Dolby Atmos (Spatial Audio) Music: My Opinion

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Hi

First of all let me preface this novella 🙂 by saying I do not consider myself an Audiophile; which by one definition are:

“…an exceptional breed of people who are fascinated by pure audio, motivated by sound quality and addicted to audio gadgets. Audiophiles take their passion for music one step further. They're curious about how songs are recorded and the science behind how sounds are reproduced”.

With that said let’s begin….

Some of you may have read my posts wherein I talk about “stereo separation”. IMO 99% of what one hears musically is not “stereo separation” in its purist form. What one does hear is music and vocals emanating from two speakers spaced at least 6 feet apart where there is a “sweet spot” in the center.

The listener has a sense that all instruments and vocals are “dead “center providing the optimum listening experience. The people to blame for this misconception of what is “stereo separation” IMO are the mixing engineers. They rationalize the mixing strategy by saying it provides a “wide” sound stage.

“True” stereo separation; IMO, is wherein the listener can pinpoint the position/location of instruments either to the left, center or right (or slight variations there abouts).

Granted back in the day there were studio musicians (known and unknown) that all came together in a room and laid down the tracks. Today vocal tracks may be recorded in Chicago, horns in San Francisco, drums in New York and the list goes on by location. Those recordings (i.e. tracks) are sent to a mixing engineer that places them all together to create a single recording. The finished product is played through two identical speakers with the resulting sound called “stereo”.

So where Am I going with this….

Early on…I was not (operative word being “not”) a fan of Spatial Audio for music. Mainly because of how it was explained and supposedly worked with music. The most prevalent explanation I read was that music appeared to be coming from all directions.

The above said…If I’m at a live concert I‘m not hearing different instruments coming from above or behind. To the contrary, I hear all vocals and instruments coming from the front stage. I can even localize the positions.

Spatial Audio like stereo can offer bad and good presentations (mixing). I have a set of Era 300’s set as a stereo pair. IMO, in order to appreciate Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) for music you need a reference point for comparison. I dare say most in this community aren’t old enough to remember “true” stereo separation. To offer assistance I suggest you stream the following in so called “stereo” and then again in “Dolby Atmos” (i.e. spatial audio) available via Apple Music.

Ready For Freddie by Freddie Hubbard: Circa 1962

In the stereo stream you’ll hear the music. In the Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) stream you’ll REALLY hear the music. The separation (i.e. positioning) of the instruments is incredible. Granted you’ll get a much better perspective (i.e. listening experience); if you have two Era 300’s in stereo pair. However, a single Era 300 will still blow your mind and your “A” will follow. 😅

Needless to say I’m now a convert to Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) music when it’s properly mixed. I wish there was a “Standard “by which music is mastered and/or remastered to meet specific Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) specifications. Believe me there’s a lot of “crap” being presented and masquerading as Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) music.

I hope this information was informative and provided a more comprehensive understanding/appreciation for properly mixed music. The future of Dolby Atmos (spatial audio) music I hope is a growing medium and not just a flash-in-the-pan like SACD and Mini-Disc. For those of you that can remember; hopefully, Sony doesn’t have a hand (somewhere) in this medium. Oh…did I mention BetaMax? But that was video.😂

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

This stuff has been around for decades now, as part of even cheap graphic equalisers. I don’t know how many people find any use for it in practice even with perhaps better tech supporting it now, such that they toggle between the options frequently to keep customising the sound. Most times, an option is selected after some playing around when the kit is new, one gets used to what it does and how it sounds, and then the availability of the other options is forgotten. Which is probably a good thing for music enjoyment!

Yes, it has been available for years.

The cheaper and older versions are very limited and the sound questionable. Not so the higher end and newer designs. The move to AI powered adjustments is going to be even more interesting.

I found the room emulation setup a nice improvement over plain Stereo mode for a lot of my listening. Compared to just driving all 5 channels with the stereo signal, to get some use from the other speakers, I thought it added quite a bit.

I had several modes I liked quite well for general listening, a couple others that were great for solo piano or organ and one that had a lot of delay/echo was fun to feed chants and the like. My Denon and Yamaha AVRs did sound distinctly different even when trying to pick similar enhanced modes. Stereo and the all speakers stereo modes sounded very close, hard to pin it down more than that due to speaker and room issues.

buzz

Grand Maestro

The latest high end YAMAHA models will map the speaker locations in three dimensions.

A feature from decades past: After measuring the characteristics of respected halls, the room modes emulate a hall’s reverb characteristics.

K

Kumar

Probably based on three things - the genre of music I like and listen to, and the way it is recorded in the studio, both of which lead to the third thing, of a preference for listening to it close to the speakers such that room response is minimised, I see no point in adding back reverb characteristics of a hall, which would sound unnatural for such music. Now if I listened to a lot of church organs, things would be different, but I believe that most music catalogues contain performances recorded to give best results in the near field and close to it. Except electronic dance/trance music, I grant, where a different outcome is aimed at.

Where I would welcome progress is in expanding the size of sweet spot for stereo audio.

Movies are a completely different beast of course, where there is much to be gained by submerging the viewer in the sound field. Except perhaps for movies like Casablanca, where it does not matter.

Zeek78

Enthusiast II

I think the biggest problem for atmos music is that you need special equipment to listen to it. Most people have “only” stereo or even mono speakers. See on facebook when discussing atmos music, it is only the era 300 people think can play it like it was meant to be. Of course there are alot of misinformation on how this works, and therfor people think you need even more equipment than you actually need to listen to atmos music. I am afraid that this equipment needed is also what will causes the death of atmos music.

Airgetlam

I lived through the Quadrophonic years, and more recently the 3D television years. Time, and the marketplace will tell. I’m not against Atmos per se, but most of what I listen to isn’t encoded in it, either.

Bruce

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