John
Let’s talk about stereo — where music is mixed and mastered on two loudspeakers in a studio. We then listen to the result – as a stream or from a CD or vinyl record – at home using two loudspeakers. Some of us might use headphones instead but the principles of stereophony remain similar (if not identical): our brain processes left and right channel information to create the illusion of a soundstage sitting slightly in front of our eyeline or, a couple of metres in front of us, between our loudspeakers.
These listening experiences in stereo also mirror what we see on stage at a live rock concert. Just as our loudspeakers at home play in front of us, so too does the band on stage (rarely does it sit behind us or to the side). A typical four-piece might put the vocalist in the centre, the bass guitarist off to the left and the lead guitarist off to the right with drums coming in from behind. A band’s live sound might also be mixed in real-time this way – usually at a desk at the back of the room – so that it plays from the loudspeakers that flank the stage in front of the audience in a similar fashion.
You could say that there’s a certain stereo-based symmetry between a live concert, a studio recording, and how we as fans listen to music at home or out in the street.
Promoters of Dolby Atmos want to mess with this symmetry. Streaming services such as Apple Music now ask musicians submitting a new album (or single) to their service to supply a Dolby Atmos mix alongside the stereo mix. For that, the band will have to pay a studio engineer to take the digital stems of the stereo mix into a studio kitted out with a Dolby Atmos loudspeaker array to create a second ‘immersive’ mix of the album.
That Atmos loudspeaker array will likely put a pair of loudspeakers in front of the mixing engineer (per stereo) – but also a centre channel between them – and then two more speakers behind her, two at the sides, two (or four) in the ceiling and one or two subwoofers. A 7.1.2 array sums to ten loudspeakers – that’s eight more than is required to create a stereo mix. Clear here to see what an Atmos studio setup can look like.
As in the studio, so at home.
To hear a Dolby Atmos mix as the artist intended, we need a similarly-configured loudspeaker array in our lounge room: two in the front, a centre channel, two at the back, two at the sides and (at least) two in the ceiling; plus subs. Why? In case you hadn’t yet worked it out, Atmos mixes cause sound to come at the listener from all directions (and not just the front). If we return to our live concert parallel, we are now on the stage with musicians who no longer play in front of us but all around us.
And if we want to cut some corners, we can cut some speakers from the scene to hopefully hear the object-based Atmos mix collapse gracefully. The Atmos processor in our A/V receiver will relocate sounds destined for our absent channels to those that we do have. Alternatively, we can have upward-firing modules stand in for ceiling speakers. And if we’re really tight on cash – or space – we might choose a soundbar that fires left, right and centre channel information directly at us but attempts to bounce sounds off the side walls and ceiling so that we only need rears and subwoofer. At this point, with room reverberation in full effect, we have to ask: is our Atmos setup still delivering the Atmos mix as the artist intended?
By the time we realise that a home-based Dolby Atmos system is too complicated to contend with, we settle on a pair of headphones to dip our toe into Apple Music’s Spatial Audio offerings or Tidal’s 360 Reality Audio. Never mind that what was previously ten (or more) channels of sound have been binaurally boiled down to two, a pair of headphones is simple. They require no room or speaker installation. This is possibly why 18% of voters responding to a recent poll tell us that they are listening to music mixed in Dolby Atmos with headphones. Only 6% have access to a proper Atmos loudspeaker system and another 6% are making the best of ceiling and/or wall bounce.
The headline here is that 71% of respondents have so far taken a pass on Atmos for music listening. Perhaps, like me, they remember the failed promises of ‘content to come’ when 5.1 surround sound-loaded DVDs were touted as the next revolution in digital music playback. That was the early-to-mid 2000s. Back then, hearing The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots and Talking Heads’ Brick box in 5.1 was a trip. I bought a surround sound system just to hear the latter — but I cut back to stereo after nine months of surround sound experimentation exposed a paucity of content. Are we now experiencing déjà vu with Atmos; or is it just a glitch in the matrix?
Twenty years later, music mixed in 5.1 surround sound has burrowed its way into a narrow niche. But even the humble cassette tape is more popular. Maybe that’s because the content of a cassette tape is stereo! We need no more than two loudspeakers to hear all that it has to offer. Furthermore, if the music industry wants to go all in on Dolby Atmos as the future of music delivery, it must already know that vinyl – now the USA’s most popular physical format – has no place in that future. And it seems that this channel’s YouTube audience is a long way from being ready to board the Dolby Atmos hype train.
