atmos The Atmos thing

[Dave Bryce]

It seems that just about everywhere I turn these days, there's another speaker ad showing off yet another engineer or studio with their ATMOS setup, or an interview with an engineer/musician who's converting their studio to ATMOS (or trying to).  I keep hearing about how much work there is for ATMOS, and how all the streaming services are scrambling to have their content converted to ATMOS...but I'm having a difficult time figuring out who all these ATMOS consumers are.

 

I totally get where it would be really useful and cool for VR/video games...but I don't know anyone who has an ATMOS setup in their home, or is even thinking about getting one for gaming - especially not for things like movies or remixed surround albums.  11 speakers, plus a sub? 😳 Sure I know you can go 7.2.1 instead of 7.4.1...but still...so much expense (how many A/V units have all those outputs and amps?), so much real estate...

 

I have seen that you can get "ATMOS" sound bar setups that point some drivers staraight into the room and some towards the ceiling.  Are these the folks all this is aimed at? Heck, most of the folks I know don't even have a 5.1 setup.

 

I also understand the spatial audio thing can take advantage of these mixes...but I have Airpod Pros, and I find the spatial audio thing unremarkable.  I actually think the version where you can turn your head so that the music moves to either side kind of annoying.

 

I must be missing something. 🤔

 

dB 

 

 

[KuruPrionz]

Remember "Quad"?

Uhhh... sorta kinda. I never knew anybody who had a quad system or a even great sounding listening room of a size where quad would matter. 

 

I have a friend who has $10,000 worth of "hi fi stereo" equipment, speakers, separate tube amps (oh yes, they are absolutely identical in all respects... uhhh...) an expensive turntable with an expensive cartridge, a record cleaning kit, all set up in the living room of a small condo. It sounds pretty OK, maybe even a bit better than the system I have in my small condo nearby - a pair of JBL P-40 speakers that I found at Starvation Army for $30, a big-ass heavy Kenwood AM-FM preamp power amp with all the fancy connections that I got at Goodwill for $25 and a CD-DVD player that cost me $8 at the same place. I'm 98% there at $63. I will concede that in a better sounding room his system will sound better at high volumes but neither of us listen loud since we are in multi-unit environments with volume restrictions. And, the point is... uhh, yeah...hmmm

 

So, goodie. I guess if you are selling speakers and can sell 11 instead of 2 then business is better. Same as it ever was...

 

I bet Atmos sounds fabulous if you have the $$$. Must be nice, maybe I'll drive my 88 Oldsmobile to where the rich people live and see if anybody has a system I can listen to. 😇

[Anderton]

53 minutes ago, David Bryce said:

I must be missing something. 🤔

 

Great, and timely, topic. I was just about to post a similar topic with similar sentiments. The closest I've come to ATMOS is using the Waves NX binaural stuff to mock up surround mixes. It's not true surround by any means, but it does give a sense of how something would play back in surround.

 

At one point Cakewalk came out with an insanely great surround implementation (I think it was Sonar 7). Probably best-in-class at the time, and they were sure it would put them on the map. But nobody cared.

 

I attribute 10% of surround's demise to lack of a unified standard. So, no one bought gear they figured would become obsolete. The other 90% is that people don't listen to music that way, and the surround demos were like, okay, for a live album the audience is all around me...uh...okay...

 

Cost, speaker placement, people not sitting in one place to listen to music, no universal sweet spot are all problems that don't have easy solutions. So where do we go from here?

 

53 minutes ago, David Bryce said:

I actually think the version where you can turn your head so that the music moves to either side kind of annoying.

 

I have the NX headtracker that complements the NX software, and it's uncanny how much is sounds like you're in a studio. Other people have noted that as well. BUT, they turn if off when they mix (as do I) because it's distracting. However...the potential for VR and movies is HUGE. I could also see it take over for teleconferencing, where you could really feel you are in a room talking to people, and you can turn your head toward certain people as you listen. Even with stereo headphones, the effect is impressive. A virtual trade show would be a whole different experience if you felt as if you were in an actual space. 

 

The holy grail for "spatial" audio will be headphones that come close to a surround experience. They might end up being more like bulky, VR-goggle types of phones, but maybe not. Even my stereo phones give an excellent sense of space. That solves the "cost, speaker placement, people not sitting in one place to listen to music, no universal sweet spot" problem once and for all.

 

Music? Not that interested. VR and movies? Very interested. 

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, David Bryce said:

I keep hearing about how much work there is for ATMOS, and how all the streaming services are scrambling to have their content converted to ATMOS.

 

What a novel and brilliant idea! Taking music that a company has already paid for, often from dead people who won't have an annoying tendency to want royalties, and re-packaging and re-selling it in a different playback medium!! Has this ever been done before?

[Jeff Leites]

I've had a 6.1 home system for a looong time and really enjoy it.  Last year I got my first streaming device and was disappointed that just about all the surround content was (I presume) ATMOS which my A/V receiver outputs as stereo.  I've only recently come across some programming that comes through as 5.1.  I also don't know why nobody makes at ATMOS to 5.1 converter. 

[Anderton]

7 minutes ago, Jeff Leites said:

I've had a 6.1 home system for a looong time and really enjoy it.

 

How do you have it set up? Do you listen to music with it or mostly movies or...?

[Dave Bryce]

On 8/17/2022 at 10:32 AM, Jeff Leites said:

 I also don't know why nobody makes at ATMOS to 5.1 converter. 

Every movie or Blu-ray audio disc I have with ATMOS tracks offers a 5.1/DTS option as well.  

I have tried playing ATMOS tracks through my system (7.1), but I can't tell if the system folds the extra tracks down or just doesn't play them.

 

dB

[Jeff Leites]

1 hour ago, Anderton said:

 

How do you have it set up? Do you listen to music with it or mostly movies or...?

I use it mostly for movies.  I have my old Advent stereo speakers (probably from the 70's) for front right and left, 4 Carvin spot monitors for center, right and left surround, and center back, and a powered sub woofer off to the front side.

[dmitch57]

On 8/17/2022 at 10:32 AM, Jeff Leites said:

I also don't know why nobody makes at ATMOS to 5.1 converter. 

Actually, every Atmos amp, renderer, and AV Recover does this by design. When sound is mixed for Atmos, the number and placement of speakers in the destination theater is unknown and largely irrelevant. During mixing, sound objects are placed in one of 128 locations in a 360 degree field. It's the job of the Atmos processor in the theater or home receiver to translate those 128 locations to whatever speakers are present in that room. If there are 5.1 speakers, the Atmos processor knows what to do. If there are 64 speakers, and the Atmos processor has been correctly configured (i.e., told where each speaker is), the processor knows what to do. 

 

"During playback, each theater's Dolby Atmos system renders the audio objects in real time based on the known locations of the loudspeakers present in the target theater, such that each audio object is heard as originating from its designated set of coordinates."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Atmos#Technology

 

Anyway, back to the main thread. I don't see/hear Atmos or any other "immersive" audio tech being widely used for audio any time soon; 2.1 speakers are plenty for music. For movies though, Atmos is a huge deal. It wouldn't be so widely deployed in theaters, home AV equipment, and film soundtracks if it weren't. I don't know about VR or games, those are way outside my wheelhouse.

 

[RABid]

Not sure I understand the reasoning. 20 years ago I would say they came out with a new sound standard so that people would buy their favorite movies yet again. Hey, I've bought VHS, VLD, DVD, Blue Ray, and finally Blue Ray 4K. But the thing is, no one buys movies any more. At least I hardly do. I went from buying one a week to buying two or three a year. With so much depending on streaming, and most streaming trying to cut back bandwidth as much as possible, what is the motivation to putting out another audio spec?

[Anderton]

24 minutes ago, RABid said:

With so much depending on streaming, and most streaming trying to cut back bandwidth as much as possible, what is the motivation to putting out another audio spec?

 

Camouflage for a lack of creativity in an emotionally bankrupt industry?

[dmitch57]

It has nothing to do with buying any content. Most contemporary movies I've streamed lately have a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The benefit is that it allows the film sound folks to mix once. Then, let the software figure out how to parcel out the sound to the speakers at render time, optimally, for the room where the rendering happens. The sound folks do the hard creative part, Atmos software does the grunt work later on. You get a mix tailored for each room. Seems like a big win to me.

[Dave Bryce]

1 hour ago, dmitch57 said:

It has nothing to do with buying any content. Most contemporary movies I've streamed lately have a Dolby Atmos soundtrack. The benefit is that it allows the film sound folks to mix once. Then, let the software figure out how to parcel out the sound to the speakers at render time, optimally, for the room where the rendering happens. The sound folks do the hard creative part, Atmos software does the grunt work later on. You get a mix tailored for each room. Seems like a big win to me.

I follow that, and agree. Same for games…

 

It’s the folks who are mixing music in ATMOS that confuses me. 🤔

 

dB

[Joe Muscara]

On 8/17/2022 at 10:39 AM, David Bryce said:

I have Airpod Pros, and I find the spatial audio thing unremarkable.  I actually think the version where you can turn your head so that the music moves to either side kind of annoying.

My first encounter with this was on a long run. I had my iPhone with me (Apple Watch doesn't do spatial audio… yet) and was really looking forward to the 2021 Super Deluxe version of Tattoo You. As I'm running, the music is going crazy. The mix is weird, the instrument placements kept changing, and I truly thought something was wrong. I had no idea what was going on, nor how to stop it. It turns out, I move my head around a lot when I'm running! One of the things Apple's spatial audio does is readjust when you turn. IOW, if you're facing north, and you turn east, at first the music will remain centered around north. After a short period, it will slowly reorient east. That's fine if you're sitting at home or something, but if you're constantly moving, it just doesn't make any sense. It's trying to keep up with you and I can't tell you if it's also trying to adjust based on other movements.

 

OTOH, I watched a movie that had spatial audio on my iPad on a flight last month, and it was pretty cool. If I turned my head to look out the window, or around my seat for a sec, it still sounded like it was coming from the iPad. If I continued to look in a different direction, the sound eventually turned as well. I would say I like it better when I'm watching something.

[Dave Bryce]

9 hours ago, Joe Muscara said:

It turns out, I move my head around a lot when I'm running! One of the things Apple's spatial audio does is readjust when you turn. IOW, if you're facing north, and you turn east, at first the music will remain centered around north. After a short period, it will slowly reorient east. That's fine if you're sitting at home or something, but if you're constantly moving, it just doesn't make any sense. It's trying to keep up with you and I can't tell you if it's also trying to adjust based on other movements.

 

I absolutely hate that with music.  I see the value for VR, games, movies…but for the music, I don’t want it - really distracting, and not well implemented IMO.  If nothing else, if you move your head a few times quickly, it’s easy to confuse the algorithm.

 

Luckily, you can turn it off!  Call up the control panel that you get if you drag diagonally from the upper right corner.  Touch and hold the volume control slider while your Airpods are active and you’ll be presented with several options, including the ability to toggle Spatial from HEAD TRACKED to FIXED…which is much better - your head essentially never leaves the sweet spot.

 

dB

 

 

[David Emm]

> "Luckily, you can turn it off!"

 

Those are the most beautiful words in the world when you're faced with some bloated technical leap being made by a 700-pound milk goat.

 

I'm with the Bryce camp. The method seems promising and even inviting... for everything but music. Its too linear for ATMOS to be much besides a distraction. I heard that wild quad mix of "Switched-On Bach" on a proper setup and it was still 50% novelty. It was much more on-target in stereo. It just didn't seem very much enhanced by the Panning-For-The-Mushroom-Generation treatment. 

 

I also see it as a cheap tease when that level of multi-channel sound at home is still some miles ahead in the road. None of the golden glitter will matter until you can buy a turnkey system at Sam's Club. It will live or die at that point based on how well they can scale it up for the market. Top 40 fans & country listeners will NOT be lining up for that one. I'm quite satisfied with my effects plug-ins, thanks.

 

Not to be a Luddite; I just don't need a wireless MIDI port in my neck, SO FAR. 🤖       

[Anderton]

6 hours ago, David Emm said:

I also see it as a cheap tease when that level of multi-channel sound at home is still some miles ahead in the road.

 

Even standard headphones work reasonably well with surround and binaural...good enough to groove on movies and such. The more I work with the virtual studio plugins on headphones, the more I'm convinced they're not a gimmick. 

[Dave Bryce]

10 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Even standard headphones work reasonably well with surround and binaural...good enough to groove on movies and such. The more I work with the virtual studio plugins on headphones, the more I'm convinced they're not a gimmick. 

 

Do you have an actual surround system in either your studio or the system you use to watch movies?

 

dB

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, David Bryce said:

Do you have an actual surround system in either your studio or the system you use to watch movies?

 

No, not a real/physical one...just virtual.

 

It would be fun to try a virtual surround mix, then listen to it on a physical system to note the differences. 

[Dave Bryce]

40 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

No, not a real/physical one...just virtual.

 

How did I know…? 🤔😏

 

 

40 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

It would be fun to try a virtual surround mix, then listen to it on a physical system to note the differences. 

I’d lay odds that listening to a physical system might reinforce virtual being a gimmick.

 

Personally, I don’t think they’re even close…but I’ve had a physical surround system for around 35 years.

 

dB

[Anderton]

I'm sure a physical system would be a lot more fun for movies, which is why I qualified virtual solutions and headphones as working "reasonably well." You can get front/back and left/right, so while you're not exactly immersed in sound, you can do spatial location.

 

But more importantly, I was referring specifically to the virtual studio plug-ins as not being a gimmick for four main reasons:

 

• When collaborating, if someone has the same plug-in and headphones, you are both hearing exactly the same sound, as if you were in the same control room. If you involve speakers and acoustics, you're not going to be even close. That's a pretty big deal. Brian and I used the Slate VSX phones on a project, and it was reassuring to know we were hearing the mix exactly as the other heard it.
• The technology of creating a binaural illusion of depth and space is valid - the result is very different from having sound injected into each ear by headphones, with exaggerated left/right placement. It really sounds like there are speakers in front of you.
• Mixes translate better, for the same reason that mixes done over speakers translate better than ones done over headphones.
• It's less fatiguing over long mixing sessions with headphones

 

For mixing, realistically, it's still a stereo world. The virtual studio plugins make it easier to do mixes for stereo, for the reasons given above. Of course, I turn off head tracking    If/when it becomes a surround world, then I'm concerned collaborating on mixes will become exponentially more difficult.,

 

[Dave Bryce]

Brother Steph Marsh, who works a whole bunch doing ATMOS mixes, contends that ATMOS is only really optimal for music that was recorded and mixed specifically for the ATMOS platform.  He’s not a big fan of remixing older material for ATMOS.

 

dB

[KuruPrionz]

15 minutes ago, David Bryce said:

Brother Steph Marsh, who works a whole bunch doing ATMOS mixes, contends that ATMOS is only really optimal for music that was recorded and mixed specifically for the ATMOS platform.  He’s not a big fan of remixing older material for ATMOS.

 

dB

And that is one part of the real story. 

If you have a dedicated ATMOS room with a perfectly placed listening seat adjust to your size then you can enjoy the full potential of ATMOS.

If not, it may be pretty awesome depending on everything. 

Out of my budget range, I'd like to have that room but the reality is that I don't listen to enough music to justify it and I almost never watch movies. 

So I'll settle for stereo in the room and me somewhere in there too or maybe in the next room, or something...

 

ATMOS at the movie theater? Probably looks good on the sign on the marquee. 

If you get there a bit late and have to sit near the top row and over to one side, you might hear the slight shoe shuffle as the villain sneaks up on the heroine but the gun shot coming from the other side of the room will have too much distance associated with it, no?

[spokenward]

I'm speculating here, but I think that the reason speaker manufacturers like Atmos is connected to fundamental arithmetic, that is, more speakers. 

 

I think the reason that we are hearing about it now for music is that Dolby has shoehorned it into Tidal, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

 

Do I think that Amazon cares about it? No, I do not. If they did they would promote with speakers and hardware. 

 

Not with the fact that you can hear "Wonderful Christmastime" in Dolby Atmos.

 

https://music.amazon.com/playlists/B081KSLWPF 

 

Seriously, Dolby had to create their own marketing experience for Amazon over here:

 

https://www.dolby.com/experience/amazon-music/#gref

 

If you look at Apple's branding I can't find any mention of Atmos that does not also mention "Spatial Audio."

 

Atmos was introduced for theatrical in 2012 and this is 2022. I can find a home theater design guidance that Dolby published in 2018.  I can't point to any consumer product implementations of this. It's just way too complicated for the big box stores. 

 

[spokenward]

Sidenote [spatial audio cue: it's on the side] Dolby has also lined up a patent pool for another set of immersive audio branded technologies. 

 

MPEG-H 3D Audio Licensing Program announcement

https://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/mpegh-patent-pool

 

MPEG-H apparently got a splash in April at the Grammys.  https://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/grammys-mpegh

 

This authoring platform is news to me.

https://apps.apple.com/tt/app/media-hyperium-mh-ii/id1600588295

 

https://www.mediahyperium.com/

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, David Bryce said:

Brother Steph Marsh, who works a whole bunch doing ATMOS mixes, contends that ATMOS is only really optimal for music that was recorded and mixed specifically for the ATMOS platform.  He’s not a big fan of remixing older material for ATMOS.

 

Couldn't agree more. As I said in the conclusion to Warning: Stability Ahead, which was my August Open Channel column published by Mixonline:

 

Cirque du Soleil showed what surround can do with its The Beatles: Love show. The Optima6 audio-video guide electronics brought surround to immersive art exhibits. Installations from artists like Robert Henke (cocreator of Ableton Live) and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork turn surround into art. And for movie surround, it’s hard to beat Gravity.

 

What about music? Surround is caught between the chaos of multiple formats, and the stability labels seem to crave that comes from reissuing older material in surround—hey, that model worked before, right?

 

Well, it’s not going to work again, because the industry has it backwards. It’s the formats that need to become stable, and the art that needs to get chaotic. I don’t want to be told I gotta hear Springsteen in surround. I want to be told about musicians, engineers and producers who are creating a sonic experience unlike anything I’ve experienced. I’m waiting for someone to do the surround equivalent of taking a mic, putting it up against the P.A.’s speaker, and unleashing uncontrollable feedback—just to see what happens.

 

Surround beckons. After the failures of QS/SQ/CD-4 in the ’70s and DVD-A SACD in the early 2000s, is the music industry going to blow the promise of surround for a third time?

 

It sure looks like it.

 

Please, prove me wrong.

[Dave Bryce]

2 hours ago, spokenward said:

I'm speculating here, but I think that the reason speaker manufacturers like Atmos is connected to fundamental arithmetic, that is, more speakers. 

 

I think the reason that we are hearing about it now for music is that Dolby has shoehorned it into Tidal, Apple Music and Amazon Music.

 

Do I think that Amazon cares about it? No, I do not. If they did they would promote with speakers and hardware. 

 

Not with the fact that you can hear "Wonderful Christmastime" in Dolby Atmos.

 

 

 

Completely agreed.  Why sell two speakers to a studio when you can sell eleven and a sub?  Or miss a chance to sell all those “ATMOS” sound bars?  Or a ton of Airpod Pros to folks to whom the spatial trick provides something approximating a surround experience?  

 

To me, the main indicator is that - as far as I can tell - there’s no way to buy the tracks themselves.  Yes, they come on Blu-Ray discs…but they’re additional material - the discs play just fine on any standard surround system.  The Spatial tracks are free, too - to me, that’s a pretty clear indication that they’re selling the delivery systems.

 

One more detail: the dedicated Spatial Audio tracks I’ve heard so far on Airpod Pros (such as Grateful Dead/American Beauty, Fleetwood Mac/Fleetwood Mac) are noticeably louder, brighter and more compressed than the stereo tracks that accompany them, just in case the average person misses how much “better” the Spatial mix sounds.  🙄

 

dB

 

 

[Anderton]

2 hours ago, David Bryce said:

One more detail: the dedicated Spatial Audio tracks I’ve heard so far on Airpod Pros (such as Grateful Dead/American Beauty, Fleetwood Mac/Fleetwood Mac) are noticeably louder, brighter and more compressed than the stereo tracks that accompany them...

 

That certainly qualifies as tonight's depressing news. The loudness war lives on...just stupider.

[Dave Bryce]

Elliott Scheiner speaking on the subject.
 

 

While I’m inclined to agree with just about everything he says, he did do a whole bunch of 5.1 mixes that weren’t directly representative of the original mixes. 🤔

There is no doubt in my mind that the “stereo” mix you hear when you toggle the “ATMOS” effect off in Apple Music is way different than if you listen to the original stereo mix on Airpods with and without Spatialize turned on.  I’d much rather do the latter.

 

dB

[Paul Vnuk Jr.]

I go back and forth on this topic, and God knows Bryce, and I have had many lengthy offline discussions on the subject.

 

Do I like listening to spatial audio when done right? Yes, of course, who wouldn't? My issues are, like many others I have spoken to on the subject, dictated by my own current limitations of space (where would I put this setup?), finance (how much do I need to spend to make both an ATMOS mixing or listening environment a reality?), and more significant if I build it, will they (the clients) come?

 

As Craig pointed out, a big problem here is there is no market for spatial audio...it streams for free (or $20 per month), which is hardly enough to put food on the table.

 

If someone has positive/yes answers to the above, dive in by all means. At some point, I will dive in and try my hand at spatial audio mix in Logic since Apple has integrated that for free into the program, and all you need is a set of spatial-equipped earbuds/headphones. Of course, I would create an ambient-world beat track from scratch, mixed for the experience.

 

As to older tracks being remixed in ATMOS, it is similar to both when mono moved to stereo in the late 60s, blended with the hi-res audio boom in the mid-late 2000s. Meaning two things:

 

One––very few people are masters at it yet. Some are damn good, but almost every A-list engineer who I have interviewed that is doing it admits to still learning and having an equal number of failures to their successes. 

 

This leads to point two––there are a lot of spatial audio mixes flooding the "market," many of which are mediocre at best, and no one knows who did them. My guess is that will balance itself over time.

 

–––––––

 

To flip the script, I now have to admit that much of my "fear" of spatial audio as the future is just that, fear. Fear that people 20 years younger than me are embracing and digging into doing it without the rules we older studio cats have abided by for decades. Fear that every major recording facility now has a Dolby ATMOS room. Fear that I need to embrace it or get out of the way––isn't this a natural part of the life cycle. I don't want to become the "get off my lawn guy".

 

For instance, my 17 yr old son never turns spatial audio off on his AirPods and does not care one bit about the "original" mix.

 

As the editor of a tech magazine, I also need to at least embrace, understand, and accept that it's here, there are people mixing for it, and it may very well be the future of music. Whether or not I personally like it or ever make the jump is largely irrelevant.

 

On the positive side, I am fascinated by and will support the development and growth of the technology, the techniques and the art of ATMOS and Spatial Audio. Why wouldn't I? It is pushing music and mixing in new and fascinating directions. When done well, it can be breathtaking, and who knows as the growing pains subside what will come of it? Which is to say, I am darn curious about all of the above.

 

If manufacturers and companies can gain new revenue from it, more power to them. Sell more speakers, software and hardware. There is almost zero downside when that happens because, eventually, the technology becomes more affordable and settles in (look at what we can buy mega-powered synths, software and microphones for today).

 

Ok...there are all of my chaotic ramblings for a Sunday afternoon.

 

PV