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Comment by dontreact | Hacker News Reader

I spent some time listening to some Spatial Audio mixes about 1 year ago. Dolby Atmos is a cool concept but I was not able to hear a benefit.

This reminds me of how when stereo first came out artists (including the Beatles) didn’t take it seriously. They would spend most of their time getting the mono mix right and the the stereo mix was thrown together and would often do strange things like having the lead vocals on one side.

Does anyone know of artists that have really taken the time to ensure their music is benefitting from Dolby Atmos?

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It's a gimmick that doesn't really add much to music. Most professional audio engineers I've spoken to about it absolutely hate mixing for it.

It can be a pain in the ass to make and worthwhile.

It adds to the music when done well.

Do the same engineers hate doing compressed crap where the waveform looks like this: ========== too?

At least all of the Atmos mixes I've listened have some dynamic range in it.

Peter Gabriel's 2023 album "i/o" has some quite inspired Atmos mixing going on. The track "The Court" is particularly nice. Make sure you pick the "In-Side Mix" version of the album.

Nice Atmos tracks by other artists imho:

- Jaguar by Victoria Monét

- get well soon by Ariana Grande

- Heroes (feat. Mindy Jones) by Moby, Album "Reprise"

The i/o album really blew up the usability of Apple Music. Three mixes per song, one of which (in-side) is an Atmos mix, unless you don’t have Spatial Audio active, when you silently get one of the other two. And they released it one song at a time throughout the year, so it was just a bag of unrelated singles. At the end of the year, the album came out with duplicate tracks for the two stereo mixes, and I don’t even know for sure how to get the in-side mix.

In general, the situation with Spatial Audio mixes is confusing, and it is really annoying for back catalog tracks where instead of the established (sometimes iconic) stereo version you silently get an Atmos version that the label commissioned without input from the original artist/producer/engineer.

Thanks for the tips!

Listening to The Court right now and the soundscape is really well done.

I just love it. It adds more depth to everything even podcasts. I can’t listen to music without it, it’s so well executed that music without it appears flat to me. 100x better difference than lossless music.

Huh, what podcasts (and podcast apps) support spatial audio? Or can you somehow emulate it with any regular stereo audio now?

“Spatialize Stereo” is an option in iOS if you have airpods. (long press on volume meter, same place where you can switch between transparency and noise canceling)

Exactly and all sources will benefit from a Spatial Audio effect which is really nice

I don't really care about it at all for music, but I want it to get popular enough that it finally actually happens in games, which for some reason still pretty much entirely lack binaural audio.

It definitely made hearing acoustic music / music with real instruments a hell of a lot better for me, making it closer to being at a performance than listening to headphones.

It seems to depend. Some tracks seem to really benefit - I was listening to some Bob Marley and thought it was particularly good.

I do not know if they are on streaming platforms, but Imogen Heap has some atmos mixes and they are worth experiencing. She also does spatial in her live shows. The recording is only stereo, but you can see her do it in act 3 of her tiny desk concert.

For the majority of music in my personal listening I've found stereo to be better, but I recall the recent Blink 182 album One More Time... and Hans Zimmer's Dune Sketchbook to sound nice in Atmos.

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