🔵 Immersive audio and re-establishing music's value

Could formats like Dolby Atmos provide a path to a better music experience?

In general, I don't consider myself an audio snob. I've trotted it out before, but I certainly buy into (and still laugh at) my mate Chris's remark that audiophiles are the flat-earthers of the music world.

That said, I have written before now about moving across to Qobuz and how much that improved audio quality really highlighted what had been missing from the likes of Spotify.

Last week, the keen-eyed among you spotted me asking if anyone could connect me in with someone who had a Dolby Atmos setup. This was so that I could reference a track I'd made, which had then been mixed into the Atmos format by my good friend Peter Wade over in LA.

Thanks to the fine network of people who read this, I wound up being connected in with Dolby HQ here in London, and I was invited by a very excellent chap named Myles to come in and check out my track in one of their Atmos studio rooms. (Sidenote: massive thank you to everyone who replied with suggestions, and apologies to poor Myles who I think had at least two people contact him asking if he could help!)

So, a couple of days ago, I headed into Dolby, armed with my track on a USB stick. Myles took me down to one of the Atmos rooms and teed up the song.

Listening to it, with (I think) more than 30 speakers all trained on my head like a brainwashing scene from a sci-fi movie, was an experience I will not forget any time soon. Peter's mix was incredible, with the dubby delays and reverbs moving around me to create a sense that I was almost inside the song itself, rather than simply experiencing it from in front of me via your standard stereo speaker setup.

After listening to my track, Myles generously pulled out a choice selection of other Atmos-mixed tracks, ranging from Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" to Chase & Status's monumental "Baddadan".

I was like a kid in a sweet shop!

Granted it is exaggerating things a touch, but to me this was like watching a movie at home on a 4:3 CRT television with a mono speaker, to watching one in 4K widescreen with yes, full immersive sound.

Now, at this point I'm sure a good number of you are thinking "good for you D - you've discovered immersive audio... keep up at the back!"… and that is a fair comment.

Really though, this whole experience was yet another reminder of what music can be, and - rather sadly - how much we've let standards drop to this point where audio, the quality thereof, and the whole way in which we experience it, has really sunk to a low ebb.

To be clear: I don't hold a view that if you're not listening in crisp 24bit, 96khz super high audio quality, you're incapable of enjoying a song properly. I still have fond memories of driving around in my late teens in a Citroen 2CV that quite definitely could lay claim to having the world's worst car stereo in it, and yet it never stopped me forming deep connections with the music I was listening to at that time (Fugazi and large quantities of Dischord label bands, if anyone’s asking). Great songs always cut through, even on a shitty system.

Nonetheless, I left Dolby's HQ feeling that it was interesting that I'd not really been turned on to immersive audio before now. As a marketing man, I couldn't help but wonder why.

Cost is surely one factor, and I'd imagine there might be a cruel paradox in that bands and labels have arguably less money than ever for studio time, and Atmos mixing ideally requires a properly set-up, treated and tuned room to ensure a truly great mix., all of which incurs further cost.

But even with that in mind, I simply find myself wondering how it is that we have a format that brings a kind of third dimension to the music listening experience, and yet we don't work to highlight just how much more engrossing and entertaining it can be to listen in this manner.

Music is constantly being devalued, to the point where at times it feels like it simply rounds down to zero, such are the fractions on payouts etc. Things like immersive audio could be part of a new way to enjoy this all and experience it all more viscerally.

Of course, whilst Atmos is best experienced in one of the incredible rooms I was lucky enough to spend time in, the reality is that it can work exceptionally well on headphones, and that in turn opens up its market reach. Apple now supports it via its own Spatial Audio format, and Amazon and Tidal are also now on board. I would imagine the clock is ticking on Spotify caving in and bringing support too; after all, if everyone else is offering it, it makes little sense them being a hold out.

Perhaps then, the issue might boil down to accessibility and price. I do know there are companies working to make immersive audio mixing more accessible (L-ISA being one). It makes sense too; everyone has good reason to see this flourish. Maybe that is the last barrier to fall - ie. such that mixing in this format does not require the expense of a fully-treated room.

In general though, I just remain curious as to why this isn't championed that bit more. It may be a niche of sorts at present, but I'd certainly love to see it become something that really helps evolve how we connect with and enjoy music - and by extension, how we value it. We moved from mono to stereo as a standard. Why can’t we move from stereo on to immersive?

Have a great evening,

D.


🎶 Listening to “Radio Sessions 1993” by Orbital. Alongside the likes of Underworld, Prodigy and Leftfield, I’d argue Orbital took dance music to a deeper level - one capable of supporting whole albums without sounding like a singles comp. I also feel at points that Orbital don’t get quite the same level of recognition for their contributions to the scene as some of their peers. I was lucky enough to see them at Pryzm in Kingston a few weeks back. I expected a low-key, minimal performance, given this was an underplay via Banquet. How wrong I was: they arrived with full AV show in eyeball-searing effect, and promptly reminded everyone of why they are so brilliant. This EP serves as another reminder, revisiting some radio session tracks that I’d say are essential listening. Enjoy!

📖 Reading “The Curious Case of Sadiq Khan’s New Nightlife Adviser”. London Centric is fast becoming THE newsletter to subscribe to if like me you live in the capital. It has broken more stories than I care to remember (including the exposé around Lime bikes literally snapping limbs of riders involved in even minor accidents), and it is now turning its attention to one of the mayor’s new nightlife advisers.

📺 Watching “Bootsy Collins + Buckethead In Conversation” on YouTube. Elton John once said (and I’m mildly paraphrasing) “without artists like Bjork and Aphex Twin, music would be fucked”. It came to mind watching this chat with the gloriously oddball Bootsy and the Alpha-tier weirdo Buckethead, who, through the entire interview, only elects to respond through his guitar, with translations provided by Bootsy. It’s entirely mad, and I love it. God bless unique oddball geniuses like these.

🤖 Playing with Submix. Imagine being able to have a Zoom call with your producer friend someplace else, but with lossless audio, and the means to send MIDI such that you can be writing music together and working to get a track over the line. That’s what Submix does, and from my short time messing with it, it strikes me as a no-brainer bit of kit for producers who collab with others overseas (or hell, even in another town!).