another excellent example of the conditioning that I have been describing, unrelated to objective realism or naturalness. There is as much logic to the realism argument as to the argument that automatic car transmissions are more realistic and natural than manual car transmissions, because we only have two feet. In fact, the number of feet argument has more merit to it than the constrained music presentation angle argument.
However, when the audience is numbered one, or a small handful, the musicians and the sound engineers getting the music to this audience are not constrained by the mass audience constraints (and they are nothing more than constraints). Creative opportunities open up for new modes of musical presentation, and they are every bit as realistic or natural as the deeply constrained modes limited by the situation of a mass audience. (Our hearing organism is highly developed to detect, interpret, appreciate and react with emotion, to sounds originating from every direction. It could be argued less realistic and less natural to constrain it.) The musicians, and the sound engineers, have never in the past had this opportunity to present their music for an audience of one with a full three-dimensional palette. Rather than being unrealistic or unnatural, it is actually something new, but just as realistic and natural as any other, but with greater opportunities for greater creativity. And as I highlighted in my earlier post, conditioning is the enemy of the flourishing of this new mode, and is also the enemy of the audience itself benefiting from the new creativity and new modes of expression on offer.
The key point that I've been trying to make, and to which some seem to be unnecessarily resistant, is that conditioning is not the same as innate preference. And understanding this difference is actually important. When one doesn't understand it, one thinks that one has some innate locked preference that one doesn't actually have (one might even attempt to post-rationalise the conditioning as 'realism'), and doesn't realise that unlocking it is a genuine opportunity for oneself to move into new modes of experience with new rewards. And that as long as one remains locked in by the conditioning, one is in essence deprived, and unnecessarily so. I'm trying to raise awareness here.
cheers
In the case of Axis: Bold as Love what we have exceeds the original release because Kramer was able to work directly with the original first generation 4-track session masters digitally synchronizing them, where the stereo master was created by bouncing tracks to combine. We can be confident that the Atmos mix is consistent with Hendrix' conceptualizations because Kramer worked closely with him in the original sessions, and in various interviews (and in the liner note essays with the physical release) explains his approach.Even as DPLII or DSU stereo upmixes, the old Hendrix albums already had a lot of fun content hitting you from all around, thanks to the extensive use of phase shifters and such in those old mixes.
Making discrete 5.1 or Atmos mixes of them is almost overkill
It is remarkable that Eddie Kramer was able to take analog tapes made in 1967 and provide us with such a spectacular remix/remastering (not to mention the supplemental stereo tracks in the box set.)
To my mind, for anyone interested in Atmos, this is a most worthwhile release. It does take advantage of the front wide positions, if you have those speakers.
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