I listened to Peter Gabriel’s i/o in a fully-treated Dolby Atmos studio…

MSM Studios opened its Berlin doors in October with its original Munich studio in operation since 1991.
It is co-run by Stefan Bock, Hans-Martin Buff and David Merkl.
Bock is the brains behind the Pure Audio series of Hi-Res Blu-Ray discs.
Buff is a mix engineer who worked with Prince at Paisley Park Studios in the late 90s and who recently completed the Dolby Atmos ‘In-Side’ mix of Peter Gabriel’s i/o.
Heard at MSM, that ‘In-side Mix’ sounded astonishing. Truly breathtaking. And yes, I’ve already spent time with the Dark-Side and Bright-Side stereo mixes.
At no point did Buff’s Atmos mix of i/o make me aware of sounds flying above my head or emanating from behind.
The listening experience is less a fireworks show with heavily localised effects and more of a holistic presentation of music that wraps around the body.
Hans-Martin Buff cues up his Dolby Atmos ‘In-Side Mix’ of Peter Gabriel’s i/o at MSM Studios in Berlin.
Buff refers to Dolby Atmos and other multichannel music formats not as ‘Immersive Audio’ but as ‘3D Music’.
The room at MSM Berlin is fully acoustically treated with panels fixed to all four walls and the ceiling. Those panels play a large part in the quality of the listening experience. Notice the absence of a rug on the floor.
The Dolby Atmos speaker array is 9.1.4: 2 fronts, 1 centre, 2 wides, 2 sides, 2 rears, 1 sub and 4 downward firing modules.
According to Dolby, the minimum spec for an Atmos speaker array is 7.1.2: seven speakers placed at ear level, one subwoofer and two ceiling-mounted speakers.
The two additional speakers found in MSM Studio’s Berlin configuration are the ‘wides’.
And if you want a full Dolby Atmos setup at home, there is no getting around mounting four speakers to the ceiling or, at the very least, high up on the side walls.
MSM uses the same Amphion 2-way One18 loudspeaker model across all channels with Amphion’s BassTwo25 bass extenders applied to the left, right and centre. The subwoofer is an Amphion FlexBass.
Bock believes that using the same loudspeaker model contributes to the overall sound of an Atmos speaker array.
He adds that spectacular results can be had from running a Genelec G Two (€587/each) across all channels where a Genelec subwoofer would also make sense. This would put a full 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos speaker array into a room for around €7000.
The Genelecs are small enough that the four downward-firing speakers could be suspended from the ceiling with wires. That paints a nice, clean mental picture but says nothing about power and signal cable routing.
According to Bock, upward-firing speaker modules that exploit ceiling bounce can be very effective indeed.
Buff sees the hardware installation nightmare for the majority of would-be Atmos listeners and believes that Atmos’ broader market adoption will be driven by Apple Music and headphones.That assertion is borne out by Darko.Audio poll results taken four months ago. (Remember: we’re concerned only with music and not home theatre and movies):
Apple Music uses an in-house coded binaural processor engine to playback Atmos mixes (which Apple has dubbed Spatial Audio) via Apple headphones.
If the listener isn’t using Apple headphones, he or she will hear Dolby’s binaural processor at work, which is different from Apple’s — and is used by everyone except Apple.
That’s a consumer headache in the making: “Which binaural processor am I hearing? And is it superior/inferior to another binaural processor?”
According to Buff, we retain around 60% of his Atmos ‘effects’ – as heard from a full Atmos speaker array – when listening to the same Atmos mix via Apple Music and headphones.
Over 95% of all new Atmos mixes come to market via streaming services only.
Why? Apple Music is ‘strongly encouraging’ that all new music releases ship with an Atmos mix.
Those Atmos mixes are lossily compressed by Apple to stream at around 800kbps so that they can fit down the Bluetooth audio transmission pipe.
According to Bock, streaming a Spatial Audio mix losslessly would eat anything between 5000kbps and 10,000kbps of bandwidth.
Bock says that Apple’s Atmos streams are obviously lossy, especially when heard side-by-side with the lossless version played from a Blu-Ray disc.
In other words, Apple Music Spatial is to Atmos what an 160-192kbps MP3 is to lossless stereo playback. Not only Apple Music Spatial, but any streamed Atmos.
However, Bock reckons that, when listening to Atmos on Apple, the ‘3D’ nature of the mix partially mitigates Apple’s heavy lossy compression.