Dolby Atmos - Should You Wait

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[marklholloway]

Colt Capperrune said the top head of Warner Chappell in Nashville (Guy Moot) communicated to all management and staff that Apple requires Atmos. He claims it was an “inside baseball” conversation, which makes it sound dirty, although they’re denying Colts claim they communicated that message. In the same video Colt did say Sweetwater helped him get into an Atmos class in exchange for promoting that Sweetwater has Atmos studios. I don’t think any full-time/pro folks took his click bait seriously. We all know Atmos is coming and the listener experience will vary across different headphone, soundbars, bluetooth speakers, cars, with a varying degree of experience where some will be noticeable Atmos mixes while others are splitting hairs compared to stereo given the speaker setup. As Andrew Schepps said, labels want an Atmos mix on a stereo budget.

[Fnkmaestro]

Speaking as a home-based creator AND consumer, atmos is a sales industry pipe dream. I’ve been consistently expressive of my disinterest in reinvesting, as have others. Who would I even be mixing atmos for? Basically no music listeners will have atmos systems, and I’m not doing cinematic sound design.

Atmos is a marketing gimmick.

Get good headphones or IEMs, do the mix through the binaural renderer. Or just do a stereo mix and use the atmos authoring tools to print it as the 2.0 bed of an ADM file. Congrats, you just made a 100% valid atmos mix.

[citytonightproductions]

I’m not investing any more money in speakers, cabling and everything else that comes with atmos. Fuck it. It infuriates me to even think about spending more money on my studio. I finally have mine to where I want it after all these years of hard work.
It’s already a terrible business model as is for studio owners and musicians. Just think, all the money we spend on hardware, software, instruments and gear. And at the end of the day the artist makes a fraction of a penny for a steam of their song. Not even a cent for a play on Spotify etc. something has to change.

[RPMusicStudios]

Thanks Barry! I like your perspective on this. I’m 48 and have been through most of the tech changes you’re talking about. My grandparents had the 8 track player that looked like a piece very nice furniture! I’ll admit that when I saw other channels talking about this I was skeptical. When the day comes for me to switch I may start with headphones. Great talk.

[oscarpatxot]

The first time I heard atmos on headphones was like 2 days ago. On headphones 98% of what I heard sounded like shit compared to their stereo counterpart, the other 2% sounded just ok. Headphones is where most people will continue to listen to music, this is just sad that the industry is pushing this. I have the space and the possibility to make atmos in the near future if I don’t have a choice, but wow this shit pisses me off.

[enbo]

I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your takes on the industry happenings. I HATE when companies use fear mongering to sway people into buying or upgrading gear. 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

[em]

I think I speak for most when I say this was another great video, we appreciate all your efforts to teach and make us laugh brother, you are loved by the community for your honesty and personality, thankyou❤️

[chemdrum]

For about the past 2 seeks I've been doing some extensive research on Dolby Atmos. It was all because of a video of another YouTuber that spoke about the announcement of Apple Music no longer play-listing your music unless its in Dolby Atmos. This got me thinking a lot, which led me to my research.
I definitely think Atmos is something that's gonna be quite different and it'll take a few years for it to be here for good. I'm praying the technology upgrades especially for headphones because I can personally say that listening to music in Spatial Audio sounds worse then regular stereo(in my opinion). And I'm sure your average consumer of music will think the same. A lot of music in Spatial Audio just sounds like everything is in a short reverb(small room) and you don't get the full benefits of multiple speakers around you.
I also don't think stereo will and should go away for Dolby Atmos to completely take over. Atmos is great for having the speaker set up, movie theaters, cars with Dolby Atmos, and hopefully it improves in headphones. But would this mean any other way we listen to music has to be in Atmos too? I can imagine radio stations to start transmitting in Atmos but will venues have to do the same? Will a DJ have to bring multiple speakers to a wedding just to have the Dolby experience? Clubs? Churches? Even live shows, I think stereo will have to stick around for those. These have been my thoughts during my research lol

[samuelgutierrez]

What I find interesting is we've already been down this road before. Does anybody remember quadraphonic? I had such a player in my truck back in the 70's. There were several albums released in this format but it died out. I don't think Atmos will die out this time.

[operasinger]

People used to love listening to Beatles through one speaker. If Atmos makes my music sound like the Beatles I am all for it.

[Geeztown]

The problem i have with Atmos is that there is no way to have a dry mono sound. And no way to get rid of that artificial room reverb. As a mixer, I like to create contrast, and that's limiting.

If it catches on, it will be because of the headphone version and cars adapting it. The headphone version is supposed to simulate binaural audio. Like the dummy head with realistic molded ears with microphones in them. But there doesn't seem to be a way to make close dry sounds. Look up the binaural haircut here on yt for example and listen with headphones. When Atmos gets that good, maybe I'll be on board, but right now I think it's great for movies and shows, but kind of a gimmick for music.

In movies, surround isn't used 100% of the time. It's only for effect to give more information about what's happening off screen. If it was used too much, it would be distracting.

For music, it's kind of the same way. We still expect the important things, vocals, kick, snare, to be center. And less important things to be planned out to create contrast. But where exactly things get panned or placed isn't as critical as it is with a movie for it to be believable and for you to be immersed.

For a movie, when the airplane sounds like it's above us, we go "wow that's so realistic and amazing". And since we expect that airplane to be above us, it's easier for our brain to interpret the sound that way. For a song, if a synth part is placed above us, we might think it's cool, but there isn't the same wow factor and level of immersion like there is for movies. It's a bit unnecessary. And considering where most people listen to music, it seems even more unnecessary.

For movies, it helps to tell the story better. But for music, unless someone writes a cheesy song about things being panned all over, it doesn't necessarily add anything to enhance the songwriting.

[AdamGotheridge]

Great perspective. We still don't have 4k broadcast TV out of Chicago. YouTube tv 4k is really a pretty recent development too.

[planbrecords]

I love your pragmatism, Barry. Your experienced take on this stuff is very much appreciated! I’m an old dog too, but this time, I think I want to be one of the first ones on my block to take the step up, primarily to get the learning curve out of the way. There was a time when I was proud to say I’m only an analog guy”-and it did not fare well for me. I found out the hard way, that you’re either making dust, or eating dust- and I don’t want to eat dust anymore, lol.

[michaelclover]

I survived the quadrophonic scare back in the day.
And certainly not sure about this format either.
If I go see a concert the music/vocals normally come from the front left, front right and center.
I don’t hear any instruments or vocals coming from above left, above right, directly overhead or from the back.
Atmos could certainly apply to audio for film or video as to enhance the visual.
Just not seeing it for music production. Why do I want drums coming out of left field, fly overhead and land somewhere else? Yes I’m exaggerating a bit.
Yeah I know….I’m a downer.

[jaxtongoldthedefinitions]

I really appreciate you putting this into perspective in a practical sense.

[robfulco]

Here's the thing. If everyone is recording and mixing in stereo, places like Sweetwater will sell you a pair of Focal Trio6's for $6K. But with Dolby Atmos, they will sell you 7.1.4 Focal speakers for $25K. "You MUST have it, because Apple and Spotify says so. Oh, and you have to be able to calibrate your speakers, so you have to spend another $8K and you need an interface with at least 16 outputs, as 8 outputs isn't enough". We have to spend a minimum of (I understand some people are smarter than others and will find more cost affective ways of doing it) $37K just get our foot in the sandbox to play with everyone else. Not all innovations are good. Especially if they force it on you.

[StanAllDay]

Hi Barry, thank for the video. Car manufacturers still put tape decks in to cars until 2006 FYI. It took approximately +-24 years as cds were first introduced in 1982.

[allenlocke]

Exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you.

[GregoryStephenSchumacher]

Atmos will never be mainstream for a public that listens on buds and phones. This is simply the industry taking control back for the big boys and squeezing out the creators. Atmos folded down to stereo is stereo. Don't believe them when they say it sounds better than stereo. It can't. Listen, Atmos is nothing new. Just a bigger surround. Its not industry changing, sound changing, music changing or anything else. A shit song is still a shit song, and a great bootleg is killer. Quad didn't work for them. Surround is cool if you sit in the middle. Atmos is a waste of money. And the "spatial" algos they put on our devices sound like smeared crap. Just saying it plain is all.