Dolby Atmos for music streaming is a waste of time
pocket-lint.com
pocket-lint.com
That... Doesn't feel like a problem to me? First music I remember "owning" as a kid was mix tapes I listened to on a portable radio. Later I grew up listening to crappy MP3 rips of albums on tinny earbuds. I got better headphones. Blasted the same albums on vinyl on big speakers. Listened to stuff compressed as hell over FM radio. Listened to albums in my car with an aftermarket subwoofer. Listened to FLAC rips of remastered albums. And yeah, a few Atmos albums on Tidal recently.
I can have listened to like 10 different iterations on the same one album and just enjoyed hearing the differences and the nuances of each medium or production version / remaster. You listen obsessively to one variant of an album enough to know every intimate detail, every imperceptible flaw in the recording, it becomes very familiar and then hearing new sounds in new variants is novel.
Edit: to give a concrete example: Pink Floyd albums. Listening to dark side of the moon, I equally have enjoyed the different warbly qualities of gradually degrading tape and vinyl, the tiny hiccups of slightly scratched CD, the squishy high frequencies of old MP3 rips, and just how clear everything sounds in hi-fi formats, and the atmos version. And like, listening to it over different generations of speakers and headphones etc. It's not an evolution or a progression; it's just hearing stuff different.
As a lover of music and a hobbyist musician, I hate Spatial Audio. It’s corrupting the mix created by the artists. I turned it off immediately.
Like stereo mixes, Atmos mixes are also created by the artists with their production and engineering teams.
The real problem, as the article notes, is that we're in the early days of mixing for object-based audio, just as we were once in the early days of mixing for CD. Mixes for the then-new CD format were sometimes terrible.
As the article also notes, there are some stellar Atoms mixes out there: "…some albums really have been mastered well for the format, to the point where I prefer listening to the Atmos version. An example of this is the Pixies' classic album Doolittle, which has an absolutely stellar Atmos remix. I will sometimes turn Atmos back on just to listen to that album."
Mixes for the then-new FM radio were stereo. CDs didn't change mixes. We had stereo on tapes, even on records. AM was mono. FM was stereo. I don't believe you're up on the technology with this data point.
Albeit some Atmos engineers are better than others.
Atmos mixes are not “just thrown together” and now, more often than not, the Atmos mix is primary and the stero mix is simply folded down from the Atmos master.
Generally speaking the artist is not "creating the mix" - they are giving input, and approving it, but not creating it. A mix is made after recording, by a mix engineer. The job of the mix engineer is to place all the stems within the stereo (or in Atmos, XYZ) soundscape to make them all work together, including adding texture, effects and balancing all the elements to make them sound right.
An artist will say what they want, they (or their label) will be involved in selecting the mix and/or mastering engineer, and someone will approve the final mix.
The example of Beach Boys and Beatles mixes being "thrown together in an afternoon" mix have been true 50+ years ago, when stereo was the new cool thing, but that was 50 years ago...
However, the idea that an Atmos mix is "corrupting the mix created by artists" is just not the case - for the reasons above, but also because most frontline music is being mixed in Atmos by default now: that's because of various things including future proofing, but primarily because some streaming services (Apple Music in particular) offer an uplifted royalty rate for "spatial available" audio.
You can read more about that here:
https://itunespartner.apple.com/music/support/5216-deliverin...
"Creating music in Spatial Audio takes a high caliber of dedication, and Apple Music acknowledges these efforts. Spatial Audio content receives a greater share of sound-recording royalties on Apple Music than content not available in Spatial Audio, by a rate of up to 10%."
So pretty much anything current via a major label (Universal Music, Sony Music, Warner Music) is going to be delivered in Atmos. The major labels are also remastering high-performing catalogue to take advantage of the royalty uplift.
Whether an artist is directly involved in approving a mix or not depends on a whole bunch of things - but someone is definitely approving the mix, and more importantly, someone is selecting and hiring a mix engineer who understands Atmos.
You can read Universal Music's guidelines on Atmos mixing standards here:
https://contentguide.universalmusic.com/dolby-atmos-audio-be...
In particular, it's worth noting statements such as "This section aims to support you in your workflows based on our learnings from the past years of working with Engineers during the Dolby Atmos mix and Mastering process."
and
"UMG will review Dolby Atmos mixes to ensure a quality experience with meaningful format engagement."
Apple has some pretty specific guidelines about what is allowed when delivering content as Atmos - from the document I linked to earlier.
In particular "Upmixing from a stereo release is not allowed. Extracting stems (“de-mixing”) from a stereo release is not allowed. A Dolby Atmos track consisting only of a stereo mix placed in the sound field with added ambience or reverb is not allowed."
You may be hesitant to take me at my word, but I can assure you I have detailed knowledge of this area. I think I've found your instagram profile (which is similar to your username but with an additional word) so I'll message you proof of my credentials if you wish.
It's like the instruments feel further away from me as opposed to directly in my ear. Or like I'm listening to music where the instruments are further away from me.
When it absolutely excels is movies and TV, the immersion is spectacular.
I’m holding out for an example of Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos where the immersion it can provide adds to the experience. Orchestral music is probably the best place to find that.
If Atmos was like Q Sound and an intrinsic part of the artists’ recording and mixing process, that would be one thing, but sticking it on afterwards, especially when the core guy is dead, is just fucking things up.
It’s the musical equivalent of the woman who tried to restore the Ecce Homo painting.
For decades, everyone has been obsessed with trying to remaster and restore music and extract as much as possible from the original recording, resulting in outstanding work (I like The Beatles’ Love, btw) and I guess we’ve run out of projects for remastering engineers if retrofitting Dolby Atmos is all they’ve got.