I pass all my audio through a high-end DAC before feeding it directly into a wax cylinder so I can get that genuine flapper 1920’s vibe. I wanna hear music the way Thomas Edison *intended* it to be heard.
@@nickcarter4006You are really not far from the truth in that…although, I do try to take advantage of Plex’s support for FLAC* files. Plex Amp is easily my favorite music streaming app. Simple, functional, supports my extensive personal library of purchased music from the days before digital distro, and really a beautiful UI. \*My phone *really* wanted to autocorrect this to say “flaccid”.
Imo Dolby Atmos sounds crazy nice but only if it is ACTUALLY utilised correctly. I’ve heard some awful atmos mixes which feel like you might as well should have not mixed in atmos… but it’s worth it for the good mixes. My setup is with Sonos and I can definitely hear things coming above and behind me like the “bubble” they claim. Sooooo sounds like good atmos just ain’t possible at that cheaper budget. (Also Sonos allow stereo mix or atmos depending on track soo)
Agreed. I have a discrete 5.1.2 system powered by a Marantz NR1609 and it sounds pretty great in movies, everything else is meh. I'm also a bit crazy I guess because I bought all of this originally when I was living in a 450 sq ft Manhattan apartment! I've since upgraded to an 850 sq ft apartment in Miami, the living room is an odd shape though so the speakers stick out/are crammed close together.
I have the Samsung Q990D Atmos Bar with rear speakers. It sounds incredible. It has a feature that calibrates to your rooms dimensions and it is works. Also supports the other Dolby formats and even DTS:X, no need to calibrate anything. Just set the channel sound level for the speakers to your likings and then the SpaceFit setting will adjust the individual sound levels to your rooms dimension for optimal surround, the built in microphone measures the sound feedback and knows what to adjust.. Music on this thing also sounds really great, especially the remastered tracks (like Dire straits or Phil Collins. Of course, this is not a $500 system but rather $1599,-. Probably the best purchase i've made in a long time. I previously used a Bose 3.2.1 system (over 2 decades) and it served well as a general stereo setup for my tv and music. The 656 Watts this thing can put out is basically overkill for my apartment living room, i haven't had the balls to go over "25" on the sound level... and it goes up to 100.. The doors literally start shaking.. might need to have a look at that.. rubber strips along the sides maybe? I do hear a clear difference in sound between DST:X and Atmos. When playing a movie via pc, i sometimes switch to DTS:X as that sometimes sounds more crisp and less boomy. But when you watch a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road... Atmos is your friend. The engines firing up and roaring when they come past you.. it's just a real nice experience.
Atmos must be the thousandth time Dolby came up with an actually impressive technology for cinemas, and then completely ruined the brand by sticking the name on all sorts of random consumer products.
They don't stick the name on cosumer products, the brands buy the license from Dolby if they think it adds value to their product. You are always free to choose a product with a different feature set mate
These consumer electronics companies need some kind of new label to put on their product marketing page. They don't care if it works well or not. And if they don't put that label on their product they know consumers will go and buy the one that has the label.
I'm a pro mastering engineer, you just beautifully described what I've been telling a lot of my clients for the last year! I'll send them to hear your report as it's way less sweary than my usual rant!
One of the few practical benefits of atmos is that many albums mixed in atmos has better dynamic range and seems mostly unaffected by the loudness war thing. But unfortunitely, Dolby's decoder on mobile devices (esp. on android + windows) has it's own dynamic range compression which can not be disabled and it sounds bad. A properly encoded bineural track sounds great though.
Sooooo... Is DTS any better, or should I just stick with my 13 year old Denon 5.1 Amp and the collection of Bose 301's and 151's I've been using all along? (Actually, budgeting concerns have answered that question for me, as my daughter has an expensive college bill coming up... Guess I'm sticking with the current setup a little while longer.)
hearing the singer "swirling around your head" must be the dolby atmos equivalence of the 3D movie "this thing flies really close to your face" effect.
I feel like that'd be a very stressful listening experience lmao Like, I wanna listen to music comfortably, not feeling like I'm in the ocean being circled by sharks
I hopped on Tidal with my XM4s to see if this spatial audio thing was legit. I tried both Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio. It's like Benn said, there's sound coming from all directions but it feels incoherent and unnecessary, almost as if it was tacked on after the fact by a corpo. I prefer stereo.
@@jassykatRight, it’s not like those “8D immersive audios” on UA-cam where they pan the the singing voice left and right. When it’s done right, it feels like you’re in the room with them while they’re recording.
To be fair, most of the customers for this tech only listen to music on subscription platforms. The only people "paying for" Atmos mixes are people buying special edition Blu-Ray releases, and those work without any stupid subscription fees.
I guess it's... partially physically impossible? With the exact right reflection/absorption level of materials, a really weird and expensive speaker array that can do strategic cancellation/addition, and a detailed LIDAR scan of the room, maybe you could halfway manage. But yeah, it's scammy advertising. Not going to work in your real-world living room unless maybe you're one of those minimalist influencer types and just got lucky with your wall materials and room geometry.
I loved that bit and I want it played on repeat anywhere they sell soundbars. Soundbars are perfectly fine if one wants anywhere from stereo to 3.1 audio that's better than their TV's built in speakers, but will never come close to a real surround system with multiple speakers physically located around the room when listening to actual surround content, no matter what the salesman at Best Buy might claim.
Finally someone gets it! Fucking nobody takes me seriously when I say atmos 99.999% of the time is a gimmick. Atmos when done correctly can be incredible for content, but it MUST be produced and sound engineered and have the receiver that can decode it and send the information and then actual physical speakers there to receive that signal. Otherwise you’re kidding yourself that it “sounds better”. I personally have had a much better experience with my 2.0 setup with speakers in the right position (and time alignment if needed) than ANY “atmos” soundbar
I never expected Atmos music to just be the "7D" versions of songs that trended on youtube for a little while a couple of years ago, with all the instruments just panning around for no reason
Those videos were awesome. I'm happy a good chunk of the cool stuff about this is accessible to a bog-standard pair of headphones. I hope it gets another surge of popularity
"with all the instruments just panning around for no reason" It's like 3d movies, the producers and directors just can't let it be 3d, they're compelled to have things flying directly into the camera lens whether it's relevant or not, because just seeing things in 3 dimensions would be 'too boring'.
THIS. most mixers have Pan knobs that let you control how much in the left andor right ear a sound is. if you're doing it live and people move around you can just have 2 microphones too.
"If however you are listening to your music makes you happy, you are listening to it PERFECTLY" Please spread the word, that needs to be understood by more people
As the only person I know with any kind of immersive audio (I have mid rang Polk 5.1 set up) I really wish they'd expand the breadth of immersive audio content rather than keep moving the goal posts for the 1 in 1000 people interested in this. It's like they know that with their unsustainable business model based around restrictive licensing will never be main stream, so rather than try for real adoption they keep bleeding the same handful of people until they can't anymore. Listening to music thoughtfully mastered in 5.1 is actually pretty amazing, when you can find it. The problem is there isn't enough of even 5.1 around for most artists to conceive of their music in an immersive way from the beginning.
Sometimes I'll crank a low fidelity youtube music video over laptop speakers just for the joy of hearing the song again and I've already heard it in good quality a thousand times anyway.
You hit the nail on the head. They ran out of stuff to sell. Nobody needed dolby surround as soon as we were able to run digital multichannel uncompressed audio. Atmos was a hail Mary for them.
@@plankton50Great idea if you have no intellectual property to protect and everything to gain from stealing other people's work. Without patents there is zero intensives for inventing anything or innovating. Let somebody else invent it and just steal that. Why would anyone put their life's work and possibly life savings into coming up with something new that anyone could just take it. All forms of IP Copyright are vital, especially to musicians. You are watching this musician's youtube channel. Benn Jordan wouldn't be able to make a living or make these videos without revenue from IP copyright. I left the 'you dumb ass' off the end of the last sentence to make sure my reply stayed polite.
I am absolutely blown away...this "rant" actually justified my impression of any attempt at "immersive" audio.From my first attempt buying Bose Acousstimass speakers system some 30-40 years ago to my present 7.1 Denon AVR and ceiling mounted speakers, that holy grail has yet to be found. In fact, in some ways, it's made listening worse. It not only depends on your gear, etc. but it also depends on specific stations. For example, if I'm listening to an interview of a music celebrity and they change to his/her music, the music gets lost, so I adjust a setting that favors music. It returns to the interview and the audio is so low, I either turn up the volume or got back to settings...sometime both. The moral of the story; good ol' stereo with a subwoofer is good enough for 90% of my listening pleasure without the constant pain in the ass tweaking. Thanks for you brutally honest review.
And yet for 5 mins of the video he seems frustrated it’s not working, after just explaining it’s a hoax. Unless that was the joke… but it’s not. That’s his argument, “there was no height experience”… well no shit, you bought a 5.1 setup that was Atmos enabled not a 5.1.2 or 5.1.4 or 7.1.2 or 7.1.4
Haven't those "strange magic box with many small speakers in front of you magically projecting an entire surround sound system around you" systems been a thing since the '00s? Sales pitch didn't seem particularly convincing back then either.
@@keithwilliams88 sure, the modern capitalistic “accept or die” & “it’s everywhere” approach is despicable, I was just poking holes in his argument because I believe Atmos will stick around going forward, not as a replacement for stereo, but coexisting as a uniquely appealing alternative to tradition (for various reasons). I’ve invested not even a dollar into Atmos, but if I do I‘ve got to make sure I don’t have any blindness from bias. It could fuck my entire life up. So, I’m always curious to hear other opinions. This video seems like a rather personally-charged take that wasn’t fully thought out. The problems lie elsewhere, let’s say. If you know, you know.
By the way, the limit is ACTUALLY 32 channels/objects for any consumer. This is a limitation of data bandwidth over HDMI, you can find it buried deep in the developer docs, but of course this isn’t marketed toward consumers…
Couldn't that limit technically be expanded upon by HDMI over Ethernet? Obviously it's not a consumer grade upgrade but I presume it's possible? (This is coming from the background of the limitations of DMX512 [Lighting protocol] being worked around through Ethernet transfer rates. I haven't personally delved deep enough into audio docs to know whether or not that'd be possible. (I know a lot of live theaters run audio out of Ethernet for multiple channels, I'm referring directly to Atmos here)
@@gambitman7158can you even differentiate between 32 different sound sources simultaneously in your real environment? Most people will track a couple at most. You switch to the important ones. Mixing can group by distance and importance and stay below (way below) the limit.
@MadsterV I can barely do 2... If there's loud music & someone screams something at me I'll be hearing both with no way to differentiate between the 2... I.E. I'm hearing noise 😂
@@gambitman7158hdmi can carry way more raw data than a cat6 cable can, to test cables, we recently had to purchase a new tester that does 48gbps because our old one only did 40. I believe 48 is for 8k video, if i remember correctly, 60fps 4k at 4:4:4 should be 18gbps, this excludes audio! So yeah, ethernet yes, but maybe with 100gbps fiber transceivers in the not too distant future.
RIP to the eleven people listening on a real setup though. You should definitely mix on the best thing you have available to you because the artifacts from your crappy speakers will hide the artifacts of the song. If you really have to kludge it, mix on your car speakers since that's going to be the nicest set of speakers most people own, and also probably the real most common way people listen to music.
i mean all you really need to do is add a little more frequencies or saturation to your low end to make sure its audible by anything without a subwoofer or bass extension
I have 1 foot still in the industry side as a ghost writer, and its getting ridiculous. My gripe is record labels are demanding we spend extra studio sessions prepping atmos stems, at our cost of course, only for the label to then take more of our money (out of the advance) to give it to some upstart that then asks "for screenshots of any reverb settings" so they can produce an atmos mix like wtf. We've had every excuse under the sun including " you can't even get on Apple music without an atmos mix now". And btw, these are pop / edm tracks, its not like they benefit from an immersive sonic experience or have the audience that would appreciate that.
I'm with ya until your last statement. I would argue edm benefits more than most genres of music through Atmos. Just because you don't understand the culture or music, does not give you right to kick dust on it. Also I suggest you do not speak for an audience you are not part of; you're making assumptions you have no way of substatiating, all in frustration for Dolby Atmos.
@@somethingsoupy speaking of "not having the right to kick dust on it" what on earth gives you the right to assume I don't understand EDM or the culture? It's both by my living and my passion. I've been to all the clubs (most of which sum to mono for good reason), I've taken the drugs, I grew up on rave music in its country of origin the UK, I've engineered, played, written and produced it professionally for over a decade. Instead of making assumptions, all you have to say is "I disagree, here's why" and actually share your opinion on why you think it's a good fit, a debate doesn't have to start by tearing into someone you don't know, just present your counter argument! Having said all that here I'm talking about "pop/EDM" as one genre. I'm talking about commercial chart style tracks with full vocals and a dance beat, not separate genres.
@@Bthelick I was not trying to tear you a new one, but I do disagree and believe what you are stating is untrue. It was my opinion, that you did not understand the culture, because what you said is often stated by jaded 50 year old's that mix the same shit every day, be it in post-production or live sound. Obviously, based on your channel, you are part of the community and it was my mistake for making that assumption. I gave you a subscription, your tutorials are very helpful. I hear what you are saying about Pop/EDM, but Pop is just as effective, imo. When I read EDM, I don't think of chart toppers, I think of the guys with 100-10,000 listeners that are pushing the genre to its limits. Apologies for coming off crass, but I think you were being hypocritical as you were attacking a community and people in it. I only sent that same energy back to you. If you had presented that argument and left out the insults, I would have moved on. It was because I saw someone that could not defend themselves, from a person that seemed ignorant in the moment, that I commented. Have a nice day.
As a musician who is deaf in one hear, the only way you're going to hear it as I do is if I pan everything right and tell all y'all to just deal. I have considered this, but ultimately decided to just do a simple stereo mix as best I can and get on with my life.
I once described playing live as being like moving all your equipment across town so you can not hear it, hope you are playing the right thing, having no idea what others are hearing, then taking it all back home and telling yourself that was a success. ....So I've been not quite so sure people actually would want to hear songs like musicians do. Careful what you wish for. But hey, if you want to develop the True Musician Experience Right Channel Noise Codec specially designed for home theater missing half the speakers, and broken monitors that give the true experience...I'm all in with ya. :D
@@AveragePicker Ya see...I know, pretty much for a fact, my stereo imaging is shit. I spend almost no time on it at all. But people say it sounds fine. What we hear and what non-musicians hear is totally different. They like it...but they can't tell you why they like it. its so subjective as to make any standard meaningless.
I am not completely def in one ear, but pretty damn close, it happened because I wanted the perfect guitar tone and raised my 1x12 cab to head level on one side.
Almost same here. I ended up deciding that all releases I'll do will either have almost no steeeo or have a mono alternative mix, just cuz Windows forced mono fucks everything up.
I had a client who was an insanely intelligent sound engineer (developed software to tell you where the “problem” was in an aud8torium…wrote books etc). One of my favorite stories though (besides trying to get him to even talk about setting up my bands practice room…like trying to get your nuclear physicist to work on your toaster) was he toured with The Clash as a teenager (among MANY other bands…but the Clash was his favorite…and Ive never been a fan). Bottom line the Clash used to stick expensive equipment in crappy cabinets so fans wouldnt think they were as posh as they were…and is why they sounded better than “advertised” so to speak.
I should add one other thing. I was genuinely excited about Atmos when I started using it. The idea of making one mix and it sounding good in any speaker setup was tantalizing. That promise is a lie. When we send deliverables to studios, we have to do an Atmos mix, a 7.1 mix, a 5.1 mix, a 2.1 mix (sometimes), and a stereo mix. I thought Atmos would save me time; instead it just made more work for me.
@@caliginousmoira8565 As mentioned, "in theory" its about letting the final mixes object positioning be handled by the equipment at the end user, so it can more accurately be adapted to the speaker setup and room acoustics. It actually is the first time I managed to get a truly impressive surround experience in my small room, specifically having phantom rears actually works better than real rear speakers - as I was always sat too close to them. This is in spite of a lot of time it being PC games I play which probably are only using Atmos to send a channel-based output to my receiver - but the receiver is doing a better job of recreating those virtual speakers positions. It really shines in movies, particularly UHD Bluray that isn't restricted to the streaming services limited bitrates. Although I do find Atmos usually isn't really flat sounding like streaming services often are for legacy surround mixes vs Bluray. The problem is, you need to have the right equipment to make this work and as mentioned in the video there's lots out there that doesn't have this room calibration (or does it poorly) so is missing out on the entire point of HAVING object positioning handled at the end user. So they end up with a worse experience than a well mastered channel based mix.
@@SioxerNikita And then every company takes the universal standard, half implements it, changes the serial clock by 2%, makes up some 'im 12 and this is edgy' name for it, and now we have a common low cost device artificially walled in and price inflated with 17^(16+1) standards to decypher. And drivers for every one of them, for every current version of windows, no linux option, and none of the drivers get along with any of the other drivers...... "Here at [insert literally any computer parts manufacturer here], we care about the customer experience..." ...My pimply fuzz covered ass. 🤬
Same with head-tracking headphones. What do they do? Where is the problem they want to solve? When I'm watching UA-cam and I'm too drunk and the sun hasn't come out yet and I can even barely keep my eyes open, but still want to know where my laptop is? Playing an electric organ on a huge turntable to experience some crazy Leslie effect? Myy hearing ability varies due to my tinnitus so depending on the changing condition I could angle my head a bit while watching TV to equalize sound levels. Maybe you guys got some ideas?
I would like elevation data when playing games but that would also require floor speakers. It's already impractical. They were doing weird things with QSound back in the day...
I have a 7.2.4 setup and my Atmos movie, music and game experience boils down to 10% "that's awesome!" and 90% "that sounds really unnatural and forced."
Is there any music you actually recommend? I've heard a few 5.1 mixes of music and its always like you said, extremely forced seemingly to show off what they can do, rather than actually add anything to the experience. In fact the only time I've been impressed is using Pro Logic IIz on stereo tracks with exceptionally good dynamic range/sound stage (in other words, very rare), that allows it to perform absolute magic on it for a fully immersive experience.
@@alexatkin Anything that includes a technology just for the sake of using a new technology is always going to sound gimmicky. There's nothing miraculous that 5.1 or any other multi-speaker system does that you couldn't hypothetically do with a set of headphones and a binaural audio engine.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 That's simply not true. Headphones may pull all the tricks with your ears but cannot fool your sense of touch. Any concert I've ever been to had a tactile experience where you can feel the vibrations in your clothes or in your seat or in your chest. Speakers can recreate this experience unlike headphones. It's my opinion that 2 speakers in a fully acoustically treated room with the correct balance of absorption, diffusion, and reflective surfaces creates the most immersive audio experience.
@@alexatkin Randomly "Don't worry be happy" is pretty epic in atmos haha, Fleetwood mack albums, The Queen stuff, UB40's Best Of Labour Of Love album, Bob Marley legend album is great, Jamiroquai - cosmic girl, Chaka's - Ain't nobody, Thriller album, Whitney's dance with somebody is randomly pretty epic also. There is a lot nowadays as understandably producers have become better with the change and gotten over the gimmick side of it.
@@alexatkin I really like the BluRay copies of the Alan Parsons Project stuff and the DVD-A copies of Stone Temple Pilots "Core", Frank Zappa's Quadiophiliac, and Nine Inch Nails "The Downward Spiral". Those are all pretty solid surround mixed/mastered albums that don't sound incredibly awkward.
Thank you for this dose of reality. The funniest part is how the Atmos demo on their website uses a deliberately crap stereo mix of the Marvin Gaye song for comparison. I'm sure it's great for a movie theater but I don't live in one. Edit: To answer your question at the end, even if there were no licensing fee premiums associated with Atmos, it doesn't offer much to me.
Thank you for validating what I have been screaming for a decade. The first thing I tell people starting and building up in this recording industry is DON'T listen to marketing telling you what you need or UA-camrs getting paid to shill products. You've been added to my exception list, great work.
To be fair, it’s possible the artist will make more money by rendering an atmos mix of their stereo mix just to have the “atmos” stamp, and who doesn’t want that?
@@talonsid Provided we as studio owners can afford to invest $30-$60K in interface/speaker studio construction upgrades and manage to write that off in depreciation and still come out ahead. Not likely at all.
In university, one of my last assignments was to write a song made for atmos. It was an electronic song, and when writing a song specifically for surround, it can be super cool. Things like lazer sounds firing around. If the song was written for stereo though, it just won't be much of an experience. Finished university almost 2 years ago and I haven't been able to listen to that song properly again.
I'd love to try to actually make a song in Atmos because the songs I have heard in the format are usually rhythm/lead in front, ambient/background in the rear/height, even when a sound is clearly supposed to circle around you.
I had a similar experience after making a piece for a hall with a specific speaker design that covered all walls. I can now only experience it at home, because of course it does not translate as intended in headphones or any regular hifi/car stereo etc.
This is great. I love that you have a contrarian and kind of grumpy vibe going on with things that are good to be grumpy about. Calling out BS is a service to the community. I also love Red Means Recording and Venus Theory for the same reasons.
Dolby: trying to push some weird speaker setups for decades me: just enjoying movies and games on analog headphones, providing me with more spatial awareness than any consumer speaker I've experienced.
@@pazsion yes... that's why I like analog ones. most music is in stereo... which means that it's either gonna flatten the left-right difference to emulate 2 speakers (which I don't like) or it's gonna fake the effect, getting the surround info from nothing. It's even more pronounced in games. it's easy to make a game work with headphones, and vast majority of them will do it correctly. and unless such headphones would appear as more complex setup on a driver level, a given game can't even send proper info as it only compresses it down to stereo, while the "3d effect" is again faked on headphones themself. bottom line is that ignoring your head movement relative to monitor, headphones have only 2 channels for 2 receptors that are your ears, so a good source is very much enough with them.
😩😩You are precisely the type of person Atmos is targeting - people who don't have the technical know-how to get stereo imaging out of consumer speakers
@@b1zzler that's bs. You don't even have any idea which headphone buddy is using lol. A ton of headphones can get awesome imaging, especially open-back ones. I run a SHP9500 / HD599 / HD600 (I gotta sell at least one of them tbh) setup with a DAC+AMP setup and they're amazing. Other than that, I have a pair of (probably considered low-end) Edifier MR4s which sound beautiful as well. There's really not a lot of work or need for "technical know-how" when you have a decent set-up my man. I've tried quite a few of these effects and whatever, ATMOS, DTS stuff, everything. None of it sounds good to me, I always end up returning to my basic preferred EQ settings after 1 or 2 days after the novelty wears off.
@@LoneWanderer905 ?… Of course you can get good imaging with headphones. That’s my entire point. The problem is that he says he hasn’t been able to get imaging out of consumer loudspeakers. That’s generally a problem with speaker selection, speaker placement, AVR/DSP selection, and DSP tuning. Most people can’t be bothered to do all that so they throw in the towel and stick to plug and play solutions, which is precisely what headphones are. Atmos is trying to make in-room spatial audio as “plug-and-play” as headphones are so non-technical consumers can get a pretty close approximation to what mastering engineers are hearing in their Genelec/ATC/B&W rooms. That’s what I was getting at. Not that headphones are bad.
I’ve got a 5.1.4 system. When the movie is mixed in atmos and when loud objects are on the top channels, it’s awesome. That said, it’s exceedingly rare. With music, there are only a few good atmos mixes out there. Very few albums are composed and mixed with spatial audio in mind.
Movies are delivered with multichannel streams, and originally mixed with discrete channels for multichannel sound. What music source are you listening to that delivers multichannel audio?
@@kevofyb Those albums were written, arranged, produced, mixed and mastered to be listen to on two speakers. When you mix a record you try to reproduce the live experience. THe band is in front of you, one guitar on a side and the other guitar on the opposite side. Everything in the back is just a distraction. If an artist want to do an "immersive" record it's his call, not Apple's.
@@casaroli Thanks for the reply. I think I was asking which device you were using to stream music that also offered multichannel output (in addition to the service, though, which is interesting info).
I needed this. I'm a mixing engineer and I just figured atmos was where the field of mixing was going next which probably meant mixing in atmos and then downmixing to stereo. Hearing all of this is comforting because dare I say it, I love stereo mixes. I love hearing songs in stereo. Mixing in stereo is hard enough as is. I'm not interested in surround in music. I don't really notice it all that much in theatres either. It'd be nice to have a personal rig for movies but I think stereo is just fine for music. My opinion may change in the future because I know there's the benefit of less distortion. That being said I recall that most atmos remixes and even the stereo downmixes if they start at atmos tend to usually be direct interpretations so that may be why Benn doesn't hear noticeable difference.
Be careful discounting Atmos because of this guys video. It's controversial so gets lots of eyes (not saying this is why he did it). Don't work with the fear of getting left behind but make sure you go expierience a good atmos setup with music somehwere (not a theater...they don't' eq the sound correctly and it's way to fng loud). You may be surprised. It should sound like a stereo mix with a litle icing on the cake at certain times. If it doesn't, it hasn't been set up properly. It's unfortunate this guy hasn't heard a decent atmos setup in his own home. The out of the box stuff doesn't cut it. Just like he wouldn't buy an out of the box complete studio tracking and mixing setup!
@@NakeanWickliff I just think it's more trouble than it's worth depending on where you are in your career. If you start getting requests for atmos mixes then sure, withdraw your overhead and make the switch. There are great DIY atmos rigs out there that more than do the job if cost is a factor. I also don't think stereo is getting left behind. I think stereo is in it's early adoption phase just as much as surround tends to be implemented in home theatres mostly. 2.1 and 2.2 systems need to be widely adopted first. Alot of people are listening to music on soundbars, mono speakers and consumer grade headphones. Part of the job is archiving things right? For alot of us, atmos can wait.
@@noahhonore2022 I completely agree with all of your points. I just don't like that the OP basically said Atmos is garbage, cause it's not. It's a faulse pretense for a correct decision and others shouldn't make the decision because "atmos sucks" (because it doesn't).
@@NakeanWickliff The concept is fine. Yet another proprietary codec that is inferior to open codecs though? *very* unwelcome. Atmos real does not offer anything that couldn't be done before and at such a high price even professionals balk at it. Consider other problems with proprietary tech that ends up defacto standards, it allows for even less consumer control. No thanks.
I used to install atmos speakers and clients would always be like "I can't wait to listen to everything in atmos!" and I'd always have to have the "...welllllllllllll..." speech ready
5.1 was always good enough for movies tbh. I would even say stereo is enough, but just having that extra bandwidth from separating the center and the LFE, plus a little extra "wow" factor from the surround speakers makes the whole thing worthwile
@collinbeal 7.1 requires a specific room and seating layout to properly enjoy, 5.1 can make any audio better in any kind of room with different seating IMO
@@samuelhildebrandt9074also 5.1 in smaller rooms allows the same side back effect as 7.1 whitch is only required in larger open spaces as the soundnpasing back and forth isn't separated and flows perfectly well inn5.1 in a average living room
I have a 5.1.2 setup just so I could get a taste of every feature without going too crazy. I can confirm that, even in movies with surround sound, the rears and heights are barely used. I think 3.1 is a huge upgrade when watching movies because of the LFE (like you said) and the ability to turn up the center channel to hear dialog better.
some of the "binaural" stuff from the 70's is pretty cool - 2 microphones placed on a "fake head" where the ears would be, and you listen to it on headphones. Pretty sure everything else since then is just a gimmick. I only have 2 ear holes where sound goes in - therefore everything you could possibly hear is captured by 2 microphones placed where your ears would be, and 2 speakers later placed where the microphones were.
I've heard a really-good version 'The Mist' which was done like a radio play instead of audiobook. Now I'll be looking for that cassette in secondhand stores.
Probably the best spatial music experience I've had was Jean-Michel Jarre's Aero, mixed in 5.1 and listened to in my car on a head unit with full surround decoding. Forget the car and road noise (there was plenty), that it was rendered on 4 speakers plus sub, and that I was off-center, the tightness of the timing and the close speakers in the tiny cabin made it immersive. Musically the reason why it worked was because it was JMJ's own vision and not some post-processed "make it sound like it's around you" crap.
People can barely afford their own home right now, never mind installing a sound system in the living room with a 10ft ceiling that the landlord is about to hike the rent on… I’m glad you talked about this, the amount of micromanagement that goes in to the structure of the sales model makes me think companies like atmos may be fans of the pharmaceutical industry.
setting max volume on my phone to hear it through the vacuum cleaner. Yup, probably not the way it was meant to be listened to, but i enjoy music this way.
I'll stick to stereo for my creations. In the unlikely event that my music gets into a movie, they'll either want it in stereo (just the same as most music in surround sound movies is still just stereo) or they can pony up for me to make them an exclusive remix at someone else's studio.
I think surround sound music is cool, provided you do it well, but I'm not pretending like it works on a phone or speakers. It's dedicated to a physical surround sound system. I imagine Atmos would be the same, but they ruined it by slapping the label on things like phones, earbuds, laptops, TV screens, etc. that clearly can't actually handle it.
Totally. Even if your music ends up in the movie, it makes no sense to use anything else than stereo. The only exception that could make sense would be a live performance. Otherwise, surround/ambisonic sound effects from the movie + surround/ambisonic music would collide and confuse everyone. "Oh, I can hear explosions behind me, gunshots in front of me and a drummer playing on the right side of the battlefield" :D
I feel like if you're gonna go beyond Stereo for music, you should be doing something experimental enough where the positioning of sections is integral to it. Or like the type of ambient music that's trying to immerse you in a specific environment I guess lol. Either way, it's kinda weird to do it on pop music
@@BattleAngelSound If you were playing music over an action scene like that it's not like positional accuracy is a majorly important feature. Usually when music is playing it's either subtle background or the primary audio source. I think for louder action scenes it's more likely to be some form of expanded stereo so the rears aren't dead air.
As someone who's been in the market for a new sound system, I cannot thank you enough for this video. The last couple of months have been a mental circus of jumping through hoops and realising that in order to get "the perfect sound" for my 4K discs, I'll have to literally change the way my living room is built. That's insane.
@SamuraiGuy At least get a real receiver. My Denon 1600h can do Atmos, mono, stereo, quad, and basic surround. It's the decision to go with a bespoke solution like a soundbar or home theater in a box that is creating the issue of stereo sound not working well. Not that it's primarily the purchaser at fault here, the marketing for this stuff is manipulative at best. Unfortunately home theater receivers are expensive, but the upside is that you can use any speaker with them and upgrade only some components as desire arises, instead of having to replace it all at once.
@@webby2275 "real" systems are more expensive, but also take more space and time to learn how to pick parts and put them together. I did put together a system fully utilizing a 960h, and I'm glad I did, but when most people don't care to use anything more than their TV speakers, a simple soundbar gets most of the way there. I just want people to get the center channel and sub because they're probably an upgrade most people will appreciate.
My favorite use of spatial audio is careful binaural convolution panning baked into certain elements of a stereo mix - If you do it right the headphone listener gets a nice spatial expecience of that particular element, while also translating well to speakers and not disappearing in mono.
@@arpaddanos9416 idk offhand but there's a free vst called DearVR Micro that you can play around with! I have to exercise restraint to not overuse it haha - before this I used to use an oculus vst plugin that accomplished the same thing
@@asmrengineering3710 There used to be hardware for this too. I used to have a vinyl demo that was impressive even by modern standards. It was just too expensive and deemed unnecessary at the time.
Do you have an example of a song like this available on Apple music? I have not heard a single song that I have enjoyed with spatial audio on earphones, though I do really enjoy it on my genelec system about half the time if the mastering is good.
@@stevenswall sure! some tracks I've done this on: Cul-De-Sac by G Brenner at about 3:00 on uses it pretty overtly, as well as some textures in the background of the track Pluperfect Mind by Dear Laika - also various percussive blips from Dog Ears by scuttlefuzz that wiggle in the stereo field - the use of the panning doesn't really call attention to itself (or provide "immersion") but It adds a lively texture that I like a lot, especially when things move around
Thank you, Benn, for always being a resource that I can send to my friends and family when I just don't have the gumption anymore to try to explain why they're being taken advantage of by money-hungry companies
Every video. EVERY video you make it fantastic. Even if the title and thumbnail don't get me excited, I know that I won't be disappointed. I appreciate your attitude, methodology, and commitment to honesty and transparency. You keep things interesting with your passion and I'm here for it. Keep up the good work Benn!
And his pitch to buy a membership to his channel wasn’t? Btw, literally every product released by Dolby, Apple and Microsoft is a money making opportunity.
@@chromatec-video Well, as far as developers of apps for the creation of audio content, DAWs like Pro Tools, Nuendo, Logic Pro, MIR Pro 3D, etc.. they all now support Atmos, (they’ve built in the Atmos renderer and support the large channel formats like 7.1.2, etc. One misconception about Atmos compared to traditional surround formats like 5.1 is that the listener doesn’t have to have the same speaker setup as the creator. Because Atmos uses object instead of channels, the decoder figures out how to place the sounds with the given speaker setup. So, from the creative side, the industry I work in, Atmos has already won. One of my partners just had an Atmos installation done in his studio. We’re composing in Atmos. Personally, I think all surround formats are a pain, although I think Ambisonics and Binarual technologies are fascinating. Many movie theaters, music halls, performance halls, or anywhere there is an installed playback system, they’re all moving to Atmos, at least in the US. There’s other formats like Aura 3D, but the DAWs don’t support it natively. I’m not sure if consumers will buy into it, but with Apple Music supporting Spatial Audio with headphones, I think that will be one of the more bankable markets.
If I want an immersive experience for music, I try to go see them play live. Otherwise, I just want a mix that sound good in my car while I'm driving (and dealing with a certain amount of road noise). I hope that's what most artists would be okay with for my listening experience!
Living performances generally use mono audio for everything because they can't predict where each audience member is standing. So, aside from the immersiveness of the venue and crowd, the audio is even less immersive than a stereo mix.
@@JustinLesamiz Definitely this, I've found it pretty rare that an artist has their audio nailed at a venue. AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Deadmau5, and Computer Magic (Danz) come to mind of acts where it was actually dialed in very well. Dozens of other performers, many having toured for decades, I thought were generally better served by listening to the albums first so you can counter the imbalances in your head (and a lot of that is just who runs the venue). Live is definitely more for appreciating the artists as people and seeing the fans.
@@LeMicronautit depends on the listener, genre, the band, the engineer, venue, there’s a lot of factors that come into play that make a performance. Comparing studio and live is apples and oranges, there’s a lot of people who prefer only studio or only live versions of songs because of how different or close they are. Me personally I’m fine with sacrificing stereo width and fidelity so I could hear a unique version of a song in a room with fans. There wouldn’t be a demand or need for live albums and bootlegs if they weren’t immersive or good
even if youtube supported 5.1, I doubt that most youtubers would want to spend the time to mix their videos in 5.1. It's a lot more work invovled and for a lot of content on youtube where it's just a personality speaking, it doesn't even make sense to mix in 5 channels.
@Melodic Fables true, but as a wishful thinking speculation, I'd love to watch a Suzanne Ciani concert in surround. There are some videos where it would be extremely nice.
I really, REALLY appreciate the non-profit transition. I’ve never subscribed to someone’s Patreon or whatever before, but I’ll support your efforts for sure, sincerely.
on one hand, mastering my music for object based systems sounds awesome, I'd love to experience my own music that way, and the idea of being able to move instruments like that sounds great, but on the other hand, visiting friends and realizing that they listen to music on a google home that's in a different room with the volume turned up... I can be pretty confident that even the basic stereo things I do are probably lost with the delivery that 90% of people listen with.
I wish stuff was reliably produced at different levels of fidelity. Sure, crank out a hella compressed version for mobile. Maybe make it mono! Then consider an audiophile 2 channel mix, with actual dynamics. Maybe then extend that to an immersive object-based format. I think the reason this doesn’t happen is mostly that the value doesn’t flow back to the artists well enough. There’s a market for those higher fidelity versions, but it’s small and difficult to reach. 😕
I have a similar thought process, and always have since Dolby surround sound first came out for consumer home theater. It would be cool to make music in surround, but it'd only be for me and the random few people who can afford and have a surround set up, and I would NOT want it to be the only way to listen to it, nor it to be forced down peoples throats. I see it as it's own thing, not a replacement for stereo, but something for people with specialized interest in new/exciting audio experiences and money. Not as some standard across the board. Hyper aggressive marketing only works if there's some core level of adoption by a big enough % of the base of stereo listeners, and that just isn't the case. It's hard enough getting people to listen to your music on a decent pair of stereo speakers so they can hear the bass, let alone 24 of them so they can hear sound behind them and above their heads! I've heard someone argue "well Atmos is in Tesla and Mercedes cars now!" and I'm like .. what about "Toyota, Honda, Chevy, Ford, Nissan, Dodge, Mazda..." and all the other more common brands of cars that aren't upmarket and account for the majority of consumer cars? Just because 2 or 3 expensive brands now put these sound systems in their cars doesn't mean it's become widely adopted or normalized in the slightest, nor does it mean it will become so in the future (which was the point they were trying to make). Sure there's a market for it, but it's not big enough to become an overarching standard audio format, when 99% of people will be listening to the folded down 2 speaker version if it did anyway. That's the definition of uneconomic and wasteful, poring so many resources into something that will, for the most part, be completely underutilized in it's intended format. But hey, who'd of thunk Apple would of been at the forefront of ramming something down your throat you don't want or need, to the point of them trying to break/make obsolete something that worked perfectly (stereo) just to force you to buy something most people wont use fully (Atmos wrapped up in Apple spacial audio). At least USB C is cross compatible I suppose, although headphone 3.5mm jacks are still just as useful and haven't gone anywhere, despite their attempt to remove them from existence!
watched your ADHD video earlier and fell down a Benn Jordan rabbit hole, now subed here and following on Spotify... glad I found you (just when I was needing some dopamine) :)
I tried Atmos years ago and immediately thought of the fact that I have never been to a concert where I was surrounded by musicians instead of them standing in front of me, and I dont think I ever will, what benefit do I receive from the tuba player standing behind my head? On a side note, anyone remember the old quadraphonic systems, like an old version of Atmos from back in the day where you'd use 4 speakers instead of two? That was stupid.
I remember that the Quadraphonic mix of Dark Side of the Moon was the primary demonstration album. Deep Purple’s Machine Head was also released in quadraphonic. Smoke on the Water in quad? If there was ever a song that had no business being mixed in a surround format, that was the song.
Sun Rah's Arkestra would play Space Is The Place while walking through the audience to the stage but you wouldn't want that "Tuba player in my right ear " thing if he wasn't actually there.
I have the Pioneer VSX 534 amp connected to JBL Studio One 5.1 speaker set up. Its awesome as the Pioneer amp has Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization and some of the sounds during action scenes do appear to come from above which is great from a 5.1 set up and no height/ceiling speakers required.
I recently saw a really cool video by Steve Mould on the topic of acoustic cameras. By using a bunch of well-placed microphones and clever algorithms, it's possible to accurately visualize where sounds are coming from, as well as how they bounce around and interact with the environment. Watching more of your videos, this topic seemed right up your alley! I'd love to see a video not only on the science behind it, but maybe you could try to make one for yourself!
Here’s a cautionary tale. In about 2003 I converted my studio, basically a glorified home studio with treatment and, at the time, regular work coming in, to 5.1. I’ve done precisely two paid mixes in 5.1 and only one of those ever went into a theatre. I love mixing for surround and listening to it is wonderful. But when I came up in the 80s, the key review of a mix was to dub it onto a cassette and go for a drive and play it on a bog standard factory car audio system. And this was a time when many more people would sit down and actually listen to an album. Earbuds, mobile phones etc have made this type of listening extremely rare. Even the people who say they care about audio quality (I don’t mean audiophiles, those men - I’ve never met a woman who calls herself an audiophile - are lunatics. Green felt markers make your CDs sound better, don’t you know?) anyway, people who care about sound quality often fall for the BS that is Beats headphones. Yes, Beats can sound good. But accurate? Pfffft. And you pay a ton for the name. They are the monster cable of headphones. And they’re headphones. Enough said there. Anyway, I digress. I think this is possibly the 4th or 5th time I’ve been told surround sound, quadrophonic, Atmos, Ambisonic, whatever, is the future of audio and/or music. But stereo remains the majority of listening experiences by so much, the percentage of listens on an immersive or surround system looks like a rounding error. Ok. I, too, love the 4-channel Ambisonic stuff. b-format whatever. It’s a lot of fun. But I’ve never met anyone who could be called anything like a consumer who listens to more than two channels regularly.
I have a vintage Sansui 5500 receiver and the QS-500 rear channel amp attached to it. I have 15 or so quad encoded LPs, not all of them encoded in QS (the version of quad encoding that Sansui developed). Some are SQ so I can't decode those or the CD-4 encoded ones. So maybe I have 5 QS encoded LPs. I got them not because I was looking for them, but I just came across them at goodwill or where ever. I do have Sly & The Family Stone's greatest hits in quad that I also have a stereo pressing of, and it's a pretty good record. A fun listen even if I'm not a rabid fan, but it's in SQ. Womp womp. As for CD-4, that's supposedly results in the best "real" quad experience because unlike the others which are matrix encodings (not true discrete 4 channel) CD-4 does actually encode the 2 additional discrete channels, but there''s a catch. (We'll ignore that stereo records do not contain a discrete left and right channel, but a left channel and a difference channel from which the right channel comes by applying it to the discrete left channel signal that requires no prossesing or demodulating or matrix mathing to get to the actual signal). The CD-4 signal is modulated to 38khz carrier signal (or something near that), which in itself isn't an issue. Demodulating carrier signals is how we get stereo over the FM frequency band and we all love how that sounds. The problem is that your average stylus is not designed to pick up frequencies that high. They go to 22khz maybe. So you need a special (read expensive) stylus of the finest teeny tiny point of contact that gets down and can pick up those frequencies. Then you need special "ultra low capacitance" phono cables so they don't accidentally filter out that frequency. once you got the very low high frequecy signal in your CD-4 pre-amp then you are set becaus the demodulation process is simple and you've got your 2 rear channels. That is if the 50 year old record still has the high frequency data and it hasn't been "scrubbed" off the grooves by your shity conical stereo stylus/cart that you have tracking at 5gms. I've heard that og dolby pro-logic (a 4 channel surround tech, FL. C. FR. RL and RR are just the same single read hannel) uses the same methods as CD-4 to get it's 4 channel signals, and so it can decode a CD-4 signal (I've heard. Could ne wring an evne so it's only the OG Dolby Pro logic version 1 that might work). I aint spending the $400 for a shibata styus just for Sly.
I'll say that as a gamer, it is sad to me that multi-speaker headphones are a rare nitch thing. I think that could all turn around fast if android or apple advertised bluetooth headphone to stream in 4.1 or 6.1 as a standard feature and got a streaming service on board with it. I'm amazed how many people watch movies on their phone instead of a laptop or tv nearby. They select HD on youtube, so it seems logical to have auto surround sound too.
As a consumer I dipped back from 5.1 to stereo because it was always terribly done over the top in games and film. Half the time you had to manually set it to stereo to actually consume the media, and infact you got better positional audio too because it was actually done right instead of lazily as a gimmick.
You're totally right about it being all guys, and those guys work very hard to ensure it stays a boys' only club. I used to call myself an audiophile, as a teenager who just thought it meant you appreciated good quality speakers and headphones. The Audiophiles laughed me out of online spaces because I hadn't spent £20k on an amp and wasn't putting the special felt marker on my CDs, and I was GASP using the analogue audio out on my CD player. I never called myself an audiophile again even though I do certainly seek out the flattest frequency response curve in headphones and stuff like that - stuff I didn't know about as a teen but certainly was never informed about by those Audiophiles. It's musicians who taught me about all that. Musicians care to distinguish the snake-oil in a way those guys just don't.
Wow, the “.. and didn’t know that homeless people exist”-comment stunned me! That line made me immediately click the subscribe button and the like button! Well done, sir! First time I hear someone actually repeating what I’ve been annoying my friends with since I was a child, basically saying ‘I have no problems with ridiculously rich people, I have a problem with ridiculously rich people living and staying (or becoming) rich in a world, or even in a community, with poor/starving people!’. There is no way around it, it is absolutely appalling and immoral. No one can make an honest case for the rich deserving to be rich while the poor should only blame themselves. Yet, financial bliss is still being treated as an accomplishment that demand way out-of-proportion respect and privilege. How can you defend having, let’s say, a billion dollar “knowing homeless people exist”?? You really can’t make do with 999 million? Or 99 million? Or 9 million? How high maintenance can a person get without crossing the line into actually seeming to be handicapped? If virtually everybody else (statistics) can make it with a fraction of a million, what damage is causing the need of x1000 that amount to keep a person alive AND well? Sorry, rambling away here! Anyways, mad respect to you, sir! Regards, Not a bitter poor person! I’m actually by many standards rich myself living in Sweden, working as doctor (psychiatrist). Although many lengths away from the american wages that doctors enjoys there over the pond, I do get to enjoy tax-payed social welfare for me and my family like kindergarten, school, healthcare etc.. I mean, I didn’t have to pay a dime going through a world renowned and internationally highly rated medical school in Stockholm (Karolinska Institutet). Much love to you!
This video *really* strikes a chord with me. Back in the day, I would use a 5.1 system for my games, and for the most part it would just work. Especially with PC games. Now, finding a 5.1 system or Atmos system that supports HDMI and is actually *affordable* is a real headache. There are SOOOOO many products out there that are complete junk, and even the ones that are "good" don't really compare to what I was using 15 years ago. It all took me completely by surprise when I went looking to buy a new sound system, because I foolishly assumed the surround ecosystem would have become a lot more streamlined and standardized by now. Silly me.
I got a $400 (probably $500 now) Yamaha bundle with an actual 5.1 avr and all 6 speakers. Works really well. Has 4k HDR HDMI and everything. I think Yamaha is the best entry point to actual AVRs, they have the same software as the high end models on the cheaper ones so they have fully fleshed out features.
So I have a device, that in theory.. will.. in theory.. with many extra steps that have insured it's not been taken out of the plastic.. switch RCA into HDMI.. theoretically... Apparently this is just something that they really don't want you to do LOL.. and I've never used HDMI for anything audio.... Especially as a PC gamer that's always had a sound card where the outputs have always been analog LOL.. like the HDMI thing happened and, it was like cool story bro.. that'll be great if I don't want to hook up speakers and I'm using a TV (which I do, but for displaying purposes, I treat it like a monitor which I wouldn't want to have audio anyways LOL just add more pass-throughs for heaven's sake LOL..) What's really frustrating is I have a near perfect audio setup for to the point where I've set it up in a way that should I wish to improve it I would have to spend significantly more money and as long as I don't hear anything like that.. I'm at the top of where I need to be LOL.. and it was based around the problem of needing to find RCA for surround on my sound card.. No I don't like center channels and I don't like subwoofers.. I don't need them either LOL I have full range floor speakers that each have 12 in woofers.. and if I was going to set up subs, I would have to do a whole bunch of things that I don't want to do LOL when I can get at the very least consistent surround low channels in surround.... and also honestly like center channels are kind of pointless.. if I was doing a 5.1 setup then yeah I would wanta center channel probably because we're talking about midget speakers at that point.. and then yeah I would have to get a sub because it would need to start doing all the sub things to compensate for the fact that the center channel is almost universally going to be limited in range, just on the mixing and never mind the output end... Of course, ghosting the center channel has never been a problem in PC world, as has full range surround never been a problem.. it just does the thing, but that translation is very sad that my production computer, has not so much lacking the DRM handshakes as all of the components in the chain have the DRM handshake of the Dolby and the DTs.. including the receiver.. including the television which is not in the chain and because I don't want to watch my content on a cell phone.. the best way to get quality is to either buy a Blu-ray or torrent a Blu-ray as streaming services don't really provide you with the surround sound on the computer.. or even the 4K or any number of things... One of these days I'm going to set up XP, if I can figure out how to find that 64-bit version that I had always tried to get to work but never could.. and just see if I was just remembering things wrong.. I feel like I I wasn't, but it was because I wasn't looking for it, I wasn't told that it had it I just remembered it having it and I remember it not having it when unreal 3 got really popular.. LOL I just remembered that being jarring having somebody in a house on the floor above me sound like he was behind me.. I was like well that's bad sound design why doesn't it do up and down....lol.
@@jakedill1304 Yeah as someone who mixes and makes tracks, but also games, I use HDMI audio only when I am using my PC for youtube or am not playing a game where I need to listen for footsteps etc, or if I CBA to turn my speakers on, or it's late at night or something. It's useful to not have extra wires, but that's about it really. I had exactly the same experience with DVI+fiber optics digital out to my monitor except it had 2 wires instead of one (it's basically the same thing, HDMI = DVI+digital audio).
HDMI was invented to push HDCP copy protections onto consumer devices. The read single cable AV standard is SDI using industry-standard 50 ohm coax with BNC connectors.
@@jamesphillips2285 HDMI and DVI-D are two standards for the transmission of digital image signals, each with different protocols, but in part the same type of conductor which, among other things, also makes them compatible with each other. The difference is primarily that DVI is a computer monitor standard and not prepared for sound transfer. The DVI protocol is somewhat more sensitive to noise and therefore cannot cope with as long cables as HDMI. HDMI is a newer standard and designed for multimedia transmission and the protocol therefore has more options and control signals than DVI (including things like HDCP).
Great video. I was weak and bought a Klipsch Atmos system. The ceiling reflections didn't come through at all, but I can say that listening to a 5.1 mix of an album where a skilled musician/mix engineer (eg Steven Wilson) actually mixed in 5.1 is a really cool albeit privileged experience.
Absolutely loving the swearing and honesty in this video. Both of those things are extremely rare in the world of audio where most people are just trying to sell you some new scam (AMP/DAC).
I cannot get over how amazingly made your videos are! I just found your channel, and everything is just executed so perfectly. Everything from the initial idea, scientific explanations, editing, engagement, etc. is done so well. Thanks for these awesome videos, and I'm excited to see more of your stuff in the future!
I really like Atmos as a concept - having ultimate flexibility with mixing and a (theoretically) better listening experience is something I'm all for. What I'm personally not such a fan of, with Dolby's implementation at least, is the proprietary nature of the format. I don't like the idea that I should have to license the way that I distribute my music, that personally doesn't sit right with me. From the little research I've done though, the ADM format (which Atmos uses to hold its data) appears to be open source, so there is some possibility there I suppose. Anyhow, the cost of entry having a system capable of using it professionally seems more than a little bit steep, which is my main reason for sticking to Stereo for now.
Agreed. It should really be dedicated to high end "pro" environments, primarily used in theaters, planetariums and billionaires' cigar rooms. At least the producers would know that the equipment being used would be capable of delivering what they are hearing during the mixing/mastering process. Having consumers needing to do so much and shell out money at every step is a sure way to degrade the brand.
I totally agree, It has uses and is a neat idea for a format. Makes surround sound not be limited to just surround systems. But this hyper aggressive marketing and forcing of the consumer to comply or miss out by slowly attempting to push for standard stereo to go into obsolescence is shady AF imo. No wonder Apple has got their mits all over this one.
I went speaker shopping with my bother a while ago and I knew those pictures on the boxes with the 3D reflections were crap!! Thanks for your research and detail!!! Super helpful! Helping the community a ton!
It just occurred to me to check after watching this and it turns out I have an Atmos soundbar on my TV. The clarity of bass frequencies when I'm watching Masterchef is unrivalled.
I just canceled my Atmos speaker order because of this video, thank you for saving me money and the headache of trying to figure out why it didn't work as promised!!
Loved this! Thanks for pointing out that the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. And thanks, too, for reaffirming that the best system is the one that sounds best to you, the individual. So many different ear shapes, canal depths, room dimensions, varying surface angles & treatments, room contents, thin or thick curtains/fabrics, popcorn ceilings, stucco, textured plaster, nasal pressure, allergies, distance from the sound... ad nauseam. You reminded me of the first AMAZING STEREO records with trains racing across your living room & planes landing or horses galloping. Then QUAD! Egads! Just plug up your side head holes up with a decent pair of cans or buds, or a set of speakers that you really, really like and sit back and watch all the FOMOs go nuts getting the latest shiny toy. Thanks again & long may you wave.
I have a 7.1 setup on my PC, all near field studio monitors. There have been so many times when I thought something was mixed in surround when it turned out to be just an incredible stereo mix, so much so that I had to rewind and power off the front channel to confirm nothing was coming from any other speaker. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the 7.1 setup when it does kick in, especially for games (oddly enough even titles from over 10 years ago), but don't underestimate the power of a good stereo setup and mix!
I already have a grudge with dolby for taking away true calculated hrtf audio for gaming by aureal, and they're just going further and further with this "virtual speaker" stuff. Edit: yeah sorry, as pointed out by drinklava it was creative labs who bought aureal. But the point still stand that it shows they can trick us with the virtual surround sound.
Windows breaking driver compatibility every 6mo is what killed creative. You can only take so many years of having to rewrite and refix stuff you've already sold before it's not worth it anymore.
This video introduced me to your channel and it's fantastic. You have no idea how satisfying it is to finally see someone crystalizing these ideas so eloquently and effectively.
Thank you for this vid! Was debating on retiring my venerable ProLogic IIx system for a newer Atmos system. Thank you for the least bias review on this platform and showing that while the tech is interesting it is heavily marketing hype and beyond expensive!
Great video. Thanks a lot! I had more or less the same experience figuring this out. Recently I was enticed to invest in Atmos from the professional side. Let me tell you a little bit about my experience. I am mixing and doing audio post for a living and I noticed that there suddenly was a demand for mixing movies in Atmos. With extensive surround mixes I usually mixed in stereo and then added a couple of days for upmixing it on a sound stage. This is way harder with Atmos as the whole strategy for mixing in Atmos feels really different to me. In surround it is mostly not really useful to have things flying all around the speakers: surround works great for adding ambiance, extent the panorama a bit, and having the odd directional fx because it works good with the picture. In Atmos I find that a lot of people are really tracking quite a big part of the things that you see with all sorts of fx with the (Atmos) virtual objects through the perspective of the picture. This is not really easily and, most important to me, creatively being achieved in an upmix. Long story short: it is forcing me to buy a full Atmos setup and make major adjustments to the setup and treatment in my room. About the music format I recently heard a rumor. Maybe you know if this is true. A lot of rights of music from the fifties and soon the sixties will expire. Atmos is supposed to renew these rights as it is technically a different format. Because it is theoretically possible to fold Atmos to a stereo mix, they might be able to replace the original stereo mix with the new Atmos file. I have not been able to confirm this, but I am curious to know if it's true. Thanks again for all the work. This is great information I wish I found earlier.
Once more great content. My only experience with Atmos is in Village Cinemas. That's it. So, every time i look at a movie with the Atmos logo on the ticket when I go to watch the movie in the theater I experience nothing special or extremely different. Nothing that I haven't experienced before with any older multichannel Surround system that we knew from years or decades ago. Except that ticket is a couple of Euros more expensive.
And those extra €2 is exactly why they made it ;) We can still immensely enjoy black and white films in mono from almost a century ago. Why? Because they were written, acted and directed as they should be. I don't need to hear the chopper hovering over my head if the screenplay sucks ;)
This is so perfectly timed for me, as I'm getting ready to move, and was literally looking into upgrading my surround sound system earlier today. Not that I'm planning on getting anything too advanced, but you've given me a lot of great information.
@@EversonBernardes Honestly, that may be the way we go, as the house I'll be moving into has pretty much nothing but long, narrow rooms, and the room the TV will go in can realistically only be set up one way, so we don't even really have room for anything behind the couch.
This guy is a tool, if you are building a HT at home with a proper setup set it up for Atmos. After upgrading my 5.1 setup to add atmos speakers on the ceiling it was a notable improvement on well mastered atmos films.
@@bb-sw6ur He's not completely wrong. Benn Jordan makes a good argument in pointing out that slapping atmos on all sorts of shitty consumer products is literally just to fleece the customer since you cannot reproduce proper spatial audio without a proper setup. BUT, If you are able to put in actual ceiling speakers into your setup, atmos will sound awesome, and it's the format most content that's setup for "immersive audio" is going to be in. I have a 5.1 setup myself, and I would never setup 7.1, or atmos, or whatever, because I am a poor and it's out of my budget. The problem here lies with making poor people think that they can reproduce accurate spatial audio with cheap consumer hardware to make more money. Your budget should determine how you step up in the audio tiers, and yea you gotta do a little research to figure out what you should actually be getting, and stop letting advertisers sell you fancy buzzwords.
This is spot on. When Apple Music did their big Lossless/ATMOS update I was extremely happy…to have lossless. I didn’t know much about ATMOS so immediately turned it off in my Apple Music setting. Apple Lossless is awesome! ALAC is just an uncompressed version of what the artist (and their mixer) uploaded. If they chose to upload in 24 bit 48kHz format, that is what my RME plays back through my amp to my headphones or stereo speakers. And that’s a LOT of what’s on Apple Music. Almost everything is at least lossless CD quality (16/44). And many artist do just upload at least 24 bit since that’s easy to get from their DAW. A few times I have turned on ATMOS to see what all the advertising is about. Like when I purchased my new Apple AirPods Pro for working in noisy environments. I tried them in a quiet room listing to movies on my Apple TV. It’s OK for listing to movies, but honestly I’m happier with my old Pioneer 5.1 surround speakers. For me a lot of the immersion is the LFE effects shaking my feet. If I A/B with ATMOS on/off for any music I love, I would choose the stereo mix 100% of the time. It’s just two mixes, and I like that I can choose the stereo mix. Hopefully artists will always upload both mixes. To me the ATMOS always sounds like someone just went to town with an EQ and reverb like a 1980’s teenager trying to blow away their buddies with their new Realistic EQ. So just turn off ATMOS and love what Apple did with Lossless/ALAC. It’s one easy setting and it’s off forever. Apple Music Lossless is an awesome way to access an insane library of music at a very affordable monthly price. And honestly one of the best ways to hear it is with an iPhone 6s (available used for maybe $150) and a good pair of wired headphones like the Sennheiser HD 560S (available for around $180). For less than $350 you can have a listening experience that really is what the artist intended and may make you cry if you love music. Or with a newer phone/tablet without a headphone jack you can buy a nice headphone DAC for around $150 to connect to lightning.
"you can have a listening experience that really is what the artist intended" Unfortunately not accurate. Unless you are listening to bedroom mixes, chances are that mixing and mastering engineers have imprinted their opinion on the sound (and some of them have strongs opinions, and can be very decisive and act in a way that the artist feel they have some authority, despite many of them having quite huge gaps in understanding of hearing). But even if the engineers nail the artists vision, or improve on it, so the artist is even more pleased with what they are hearing (and not what they should be told to like, and believe the engineer to be correct). Unless it is a bedroom production, and even then in many cases, the mixing and mastering will be made with nearfield monitors, and adopted for that. The issue with that, is that when listening to speakers in a room, there will be channel crosstalk, so sounds for the right and left respectively will also reach the opposite ear. That impacts the "soundstage" quite a lot. So the panning and balance will be made for that situation, not for headphones where each channel is discretely delivered to the ear. So the vision of the soundstage will be off (it will be for your home stereo speaker set-up as well, and the engineer in the sweetspot will hear it one way, the artists sitting behind or to the side, will have heard it differently as well, so basically it only translate to a similar listening position in a similar room... but that has been the case for several of decades, but possibly even more with headphones compared to speakers). This also extends to stereo reverbs, where the reflection may be discreetly delivered in the stereo signal, making it so that stereo reverbs sounds very unnatural. And then there is an issue that can in theory be dealt with, the low end; our hearing can't tell the direction of low end sounds, that is why it is fine to have a cross over for a subwoofer at 120Hz, if needed, but when bass is mixed in stereo, and listened to through headphones, you get this weird mono bass, that is completely unnatural, but there are tools to deal with this, making bass mono, and with speakers in a room, no one would suffer from that anyway. So you are often not getting what the artist, or even engineer intended when listening with headphones. And here, something like Atmos could have made sense, if one of the main goals and priorities was to ensure that a mix made on speakers would translate to headphone use. There are some tools to mix with headphones and making it sound a bit like being in a room, and they are better at it than Atmos for headphones. And Apple is even using their own, not the Dolby Atmos for headphones, but applying their own encoder on it, that according to some sounds worse, but ultimately, ensures that there is no single standard, so even if Dolby would vatly improve their Atmos for headphone algorithm to actually work for translating stereo speaker mixes to headphone, as long as Apple uses their own, there would not be a single way to reference the results. As for proper Atmos mixes, I do feel it can be quite effective. There is the basic reverbs where the reflections are actually coming from different places, just like in a real environment. And it can be used to add environmental sounds, like rain or wind, in an immersive way. There are also some cool effects like "voice of god", for parts of the vocals, or as spoken words. You can make the soundstage wider, and for example placing a choir behind the listener. And you could also do a mix that sounds like the listener sitting in the center of a live recording in a studio. But there should be some intent behind it. I'm 100% sure the Beatles had they had access to Atmos, they would have used it, so would have Pink Floyd, probably Frank Zappa, it is just that today we do not know how, so it is hard to make immersive mixes where the artists (at the mental stage they were at when making the songs), can tell us how they would have made them. Sure there would have beeen swirling vocals, and percussion, and weird sound effects that they werent even able to record at the time, as it was such a hustle using multiple tapes. But for everyday listening, the most important things we could ask of a new format, is to actually translate the mix between different playback devices, with different types of speakers and hedphone configurations, be that adding loudness compression, and distortion to the low end to generat audible bass on a device where the speaker(s) can't play back low end. Allt to make sure that the artists (and possibly engineers), could make a mix that sounds the best on the playback they intended it for, will maximum dynamics, and good bass balance, but still sounds reasonable on other playback systems (but really, I would like the whole industry to move to headphone first, as there are many benefits, not only as it translates better to how people that care about the sound will mostly listen, it also have a lot of benefits when mixing, as headphones remove the room, and the missalignment to the sweetspot between the speaker, that regurarely happens, when interacting with hardware, or simply accidentally move, or when adjusting seating position, as well as for everyone else in the room). And atmos doesn't do that, and nothing suggest Dolby has any such plans. And then DTS:X has a super useful tool that Atmos lacks, for home playback of films/series, the dialogue lift feature, where all dialogue objects can be tagged as such, enabling the listener to increase all dialogue elements, no matter what speaker they will come out off. It was unfortunately not made mandatory. And just like with music engineers, sound engineers for films, directors and all sort of other creatives in the industry, lack a lot of understanding of hearing, and completely lacks the fresh ears of hearing material for the first time, so they can't judge how it will actually be heard, but they believe they are the experts, and most would not accept giving the consumers control over the balance of audio, as they feel it would negatively impact their work.
@@TheJonHolstein You misunderstand one thing, human hearing doesn't become non directional below 120hz, the increasingly omnidirectional radiation patterns of speakers at lower frequencies particularly in a reflective room leads to non directional sound but we still have directional hearing capacity at low frequencies. You can most definitely feel the direction of impact from low frequency impulses well below 20hz in an open space.
@@JohnSmith-qt4pv Now you are clearly mixing up things. We don't hear below 20Hz, we feel it, a different sense. You also have to understand the different between being able to tell the direction of a sound, because of overtones in the sound, or generated by things vibrating because of the sound. If you think you hear direction of low end in a room, you are probably hearing direction of overtones, so centering a low end instrument is that what you would do, but you would center the low end of the instrument or the mix, and let he high end be directional. If we are talking about music mixing, a truly open space is quite irrelevant as well, they don't make for good listening situations.
@@TheJonHolstein have a like for the intelligent reply 👍 I disagree on one thing though: Open spaces, large sub arrays and heavy EDM works great together. Vibrate your insides levels of bass :)
I'm using a 7.2.4 system at home, in a special room, just for that with a 120" canvas. It's absolutely mind-blowing, and i just LOVE it and I'm very thankful for every dolby atmos release out there. That being said, i totally understand why most people won't take this kind of struggle to get something similar at home. Standing 7 speakers perfectly aligned in your living room is a pain in the a** enough. But get 4 ceiling speakers going is another kind of struggle. Cable management is a nightmare, so is the alignment. And even then, you just have one spot in the room to really enjoy it. In my cinema room I used over 100 meters of cable, for the speakers only. Along comes hdmi cables, (expensive) composite cables for the subwoofers, ethernet, toslink cables for some older tech, etc. It's a nightmare. For me, it's perfectly fine, because i love this kind of stuff. But i totally understand anyone who doesn't even want to set up a 5.1 system. Most "normal" people got headaches by just seeing the tons of cables behind my AV reciever.
Same, but on a budget. Atmos 5.1.2 and 75". Our room is too small to handle a larger display and more speakers anyway. I absolutely love having this room when watching movies, but I never go there to listen to music and I've never tried mixing my own stuff in anything else than old school stereo. Have you found any music mixes where immersive sound adds any value? I'm thinking it could make sense for live recordings of acoustic instruments in a nice sounding room. Perhaps a jazz trio in a lively club or symphony orchestra in a large concert hall. Use it to add the environment, not in-your-face-FX.
@@carlkolthoff5402 Pink Floyd the Dark Side of the Moon, or Mike Oldfield Tubular bells are a prime example for good Atmos Music. Yello also has a special atmos album, and Billy eilish makes some decent tracks. Of course also a matter of your music taste ;)
@@carlkolthoff5402 Pink Floyd the Dark Side of the moon and Mike Oldfield Tubular bells are prime examples for good Atmos Music. Yello also has a special atmos album, and Billy eilish makes some decent tracks in Atmos too. But of course it all depends on your music taste
the best headphone experience I had was on a PS4 with some turtle beach stealths. It was on Far Cry Primal and the 3d was insane on it. DTX I think, but I could hear and track things without a UI just based on the sound alone. It was phenomenal. Tried switching to steel series and definitely not the same feeling. The headphones matter big time
The first time I heard immersive audio was at Galaxy Studios and it was their format, Auro 3D. It blew me away. Dolby Atmos has yet to impress me on the same level. I fully agree with your assessment of Dolby Atmos-mixed tracks… some random panning and, on a number of tracks I listened to, some extra reverb, I guess to make it sound… spacious? Add in head tracking and it is just an unpleasant experience… I despise those mixes in the early days of stereo where the entire summit was sent only to the left channel along with the vocals and the guitar and bass in the right… why would I want this to happen whenever I turn my head? I want the music to stay in one place - in front of me, like I was at a show, watching the band.
To my mind listening to music is like eating food; I dream about beautiful, delicious high end meals in restaurants with great atmosphere and I imagine setting up a room in my house with a perfect surround sound system. But in the end I’m eating a granola bar at work and listening to music on the go through my 30 dollar Jlab earbuds.🤷🏼♂️
Huge W. I love this video so much man. End music gate keeping forever! Also so cool that you scored films for planetariums! I love the depth of your musical background and resume.
many years ago I talked to the the VP of Infinity audio who back in the day had arguably one of the best audio experiences anywhere and his fave way to listen to music was on a 12 inch full range MONO speaker in his garage. being a musician and sound designer after sitting in the middle of an orchestra I can tell you it's IMPOSSIBLE to remotely recreate the sound of of anything you originally hear with your ears, so just do what works for you!
As an owner of an Atmos capable sound system (upfiring speakers not overhead) I can say that I basically exclusively use it for film/series and gaming content. I wouldn't say it's exactly night and day between a good 5.1 system but it does tend to handle sound placement with a bit more precision. My system is not expensive by sound system standards but it's also not an entry level unit either. My favourite thing about it though is it's apparent ability to "upmix" stereo or standard surround content into "Atmos" content via the Dolby app on PC. Clearly a dedicated Atmos mix is going to yield better results but it does a surprisingly good job at emulating it particularly with games and software that don't feature Atmos support. I wouldn't say Atmos is a deal breaker but with the right system it's quite versatile.
I'm an audiophile and a home theater enthusiast. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a "bubble of sound" unless your room is in the literal shape of a bubble. Acoustics is THE most important thing. There are people with legitimate atmos systems that still don't sound right. You're not going to get there with a soundbar or ceiling reflecting speakers. Even commercial cinemas don't sound like a bubble.
As you rightly pointed out, atmos is insanely expensive and insanely picky but what that means is that your mid range (sub $1000) sound bar is more like an entry level product in this context. Unfortunately to get a reasonable experience with atmos, you need something like a atmos receiver, separate speakers and most importantly in ceiling speakers. And that’s going to be a lot more expensive than $1000. And even then the best experiences are going to be from a handful of movies that mix for atmos in a noticeable way. It really sucks but you’re right that you just need to spend more money and also maybe install it in a bit more of a rectangular room. So… yeah not really a mass market product at the moment.
@@drelephanttube yeah that’s definitely a pretty rough. I almost feel like there should be like a “true atmos” certification or better yet not give the option for substandard equipment to have atmos branding at all. If only there was some kind of organisation that was in charge of atmos certification 🙃
I remember the algorithm directing me to your channel a while ago. You've become a great Presenter on a series of really interesting topics, delved into with credibilty. I especially enjoyed the one on the Hum sound driving everybody nutz. Respect.
I just got really tired when I saw all the announcements and marketing about this ramping up. The base tech itself with independently moving sound objects seems very reasonable but having to install proprietary software/hardware to only play back audio correctly seems to go very much backwards in time for me. A future without licence free fully documented standards for the basic aspects of audio playback is not a direction I want to support.
DDP Atmos is backwards compatible with DDP 5.1 (2000s codec), but the big problem is that many streaming providers are locking any surround presentation, unless you have something new-ish & Atmos compatible.
@@junh1024 I want a fully open and license free standard so that everyone can implement their own codec for play back. It does not matter to me if a new standard can fall back to another older proprietary ac3 codec. I want to get rid of both, especially if this is going to start to apply to audio streams in general and just not movie soundtracks. Having a single company controlling everything or 2-3 companies with competing proprietary standards is bad for progress and compatibility. An license free to implemnt AES standard would be a lot more interesting ... I believe there is at least some related work being done there (AES69-2022)
@@pleggli 1. DDP Atmos is well-documented in ETSI TS 103 420 " backwards compatible object carriage " , and Cavern implements DDPA some playback support. 2. Patents on AC3 & LC-AAC have expired, so there should be no fees to use them. 3. AES69-2022 AFAIK describes a format for exchange of spatial-related head data, but not spatial content itself. 4. Google is working on Caviar/IAMF with AOM , but again, probably mostly google-based. 5. There is ADM from BS.2076 , but it's mainly a production format & incredibly hard to implement the full standard.
@@junh1024 Weird that I haven't seen those documents before.. I still don't know if it is possible to implement a decoder and playback system without having to buy patent licenses from Dolby but if we put that aside having all this information published like this is a good start in any case. I guess the trademark name won't ever be free to use in a product but that's maybe less of a problem as long as the implementation itself is possible to develop.
One criticism: I work in the pop music world a lot and as I understand it Apple has been requiring spacial audio mixes of a lot of AAA level artists as of late if they want any sort of special treatment on Apple Music (banners, placements and so on). So there has been a huge upsurge in people doing apple spacial audio/atmos mixes (not sure if they're 100% interchangeable but I know they're both object based). I feel like listening to some of the big pop mixes using AirPods Pro/Maxes would be a worthy addition to this since there is a lot of care being put in it, and the setup is super smooth. That stated, the thing I've been most impressed by (by far) has been the Atmos classical mixes. Totally agree with the marketing bullshit part of all of it though, it's hard to take anything seriously when you see Atmos stickers slapped on a $200 sound bar at Best Buy. What I do think is worth consideration though is car manufacturers starting to add Atmos to their stereos. If that achieves widespread adoption (a big if, I know) then I think spacial is here to stay.
Finally, someone telling us the truth about Atmos. I'm a classical music lover and love trying to recreate the live Orchestra Hall sound, since I can't go to concerts. I thought of upgrading to Atmos and buying 4 more speakers for height, front and back. Then I discovered that only one classical release has been done in Atmos and it was artificially recreated from a 1960's 2 channel recording of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic of Beethoven's symphonies. No thank you. I'll stick with MDG's 2+2+2 almost real sounding 3-D surround recordings on SACD using 6 channels 2 front + 2 front height + 2 rear speakers. Also, SACD's 5.0 (and 5.1) surround is pretty good too, as long as the rear channel speakers are a couple feet above the ear level behind you. I have one chair in the center of my listening room in the sweet spot for me only. Total cost after saving for about 4-years was about $6,000 for a used Denon SACD multi-channel player, used Denon receiver and good set of 7 speakers plus a sub-woofer in 2009. The 7.1 speakers took up 80% of the budget. It took a lot of thinking to make it work right and be able to switch between MDG's 2 + 2 + 2 set-up and a standard 5.1 set-up easily. I really love the way classical music surround sound SACD's sound on my system. I will not be "upgrading" to Atmos!
I remember when Atmos was first introduced in cinemas, film sound mixers really liked that it would automatically downmix to smaller systems. So one mix could just be run through a series of renderers and produce 2-channel, 5.1, 7.1 mixes etc. Would be nice if that was highlighted more and/or the rendering software available en masse were better? I've noticed the difference in going to lots of movies, often seeing some movies in Atmos rooms and 5.1 rooms to compare the experience. It's largely positive. It benefits music in this film mixes too, because the freedom from channels gives the mixers the ability to more precisely separate music from sound effects and dialogue during busy sequences All this is just what I've read and heard for myself, and again, is largely biased towards the cinema experience. But good Atmos mixes in movie theaters sound incredible, and I'm still hoping that those benefits can make their way into consumer music world
When you got to describing the experience of hearing your own music through this gimmick, I was nodding profusely. Exactly that! 100 %! Thanks for this breakdown.
It isn't a gimmick at all. It just isn't for everyone. The cost prohibitive part of it is real, but it DOES do exactly what it says it does if used properly by somebody that knows what they're doing.
@@JustinLesamiz Fair enough. The only time atmos has sounded good to me was listening to music in the mixing studio of friend who does movie atmos music mixes with absolute pro gear in a pro room. Any simulation with headphones etc. seems kind of pointless to me, but you do you.
As a Pure Consumer I am really glad to have had my feelings and findings validated by your little rant. I am very late to the immersive sound pursuit having only just added an AVR and upgraded to 5.1 a couple of years ago. So far I've discovered that I have to really work hard to find any source material that gets my rear channels doing anything at all. Most movies make no use of the rears. Most of my streaming is UA-cam and that's all in stereo. The surround speakers don't make a peep unless some virtualization software somewhere decides to synthesize something for them. But one really good thing has resulted from going 5.1: that center channel makes movie dialogue clearer for me. So 3.1 would have been all I need. Recently I decided to try the cheapest AVR that could get to grok Atmos (an Onkyo 7.1 AVR) just to see if I could get *something* surround-ish sounding. I run 5.1 on it, ignore the two extra channels and let the AVR do "virtualization". I found have exactly one disk that shows this off well: Mad Max Fury Road. Stunning sound. Just super glad I never tried adding more surrounds, ceiling speakers, and all the other crap.
I pass all my audio through a high-end DAC before feeding it directly into a wax cylinder so I can get that genuine flapper 1920’s vibe. I wanna hear music the way Thomas Edison *intended* it to be heard.
Buys $30,000 Atmos system…. Streams MP3s from a Plex server
@@nickcarter4006You are really not far from the truth in that…although, I do try to take advantage of Plex’s support for FLAC* files. Plex Amp is easily my favorite music streaming app. Simple, functional, supports my extensive personal library of purchased music from the days before digital distro, and really a beautiful UI.
\*My phone *really* wanted to autocorrect this to say “flaccid”.
@@silverXnoise so analog?
@@colourbasscolourbassweapon2135 Flannelog
@@silverXnoise lol dude
Finally my snare can sound shit in 3D
And you'll have to spend, like, 3x the amount of time needed to get to it sounding like shit! (mine usually takes anywhere between 2 and 5 hours).
hey!
“Almost there….” *sets track to mono* “…PERFECTION”
@@JBATahoe oh god Forget about having a marching band 🤣😂 no cap
Yes
Imo Dolby Atmos sounds crazy nice but only if it is ACTUALLY utilised correctly. I’ve heard some awful atmos mixes which feel like you might as well should have not mixed in atmos… but it’s worth it for the good mixes. My setup is with Sonos and I can definitely hear things coming above and behind me like the “bubble” they claim. Sooooo sounds like good atmos just ain’t possible at that cheaper budget. (Also Sonos allow stereo mix or atmos depending on track soo)
Agreed. I have a discrete 5.1.2 system powered by a Marantz NR1609 and it sounds pretty great in movies, everything else is meh. I'm also a bit crazy I guess because I bought all of this originally when I was living in a 450 sq ft Manhattan apartment! I've since upgraded to an 850 sq ft apartment in Miami, the living room is an odd shape though so the speakers stick out/are crammed close together.
I have the Samsung Q990D Atmos Bar with rear speakers. It sounds incredible. It has a feature that calibrates to your rooms dimensions and it is works. Also supports the other Dolby formats and even DTS:X, no need to calibrate anything. Just set the channel sound level for the speakers to your likings and then the SpaceFit setting will adjust the individual sound levels to your rooms dimension for optimal surround, the built in microphone measures the sound feedback and knows what to adjust.. Music on this thing also sounds really great, especially the remastered tracks (like Dire straits or Phil Collins. Of course, this is not a $500 system but rather $1599,-. Probably the best purchase i've made in a long time. I previously used a Bose 3.2.1 system (over 2 decades) and it served well as a general stereo setup for my tv and music. The 656 Watts this thing can put out is basically overkill for my apartment living room, i haven't had the balls to go over "25" on the sound level... and it goes up to 100.. The doors literally start shaking.. might need to have a look at that.. rubber strips along the sides maybe? I do hear a clear difference in sound between DST:X and Atmos. When playing a movie via pc, i sometimes switch to DTS:X as that sometimes sounds more crisp and less boomy. But when you watch a movie like Mad Max: Fury Road... Atmos is your friend. The engines firing up and roaring when they come past you.. it's just a real nice experience.
Atmos must be the thousandth time Dolby came up with an actually impressive technology for cinemas, and then completely ruined the brand by sticking the name on all sorts of random consumer products.
$ay it ain't $o!
They don't stick the name on cosumer products, the brands buy the license from Dolby if they think it adds value to their product. You are always free to choose a product with a different feature set mate
@@rolandmdill ahhh yes, pedantry totally disproved the op
These consumer electronics companies need some kind of new label to put on their product marketing page. They don't care if it works well or not. And if they don't put that label on their product they know consumers will go and buy the one that has the label.
@@jn1211 wow that's not pedantry at all lmao
I'm a pro mastering engineer, you just beautifully described what I've been telling a lot of my clients for the last year! I'll send them to hear your report as it's way less sweary than my usual rant!
xD
i laughed so loud i scared my cat!
One of the few practical benefits of atmos is that many albums mixed in atmos has better dynamic range and seems mostly unaffected by the loudness war thing.
But unfortunitely, Dolby's decoder on mobile devices (esp. on android + windows) has it's own dynamic range compression which can not be disabled and it sounds bad. A properly encoded bineural track sounds great though.
Sooooo... Is DTS any better, or should I just stick with my 13 year old Denon 5.1 Amp and the collection of Bose 301's and 151's I've been using all along? (Actually, budgeting concerns have answered that question for me, as my daughter has an expensive college bill coming up... Guess I'm sticking with the current setup a little while longer.)
Haha... I just bookmarked this video for the same purpose, sending to clients wanting masters in Atmos 🙂
hearing the singer "swirling around your head" must be the dolby atmos equivalence of the 3D movie "this thing flies really close to your face" effect.
I feel like that'd be a very stressful listening experience lmao
Like, I wanna listen to music comfortably, not feeling like I'm in the ocean being circled by sharks
I hopped on Tidal with my XM4s to see if this spatial audio thing was legit. I tried both Dolby Atmos and Sony 360 Reality Audio.
It's like Benn said, there's sound coming from all directions but it feels incoherent and unnecessary, almost as if it was tacked on after the fact by a corpo. I prefer stereo.
It's fun twice and then gets old. Exactly like 3d movies
it doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds cool.
@@jassykatRight, it’s not like those “8D immersive audios” on UA-cam where they pan the the singing voice left and right. When it’s done right, it feels like you’re in the room with them while they’re recording.
Holy shit, the amount of subscriptions required to use a product YOU ALREADY PAYED FOR is mind-boggling..
Corporations are leeches
To be fair, most of the customers for this tech only listen to music on subscription platforms. The only people "paying for" Atmos mixes are people buying special edition Blu-Ray releases, and those work without any stupid subscription fees.
F that shit no cap
You'll pay for everything and own nothing.
@@ThetaReactor ill pay nothing and own everything because im a filthy pirate lmao
"Shooting a fucking forcefield of ghost speakers is physically impossible." Instant classic.
Should probably be on a t shirt
My housemate totally lost it over that one.
I guess it's... partially physically impossible? With the exact right reflection/absorption level of materials, a really weird and expensive speaker array that can do strategic cancellation/addition, and a detailed LIDAR scan of the room, maybe you could halfway manage. But yeah, it's scammy advertising. Not going to work in your real-world living room unless maybe you're one of those minimalist influencer types and just got lucky with your wall materials and room geometry.
I loved that bit and I want it played on repeat anywhere they sell soundbars.
Soundbars are perfectly fine if one wants anywhere from stereo to 3.1 audio that's better than their TV's built in speakers, but will never come close to a real surround system with multiple speakers physically located around the room when listening to actual surround content, no matter what the salesman at Best Buy might claim.
& then he wonders why there’s no height effect from his 5.1 setup. He said it himself…
Finally someone gets it! Fucking nobody takes me seriously when I say atmos 99.999% of the time is a gimmick. Atmos when done correctly can be incredible for content, but it MUST be produced and sound engineered and have the receiver that can decode it and send the information and then actual physical speakers there to receive that signal. Otherwise you’re kidding yourself that it “sounds better”. I personally have had a much better experience with my 2.0 setup with speakers in the right position (and time alignment if needed) than ANY “atmos” soundbar
I never expected Atmos music to just be the "7D" versions of songs that trended on youtube for a little while a couple of years ago, with all the instruments just panning around for no reason
“8d 16k ultra quality 4d ulra hdr audio”
Those videos were awesome. I'm happy a good chunk of the cool stuff about this is accessible to a bog-standard pair of headphones. I hope it gets another surge of popularity
how dare you downplay the importance of Crab Rave 8D, i love crabs in my walls
ua-cam.com/video/Oh_lCBCQOAQ/v-deo.html
"with all the instruments just panning around for no reason"
It's like 3d movies, the producers and directors just can't let it be 3d, they're compelled to have things flying directly into the camera lens whether it's relevant or not, because just seeing things in 3 dimensions would be 'too boring'.
THIS. most mixers have Pan knobs that let you control how much in the left andor right ear a sound is. if you're doing it live and people move around you can just have 2 microphones too.
"If however you are listening to your music makes you happy, you are listening to it PERFECTLY"
Please spread the word, that needs to be understood by more people
As the only person I know with any kind of immersive audio (I have mid rang Polk 5.1 set up) I really wish they'd expand the breadth of immersive audio content rather than keep moving the goal posts for the 1 in 1000 people interested in this. It's like they know that with their unsustainable business model based around restrictive licensing will never be main stream, so rather than try for real adoption they keep bleeding the same handful of people until they can't anymore.
Listening to music thoughtfully mastered in 5.1 is actually pretty amazing, when you can find it. The problem is there isn't enough of even 5.1 around for most artists to conceive of their music in an immersive way from the beginning.
"If however you are listening to music makes you happy, you are listening to it perfectly." Truer words never spoken. 🏆👍
I discovered this when I cobbled together a sound system out of spare parts and hooked it up in my tool shed. ❤️
I exclusively use the speaker of my 2015 iPhone SE to listen to music. It's perfect. 🌈 @@cromagnon305
@@cromagnon305I'm sorry, it's a 2016 smartphone, not 2015 haha 🌈
Sometimes I'll crank a low fidelity youtube music video over laptop speakers just for the joy of hearing the song again and I've already heard it in good quality a thousand times anyway.
The problem that Atmos exists to solve is that the clock is running down on Dolby's other patents.
Kind of the corporate version of “publish or perish”.
Completely not true.
You hit the nail on the head. They ran out of stuff to sell. Nobody needed dolby surround as soon as we were able to run digital multichannel uncompressed audio. Atmos was a hail Mary for them.
abolish the patent system!
@@plankton50Great idea if you have no intellectual property to protect and everything to gain from stealing other people's work. Without patents there is zero intensives for inventing anything or innovating. Let somebody else invent it and just steal that. Why would anyone put their life's work and possibly life savings into coming up with something new that anyone could just take it. All forms of IP Copyright are vital, especially to musicians. You are watching this musician's youtube channel. Benn Jordan wouldn't be able to make a living or make these videos without revenue from IP copyright. I left the 'you dumb ass' off the end of the last sentence to make sure my reply stayed polite.
I am absolutely blown away...this "rant" actually justified my impression of any attempt at "immersive" audio.From my first attempt buying Bose Acousstimass speakers system some 30-40 years ago to my present 7.1 Denon AVR and ceiling mounted speakers, that holy grail has yet to be found. In fact, in some ways, it's made listening worse. It not only depends on your gear, etc. but it also depends on specific stations. For example, if I'm listening to an interview of a music celebrity and they change to his/her music, the music gets lost, so I adjust a setting that favors music. It returns to the interview and the audio is so low, I either turn up the volume or got back to settings...sometime both. The moral of the story; good ol' stereo with a subwoofer is good enough for 90% of my listening pleasure without the constant pain in the ass tweaking. Thanks for you brutally honest review.
“Forcefield of Ghost Speakers” 100% describes how i thought Atomos was trying to sell itself working with only a single sound bar.
And yet for 5 mins of the video he seems frustrated it’s not working, after just explaining it’s a hoax. Unless that was the joke… but it’s not. That’s his argument, “there was no height experience”… well no shit, you bought a 5.1 setup that was Atmos enabled not a 5.1.2 or 5.1.4 or 7.1.2 or 7.1.4
Haven't those "strange magic box with many small speakers in front of you magically projecting an entire surround sound system around you" systems been a thing since the '00s? Sales pitch didn't seem particularly convincing back then either.
@@keithwilliams88 sure, the modern capitalistic “accept or die” & “it’s everywhere” approach is despicable, I was just poking holes in his argument because I believe Atmos will stick around going forward, not as a replacement for stereo, but coexisting as a uniquely appealing alternative to tradition (for various reasons). I’ve invested not even a dollar into Atmos, but if I do I‘ve got to make sure I don’t have any blindness from bias. It could fuck my entire life up. So, I’m always curious to hear other opinions. This video seems like a rather personally-charged take that wasn’t fully thought out. The problems lie elsewhere, let’s say. If you know, you know.
@@daviduribe5897 That's a bit cryptic. Can you give any hints?
By the way, the limit is ACTUALLY 32 channels/objects for any consumer. This is a limitation of data bandwidth over HDMI, you can find it buried deep in the developer docs, but of course this isn’t marketed toward consumers…
Couldn't that limit technically be expanded upon by HDMI over Ethernet?
Obviously it's not a consumer grade upgrade but I presume it's possible?
(This is coming from the background of the limitations of DMX512 [Lighting protocol] being worked around through Ethernet transfer rates.
I haven't personally delved deep enough into audio docs to know whether or not that'd be possible.
(I know a lot of live theaters run audio out of Ethernet for multiple channels, I'm referring directly to Atmos here)
@@gambitman7158can you even differentiate between 32 different sound sources simultaneously in your real environment?
Most people will track a couple at most. You switch to the important ones.
Mixing can group by distance and importance and stay below (way below) the limit.
@MadsterV I can barely do 2...
If there's loud music & someone screams something at me I'll be hearing both with no way to differentiate between the 2... I.E. I'm hearing noise 😂
No but you can differentiate between more than 32 directions in a 3d space.@@MadsterV
@@gambitman7158hdmi can carry way more raw data than a cat6 cable can, to test cables, we recently had to purchase a new tester that does 48gbps because our old one only did 40. I believe 48 is for 8k video, if i remember correctly, 60fps 4k at 4:4:4 should be 18gbps, this excludes audio!
So yeah, ethernet yes, but maybe with 100gbps fiber transceivers in the not too distant future.
I think as an artist, it's actually a better investment to buy a bunch of
RIP to the eleven people listening on a real setup though. You should definitely mix on the best thing you have available to you because the artifacts from your crappy speakers will hide the artifacts of the song. If you really have to kludge it, mix on your car speakers since that's going to be the nicest set of speakers most people own, and also probably the real most common way people listen to music.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 thier is no such thing as a "real" setup. it's all placebo. and techbro.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 If you have a high end source set up, then even the shittiest gear will be transparent enough
Mix on decent Studio monitors. Then tune it later on more accessible setups.
i mean all you really need to do is add a little more frequencies or saturation to your low end to make sure its audible by anything without a subwoofer or bass extension
I have 1 foot still in the industry side as a ghost writer, and its getting ridiculous. My gripe is record labels are demanding we spend extra studio sessions prepping atmos stems, at our cost of course, only for the label to then take more of our money (out of the advance) to give it to some upstart that then asks "for screenshots of any reverb settings" so they can produce an atmos mix like wtf. We've had every excuse under the sun including " you can't even get on Apple music without an atmos mix now". And btw, these are pop / edm tracks, its not like they benefit from an immersive sonic experience or have the audience that would appreciate that.
That's so annoying wtf 😭
I'm with ya until your last statement.
I would argue edm benefits more than most genres of music through Atmos.
Just because you don't understand the culture or music, does not give you right to kick dust on it.
Also I suggest you do not speak for an audience you are not part of; you're making assumptions you have no way of substatiating, all in frustration for Dolby Atmos.
@@somethingsoupy speaking of "not having the right to kick dust on it" what on earth gives you the right to assume I don't understand EDM or the culture?
It's both by my living and my passion.
I've been to all the clubs (most of which sum to mono for good reason), I've taken the drugs, I grew up on rave music in its country of origin the UK, I've engineered, played, written and produced it professionally for over a decade.
Instead of making assumptions, all you have to say is "I disagree, here's why" and actually share your opinion on why you think it's a good fit, a debate doesn't have to start by tearing into someone you don't know, just present your counter argument!
Having said all that here I'm talking about "pop/EDM" as one genre. I'm talking about commercial chart style tracks with full vocals and a dance beat, not separate genres.
@@Bthelick I was not trying to tear you a new one, but I do disagree and believe what you are stating is untrue.
It was my opinion, that you did not understand the culture, because what you said is often stated by jaded 50 year old's that mix the same shit every day, be it in post-production or live sound.
Obviously, based on your channel, you are part of the community and it was my mistake for making that assumption. I gave you a subscription, your tutorials are very helpful.
I hear what you are saying about Pop/EDM, but Pop is just as effective, imo. When I read EDM, I don't think of chart toppers, I think of the guys with 100-10,000 listeners that are pushing the genre to its limits.
Apologies for coming off crass, but I think you were being hypocritical as you were attacking a community and people in it. I only sent that same energy back to you.
If you had presented that argument and left out the insults, I would have moved on.
It was because I saw someone that could not defend themselves, from a person that seemed ignorant in the moment, that I commented.
Have a nice day.
@@Bthelick oh and you make some of the best track breakdowns and production tutorials I’ve watched.
As a musician who is deaf in one hear, the only way you're going to hear it as I do is if I pan everything right and tell all y'all to just deal. I have considered this, but ultimately decided to just do a simple stereo mix as best I can and get on with my life.
I once described playing live as being like moving all your equipment across town so you can not hear it, hope you are playing the right thing, having no idea what others are hearing, then taking it all back home and telling yourself that was a success. ....So I've been not quite so sure people actually would want to hear songs like musicians do. Careful what you wish for. But hey, if you want to develop the True Musician Experience Right Channel Noise Codec specially designed for home theater missing half the speakers, and broken monitors that give the true experience...I'm all in with ya. :D
@@AveragePicker Ya see...I know, pretty much for a fact, my stereo imaging is shit. I spend almost no time on it at all. But people say it sounds fine. What we hear and what non-musicians hear is totally different. They like it...but they can't tell you why they like it. its so subjective as to make any standard meaningless.
Fellow deaf artist, I always consider going the hard pan route
I am not completely def in one ear, but pretty damn close, it happened because I wanted the perfect guitar tone and raised my 1x12 cab to head level on one side.
Almost same here.
I ended up deciding that all releases I'll do will either have almost no steeeo or have a mono alternative mix, just cuz Windows forced mono fucks everything up.
I had a client who was an insanely intelligent sound engineer (developed software to tell you where the “problem” was in an aud8torium…wrote books etc). One of my favorite stories though (besides trying to get him to even talk about setting up my bands practice room…like trying to get your nuclear physicist to work on your toaster) was he toured with The Clash as a teenager (among MANY other bands…but the Clash was his favorite…and Ive never been a fan). Bottom line the Clash used to stick expensive equipment in crappy cabinets so fans wouldnt think they were as posh as they were…and is why they sounded better than “advertised” so to speak.
I should add one other thing. I was genuinely excited about Atmos when I started using it. The idea of making one mix and it sounding good in any speaker setup was tantalizing. That promise is a lie. When we send deliverables to studios, we have to do an Atmos mix, a 7.1 mix, a 5.1 mix, a 2.1 mix (sometimes), and a stereo mix. I thought Atmos would save me time; instead it just made more work for me.
Hey, job security.. nice
Like in IT in general....
We have 16 standards, someone makes a universal standard so we can have fewer standards... Now we have 17 standards...
i thought atmos was just about the height(atmosphere) speakers. 7.1/5.1 were already 'here' i have a linkin park dvd of re:animation that is 5.1....
@@caliginousmoira8565 As mentioned, "in theory" its about letting the final mixes object positioning be handled by the equipment at the end user, so it can more accurately be adapted to the speaker setup and room acoustics. It actually is the first time I managed to get a truly impressive surround experience in my small room, specifically having phantom rears actually works better than real rear speakers - as I was always sat too close to them. This is in spite of a lot of time it being PC games I play which probably are only using Atmos to send a channel-based output to my receiver - but the receiver is doing a better job of recreating those virtual speakers positions. It really shines in movies, particularly UHD Bluray that isn't restricted to the streaming services limited bitrates. Although I do find Atmos usually isn't really flat sounding like streaming services often are for legacy surround mixes vs Bluray.
The problem is, you need to have the right equipment to make this work and as mentioned in the video there's lots out there that doesn't have this room calibration (or does it poorly) so is missing out on the entire point of HAVING object positioning handled at the end user. So they end up with a worse experience than a well mastered channel based mix.
@@SioxerNikita And then every company takes the universal standard, half implements it, changes the serial clock by 2%, makes up some 'im 12 and this is edgy' name for it, and now we have a common low cost device artificially walled in and price inflated with 17^(16+1) standards to decypher. And drivers for every one of them, for every current version of windows, no linux option, and none of the drivers get along with any of the other drivers......
"Here at [insert literally any computer parts manufacturer here], we care about the customer experience..."
...My pimply fuzz covered ass. 🤬
22:58 “A solution without a problem” Very well said 🙌🏼
These are the facts
Same with head-tracking headphones. What do they do? Where is the problem they want to solve? When I'm watching UA-cam and I'm too drunk and the sun hasn't come out yet and I can even barely keep my eyes open, but still want to know where my laptop is? Playing an electric organ on a huge turntable to experience some crazy Leslie effect? Myy hearing ability varies due to my tinnitus so depending on the changing condition I could angle my head a bit while watching TV to equalize sound levels. Maybe you guys got some ideas?
I would like elevation data when playing games but that would also require floor speakers. It's already impractical.
They were doing weird things with QSound back in the day...
No it's not
In the world of startups the saying is ”Solution In Search of a Problem” short SISP. 😊
I have a 7.2.4 setup and my Atmos movie, music and game experience boils down to 10% "that's awesome!" and 90% "that sounds really unnatural and forced."
Is there any music you actually recommend? I've heard a few 5.1 mixes of music and its always like you said, extremely forced seemingly to show off what they can do, rather than actually add anything to the experience.
In fact the only time I've been impressed is using Pro Logic IIz on stereo tracks with exceptionally good dynamic range/sound stage (in other words, very rare), that allows it to perform absolute magic on it for a fully immersive experience.
@@alexatkin Anything that includes a technology just for the sake of using a new technology is always going to sound gimmicky. There's nothing miraculous that 5.1 or any other multi-speaker system does that you couldn't hypothetically do with a set of headphones and a binaural audio engine.
@@dustinbrueggemann1875 That's simply not true. Headphones may pull all the tricks with your ears but cannot fool your sense of touch. Any concert I've ever been to had a tactile experience where you can feel the vibrations in your clothes or in your seat or in your chest. Speakers can recreate this experience unlike headphones.
It's my opinion that 2 speakers in a fully acoustically treated room with the correct balance of absorption, diffusion, and reflective surfaces creates the most immersive audio experience.
@@alexatkin Randomly "Don't worry be happy" is pretty epic in atmos haha, Fleetwood mack albums, The Queen stuff, UB40's Best Of Labour Of Love album, Bob Marley legend album is great, Jamiroquai - cosmic girl, Chaka's - Ain't nobody, Thriller album, Whitney's dance with somebody is randomly pretty epic also. There is a lot nowadays as understandably producers have become better with the change and gotten over the gimmick side of it.
@@alexatkin I really like the BluRay copies of the Alan Parsons Project stuff and the DVD-A copies of Stone Temple Pilots "Core", Frank Zappa's Quadiophiliac, and Nine Inch Nails "The Downward Spiral". Those are all pretty solid surround mixed/mastered albums that don't sound incredibly awkward.
Thank you for this dose of reality. The funniest part is how the Atmos demo on their website uses a deliberately crap stereo mix of the Marvin Gaye song for comparison. I'm sure it's great for a movie theater but I don't live in one.
Edit: To answer your question at the end, even if there were no licensing fee premiums associated with Atmos, it doesn't offer much to me.
Also, the Dolby Atmos version sounds pretty bad too, just in a more full-bodied way. I actually prefer the crap stereo one.
Saw "One Love" in the theater and thankfully the mix was mostly two channel. The previews were terrible with all that multi-channel crap going on!
the stereo mix they used was very good I don't know what you're talking about
Thank you for validating what I have been screaming for a decade. The first thing I tell people starting and building up in this recording industry is DON'T listen to marketing telling you what you need or UA-camrs getting paid to shill products. You've been added to my exception list, great work.
To be fair, it’s possible the artist will make more money by rendering an atmos mix of their stereo mix just to have the “atmos” stamp, and who doesn’t want that?
@@talonsid Provided we as studio owners can afford to invest $30-$60K in interface/speaker studio construction upgrades and manage to write that off in depreciation and still come out ahead. Not likely at all.
In a world where so many people are racing to consume, gatekeep, and defend expensive snake oil products, I found this video refreshing. Thank you.
In university, one of my last assignments was to write a song made for atmos. It was an electronic song, and when writing a song specifically for surround, it can be super cool. Things like lazer sounds firing around. If the song was written for stereo though, it just won't be much of an experience.
Finished university almost 2 years ago and I haven't been able to listen to that song properly again.
Why? Don’t have Atmos setup?
I'd love to try to actually make a song in Atmos because the songs I have heard in the format are usually rhythm/lead in front, ambient/background in the rear/height, even when a sound is clearly supposed to circle around you.
I had a similar experience after making a piece for a hall with a specific speaker design that covered all walls. I can now only experience it at home, because of course it does not translate as intended in headphones or any regular hifi/car stereo etc.
This is great. I love that you have a contrarian and kind of grumpy vibe going on with things that are good to be grumpy about. Calling out BS is a service to the community. I also love Red Means Recording and Venus Theory for the same reasons.
Dolby: trying to push some weird speaker setups for decades
me: just enjoying movies and games on analog headphones, providing me with more spatial awareness than any consumer speaker I've experienced.
most new headphones are digital and produce 3d sound where its an option. even cheap ones
@@pazsion yes... that's why I like analog ones.
most music is in stereo... which means that it's either gonna flatten the left-right difference to emulate 2 speakers (which I don't like) or it's gonna fake the effect, getting the surround info from nothing.
It's even more pronounced in games. it's easy to make a game work with headphones, and vast majority of them will do it correctly.
and unless such headphones would appear as more complex setup on a driver level, a given game can't even send proper info as it only compresses it down to stereo, while the "3d effect" is again faked on headphones themself.
bottom line is that ignoring your head movement relative to monitor, headphones have only 2 channels for 2 receptors that are your ears, so a good source is very much enough with them.
😩😩You are precisely the type of person Atmos is targeting - people who don't have the technical know-how to get stereo imaging out of consumer speakers
@@b1zzler that's bs. You don't even have any idea which headphone buddy is using lol.
A ton of headphones can get awesome imaging, especially open-back ones.
I run a SHP9500 / HD599 / HD600 (I gotta sell at least one of them tbh) setup with a DAC+AMP setup and they're amazing. Other than that, I have a pair of (probably considered low-end) Edifier MR4s which sound beautiful as well. There's really not a lot of work or need for "technical know-how" when you have a decent set-up my man.
I've tried quite a few of these effects and whatever, ATMOS, DTS stuff, everything. None of it sounds good to me, I always end up returning to my basic preferred EQ settings after 1 or 2 days after the novelty wears off.
@@LoneWanderer905 ?… Of course you can get good imaging with headphones. That’s my entire point. The problem is that he says he hasn’t been able to get imaging out of consumer loudspeakers. That’s generally a problem with speaker selection, speaker placement, AVR/DSP selection, and DSP tuning. Most people can’t be bothered to do all that so they throw in the towel and stick to plug and play solutions, which is precisely what headphones are.
Atmos is trying to make in-room spatial audio as “plug-and-play” as headphones are so non-technical consumers can get a pretty close approximation to what mastering engineers are hearing in their Genelec/ATC/B&W rooms. That’s what I was getting at. Not that headphones are bad.
I’ve got a 5.1.4 system.
When the movie is mixed in atmos and when loud objects are on the top channels, it’s awesome.
That said, it’s exceedingly rare.
With music, there are only a few good atmos mixes out there.
Very few albums are composed and mixed with spatial audio in mind.
thats why they get re mixed for atmos with it in mind
Movies are delivered with multichannel streams, and originally mixed with discrete channels for multichannel sound. What music source are you listening to that delivers multichannel audio?
@@SoundOfYourDestiny I used to subscribe to Tidal and Qobuz. I don’t remember which one had music in atmos.
@@kevofyb
Those albums were written, arranged, produced, mixed and mastered to be listen to on two speakers.
When you mix a record you try to reproduce the live experience.
THe band is in front of you, one guitar on a side and the other guitar on the opposite side.
Everything in the back is just a distraction.
If an artist want to do an "immersive" record it's his call, not Apple's.
@@casaroli Thanks for the reply. I think I was asking which device you were using to stream music that also offered multichannel output (in addition to the service, though, which is interesting info).
I needed this. I'm a mixing engineer and I just figured atmos was where the field of mixing was going next which probably meant mixing in atmos and then downmixing to stereo. Hearing all of this is comforting because dare I say it, I love stereo mixes. I love hearing songs in stereo. Mixing in stereo is hard enough as is. I'm not interested in surround in music. I don't really notice it all that much in theatres either. It'd be nice to have a personal rig for movies but I think stereo is just fine for music. My opinion may change in the future because I know there's the benefit of less distortion. That being said I recall that most atmos remixes and even the stereo downmixes if they start at atmos tend to usually be direct interpretations so that may be why Benn doesn't hear noticeable difference.
Be careful discounting Atmos because of this guys video. It's controversial so gets lots of eyes (not saying this is why he did it). Don't work with the fear of getting left behind but make sure you go expierience a good atmos setup with music somehwere (not a theater...they don't' eq the sound correctly and it's way to fng loud). You may be surprised. It should sound like a stereo mix with a litle icing on the cake at certain times. If it doesn't, it hasn't been set up properly. It's unfortunate this guy hasn't heard a decent atmos setup in his own home. The out of the box stuff doesn't cut it. Just like he wouldn't buy an out of the box complete studio tracking and mixing setup!
@@NakeanWickliff I just think it's more trouble than it's worth depending on where you are in your career. If you start getting requests for atmos mixes then sure, withdraw your overhead and make the switch. There are great DIY atmos rigs out there that more than do the job if cost is a factor. I also don't think stereo is getting left behind. I think stereo is in it's early adoption phase just as much as surround tends to be implemented in home theatres mostly. 2.1 and 2.2 systems need to be widely adopted first. Alot of people are listening to music on soundbars, mono speakers and consumer grade headphones. Part of the job is archiving things right? For alot of us, atmos can wait.
@@noahhonore2022 I completely agree with all of your points. I just don't like that the OP basically said Atmos is garbage, cause it's not. It's a faulse pretense for a correct decision and others shouldn't make the decision because "atmos sucks" (because it doesn't).
@@NakeanWickliff The concept is fine. Yet another proprietary codec that is inferior to open codecs though? *very* unwelcome. Atmos real does not offer anything that couldn't be done before and at such a high price even professionals balk at it. Consider other problems with proprietary tech that ends up defacto standards, it allows for even less consumer control. No thanks.
Stereo and 2.1 will always be the best ways to listen to music IMO.
I used to install atmos speakers and clients would always be like "I can't wait to listen to everything in atmos!" and I'd always have to have the "...welllllllllllll..." speech ready
5.1 was always good enough for movies tbh. I would even say stereo is enough, but just having that extra bandwidth from separating the center and the LFE, plus a little extra "wow" factor from the surround speakers makes the whole thing worthwile
7.2 is as high as I would ever go for cinematic surround sound, and 5.1 for music
@collinbeal 7.1 requires a specific room and seating layout to properly enjoy, 5.1 can make any audio better in any kind of room with different seating IMO
@@samuelhildebrandt9074also 5.1 in smaller rooms allows the same side back effect as 7.1 whitch is only required in larger open spaces as the soundnpasing back and forth isn't separated and flows perfectly well inn5.1 in a average living room
Center channel removes all height perception as compared with stereo. The image shrinks vertically to a narrow band!
I have a 5.1.2 setup just so I could get a taste of every feature without going too crazy. I can confirm that, even in movies with surround sound, the rears and heights are barely used. I think 3.1 is a huge upgrade when watching movies because of the LFE (like you said) and the ability to turn up the center channel to hear dialog better.
When I was a kid I had a "3D sound" audiobook of Stephen King's The Mist on cassette. That was the peak of immersive audio IMO.
some of the "binaural" stuff from the 70's is pretty cool - 2 microphones placed on a "fake head" where the ears would be, and you listen to it on headphones. Pretty sure everything else since then is just a gimmick. I only have 2 ear holes where sound goes in - therefore everything you could possibly hear is captured by 2 microphones placed where your ears would be, and 2 speakers later placed where the microphones were.
I have a digital copy of this. Binaural recording, done right, is astounding.
I've heard a really-good version 'The Mist' which was done like a radio play instead of audiobook. Now I'll be looking for that cassette in secondhand stores.
@@gorak9000 Yeah, but your ears _aren't_ microphones.
Binaural convolution is awesome for things like audio books, radio plays, etc
Probably the best spatial music experience I've had was Jean-Michel Jarre's Aero, mixed in 5.1 and listened to in my car on a head unit with full surround decoding. Forget the car and road noise (there was plenty), that it was rendered on 4 speakers plus sub, and that I was off-center, the tightness of the timing and the close speakers in the tiny cabin made it immersive. Musically the reason why it worked was because it was JMJ's own vision and not some post-processed "make it sound like it's around you" crap.
People can barely afford their own home right now, never mind installing a sound system in the living room with a 10ft ceiling that the landlord is about to hike the rent on… I’m glad you talked about this, the amount of micromanagement that goes in to the structure of the sales model makes me think companies like atmos may be fans of the pharmaceutical industry.
Maybe I should stop getting my boosters.
Atmos is a sound format, not a company.
@@ryankramer oh thank god you were here to clear that up.
@@BigPlasticPlant It’s only a big deal if you make it one. 🤷🏼♂️
@@ryankramer It's only a big deal when you start whining about not getting enough credit for stating the obvious
setting max volume on my phone to hear it through the vacuum cleaner. Yup, probably not the way it was meant to be listened to, but i enjoy music this way.
Roomba™ audio. Sounds 3D already!
You're listening the way the vacuum manufacturer intended.
This level of no nonsense highly technical audio content is what I live for. Great video!
I'll stick to stereo for my creations. In the unlikely event that my music gets into a movie, they'll either want it in stereo (just the same as most music in surround sound movies is still just stereo) or they can pony up for me to make them an exclusive remix at someone else's studio.
I think surround sound music is cool, provided you do it well, but I'm not pretending like it works on a phone or speakers. It's dedicated to a physical surround sound system. I imagine Atmos would be the same, but they ruined it by slapping the label on things like phones, earbuds, laptops, TV screens, etc. that clearly can't actually handle it.
Totally. Even if your music ends up in the movie, it makes no sense to use anything else than stereo. The only exception that could make sense would be a live performance. Otherwise, surround/ambisonic sound effects from the movie + surround/ambisonic music would collide and confuse everyone. "Oh, I can hear explosions behind me, gunshots in front of me and a drummer playing on the right side of the battlefield" :D
@@BattleAngelSound that would definitely confuse the audience! lol 😂
I feel like if you're gonna go beyond Stereo for music, you should be doing something experimental enough where the positioning of sections is integral to it.
Or like the type of ambient music that's trying to immerse you in a specific environment I guess lol. Either way, it's kinda weird to do it on pop music
@@BattleAngelSound If you were playing music over an action scene like that it's not like positional accuracy is a majorly important feature. Usually when music is playing it's either subtle background or the primary audio source. I think for louder action scenes it's more likely to be some form of expanded stereo so the rears aren't dead air.
As someone who's been in the market for a new sound system, I cannot thank you enough for this video. The last couple of months have been a mental circus of jumping through hoops and realising that in order to get "the perfect sound" for my 4K discs, I'll have to literally change the way my living room is built. That's insane.
Yes but tbf if you spend too much time looking up "perfect sound" you'll find people saying you have to rebuild your entire house
With a home theatre system like this, you would still need to keep an old stereo system to enjoy your favorite music
All I can recommend is getting at least a real 3.1 system. The center channel and sub help a lot, and you don't really need to rearrange your life.
@SamuraiGuy At least get a real receiver. My Denon 1600h can do Atmos, mono, stereo, quad, and basic surround. It's the decision to go with a bespoke solution like a soundbar or home theater in a box that is creating the issue of stereo sound not working well. Not that it's primarily the purchaser at fault here, the marketing for this stuff is manipulative at best. Unfortunately home theater receivers are expensive, but the upside is that you can use any speaker with them and upgrade only some components as desire arises, instead of having to replace it all at once.
@@webby2275 "real" systems are more expensive, but also take more space and time to learn how to pick parts and put them together.
I did put together a system fully utilizing a 960h, and I'm glad I did, but when most people don't care to use anything more than their TV speakers, a simple soundbar gets most of the way there. I just want people to get the center channel and sub because they're probably an upgrade most people will appreciate.
Oh wow. Had no idea you had a youtube channel with this kind of content! Your Flashbulb albums are some of my favourite ever.
My favorite use of spatial audio is careful binaural convolution panning baked into certain elements of a stereo mix - If you do it right the headphone listener gets a nice spatial expecience of that particular element, while also translating well to speakers and not disappearing in mono.
Is there some place to read or otherwise learn more about what you are describing here? thank you
@@arpaddanos9416 idk offhand but there's a free vst called DearVR Micro that you can play around with! I have to exercise restraint to not overuse it haha - before this I used to use an oculus vst plugin that accomplished the same thing
@@asmrengineering3710 There used to be hardware for this too. I used to have a vinyl demo that was impressive even by modern standards. It was just too expensive and deemed unnecessary at the time.
Do you have an example of a song like this available on Apple music?
I have not heard a single song that I have enjoyed with spatial audio on earphones, though I do really enjoy it on my genelec system about half the time if the mastering is good.
@@stevenswall sure! some tracks I've done this on: Cul-De-Sac by G Brenner at about 3:00 on uses it pretty overtly, as well as some textures in the background of the track Pluperfect Mind by Dear Laika - also various percussive blips from Dog Ears by scuttlefuzz that wiggle in the stereo field - the use of the panning doesn't really call attention to itself (or provide "immersion") but It adds a lively texture that I like a lot, especially when things move around
As always, Benn is going to burst someone's bubble and I'm here for it!!
We got front row seats, boys
As an underground techno producer the majority of the systems in clubs and raves are set up as a single stack with some notable exceptions
It is often the chems and good techno making a great rave lmao. No body would understand if there was an atmos system
Thank you, Benn, for always being a resource that I can send to my friends and family when I just don't have the gumption anymore to try to explain why they're being taken advantage of by money-hungry companies
LoL... my exact thoughts and already have forwarded this video to several 'family'n'friends 😆
Every video. EVERY video you make it fantastic. Even if the title and thumbnail don't get me excited, I know that I won't be disappointed. I appreciate your attitude, methodology, and commitment to honesty and transparency. You keep things interesting with your passion and I'm here for it. Keep up the good work Benn!
ATMOS = Money Making Opportunity for Dolby, Apple, Microsoft etc.. Thank-you Benn for a frank and honest evaluation.
And his pitch to buy a membership to his channel wasn’t? Btw, literally every product released by Dolby, Apple and Microsoft is a money making opportunity.
True - but not all new tech is successful. Only time will tell if Atmos is a commercial driver or falls by the wayside similar to 3D,
@@chromatec-video Well, as far as developers of apps for the creation of audio content, DAWs like Pro Tools, Nuendo, Logic Pro, MIR Pro 3D, etc.. they all now support Atmos, (they’ve built in the Atmos renderer and support the large channel formats like 7.1.2, etc. One misconception about Atmos compared to traditional surround formats like 5.1 is that the listener doesn’t have to have the same speaker setup as the creator. Because Atmos uses object instead of channels, the decoder figures out how to place the sounds with the given speaker setup. So, from the creative side, the industry I work in, Atmos has already won. One of my partners just had an Atmos installation done in his studio. We’re composing in Atmos. Personally, I think all surround formats are a pain, although I think Ambisonics and Binarual technologies are fascinating. Many movie theaters, music halls, performance halls, or anywhere there is an installed playback system, they’re all moving to Atmos, at least in the US. There’s other formats like Aura 3D, but the DAWs don’t support it natively. I’m not sure if consumers will buy into it, but with Apple Music supporting Spatial Audio with headphones, I think that will be one of the more bankable markets.
If I want an immersive experience for music, I try to go see them play live. Otherwise, I just want a mix that sound good in my car while I'm driving (and dealing with a certain amount of road noise). I hope that's what most artists would be okay with for my listening experience!
Living performances generally use mono audio for everything because they can't predict where each audience member is standing. So, aside from the immersiveness of the venue and crowd, the audio is even less immersive than a stereo mix.
@@JustinLesamiz immersive is the full experience of attending a live show, not just the technical aspects of audio.
ua-cam.com/video/Cjjsz14hL48/v-deo.html
@@JustinLesamiz Definitely this, I've found it pretty rare that an artist has their audio nailed at a venue. AC/DC, Foo Fighters, Deadmau5, and Computer Magic (Danz) come to mind of acts where it was actually dialed in very well. Dozens of other performers, many having toured for decades, I thought were generally better served by listening to the albums first so you can counter the imbalances in your head (and a lot of that is just who runs the venue). Live is definitely more for appreciating the artists as people and seeing the fans.
@@LeMicronautit depends on the listener, genre, the band, the engineer, venue, there’s a lot of factors that come into play that make a performance. Comparing studio and live is apples and oranges, there’s a lot of people who prefer only studio or only live versions of songs because of how different or close they are. Me personally I’m fine with sacrificing stereo width and fidelity so I could hear a unique version of a song in a room with fans. There wouldn’t be a demand or need for live albums and bootlegs if they weren’t immersive or good
I'd be happy just to have 5.1 surround sound work reliably on youtube, personally
even if youtube supported 5.1, I doubt that most youtubers would want to spend the time to mix their videos in 5.1. It's a lot more work invovled and for a lot of content on youtube where it's just a personality speaking, it doesn't even make sense to mix in 5 channels.
@Melodic Fables true, but as a wishful thinking speculation, I'd love to watch a Suzanne Ciani concert in surround. There are some videos where it would be extremely nice.
@@CatFish107 Awesome idea. A lot of the classic modular synth stuff is in quad. It would be a dream if YT would be able to handle that.
@@TheChillMelodist actually, i'm pretty sure youtube silently added support for 5.1 user generated content a few months ago
@@TheChillMelodist isn’t there where ai comes to play?
I really, REALLY appreciate the non-profit transition. I’ve never subscribed to someone’s Patreon or whatever before, but I’ll support your efforts for sure, sincerely.
I fucking love you, Benn. Like abstractly, not parasocially or anything.
on one hand, mastering my music for object based systems sounds awesome, I'd love to experience my own music that way, and the idea of being able to move instruments like that sounds great, but on the other hand, visiting friends and realizing that they listen to music on a google home that's in a different room with the volume turned up... I can be pretty confident that even the basic stereo things I do are probably lost with the delivery that 90% of people listen with.
I wish stuff was reliably produced at different levels of fidelity. Sure, crank out a hella compressed version for mobile. Maybe make it mono!
Then consider an audiophile 2 channel mix, with actual dynamics. Maybe then extend that to an immersive object-based format.
I think the reason this doesn’t happen is mostly that the value doesn’t flow back to the artists well enough. There’s a market for those higher fidelity versions, but it’s small and difficult to reach. 😕
I have a similar thought process, and always have since Dolby surround sound first came out for consumer home theater. It would be cool to make music in surround, but it'd only be for me and the random few people who can afford and have a surround set up, and I would NOT want it to be the only way to listen to it, nor it to be forced down peoples throats. I see it as it's own thing, not a replacement for stereo, but something for people with specialized interest in new/exciting audio experiences and money. Not as some standard across the board.
Hyper aggressive marketing only works if there's some core level of adoption by a big enough % of the base of stereo listeners, and that just isn't the case. It's hard enough getting people to listen to your music on a decent pair of stereo speakers so they can hear the bass, let alone 24 of them so they can hear sound behind them and above their heads!
I've heard someone argue "well Atmos is in Tesla and Mercedes cars now!" and I'm like .. what about "Toyota, Honda, Chevy, Ford, Nissan, Dodge, Mazda..." and all the other more common brands of cars that aren't upmarket and account for the majority of consumer cars? Just because 2 or 3 expensive brands now put these sound systems in their cars doesn't mean it's become widely adopted or normalized in the slightest, nor does it mean it will become so in the future (which was the point they were trying to make). Sure there's a market for it, but it's not big enough to become an overarching standard audio format, when 99% of people will be listening to the folded down 2 speaker version if it did anyway. That's the definition of uneconomic and wasteful, poring so many resources into something that will, for the most part, be completely underutilized in it's intended format.
But hey, who'd of thunk Apple would of been at the forefront of ramming something down your throat you don't want or need, to the point of them trying to break/make obsolete something that worked perfectly (stereo) just to force you to buy something most people wont use fully (Atmos wrapped up in Apple spacial audio). At least USB C is cross compatible I suppose, although headphone 3.5mm jacks are still just as useful and haven't gone anywhere, despite their attempt to remove them from existence!
watched your ADHD video earlier and fell down a Benn Jordan rabbit hole, now subed here and following on Spotify... glad I found you (just when I was needing some dopamine) :)
I tried Atmos years ago and immediately thought of the fact that I have never been to a concert where I was surrounded by musicians instead of them standing in front of me, and I dont think I ever will, what benefit do I receive from the tuba player standing behind my head?
On a side note, anyone remember the old quadraphonic systems, like an old version of Atmos from back in the day where you'd use 4 speakers instead of two? That was stupid.
I remember that the Quadraphonic mix of Dark Side of the Moon was the primary demonstration album. Deep Purple’s Machine Head was also released in quadraphonic. Smoke on the Water in quad? If there was ever a song that had no business being mixed in a surround format, that was the song.
Sun Rah's Arkestra would play Space Is The Place while walking through the audience to the stage but you wouldn't want that "Tuba player in my right ear " thing if he wasn't actually there.
Watching this video before WWDC today, I can't unhear how often apple says "spatial".
Appreciate the work you put in!
I have the Pioneer VSX 534 amp connected to JBL Studio One 5.1 speaker set up. Its awesome as the Pioneer amp has Dolby Atmos Height Virtualization and some of the sounds during action scenes do appear to come from above which is great from a 5.1 set up and no height/ceiling speakers required.
I recently saw a really cool video by Steve Mould on the topic of acoustic cameras. By using a bunch of well-placed microphones and clever algorithms, it's possible to accurately visualize where sounds are coming from, as well as how they bounce around and interact with the environment. Watching more of your videos, this topic seemed right up your alley! I'd love to see a video not only on the science behind it, but maybe you could try to make one for yourself!
Here’s a cautionary tale. In about 2003 I converted my studio, basically a glorified home studio with treatment and, at the time, regular work coming in, to 5.1. I’ve done precisely two paid mixes in 5.1 and only one of those ever went into a theatre.
I love mixing for surround and listening to it is wonderful. But when I came up in the 80s, the key review of a mix was to dub it onto a cassette and go for a drive and play it on a bog standard factory car audio system. And this was a time when many more people would sit down and actually listen to an album. Earbuds, mobile phones etc have made this type of listening extremely rare. Even the people who say they care about audio quality (I don’t mean audiophiles, those men - I’ve never met a woman who calls herself an audiophile - are lunatics. Green felt markers make your CDs sound better, don’t you know?) anyway, people who care about sound quality often fall for the BS that is Beats headphones. Yes, Beats can sound good. But accurate? Pfffft. And you pay a ton for the name. They are the monster cable of headphones. And they’re headphones. Enough said there.
Anyway, I digress. I think this is possibly the 4th or 5th time I’ve been told surround sound, quadrophonic, Atmos, Ambisonic, whatever, is the future of audio and/or music. But stereo remains the majority of listening experiences by so much, the percentage of listens on an immersive or surround system looks like a rounding error.
Ok. I, too, love the 4-channel Ambisonic stuff. b-format whatever. It’s a lot of fun. But I’ve never met anyone who could be called anything like a consumer who listens to more than two channels regularly.
Fun fact: Beats was a Monster product before Apple acquired Beats. But maybe I’m kicking open een open door here.
Great comment bij the way… 👌🏻
I have a vintage Sansui 5500 receiver and the QS-500 rear channel amp attached to it. I have 15 or so quad encoded LPs, not all of them encoded in QS (the version of quad encoding that Sansui developed). Some are SQ so I can't decode those or the CD-4 encoded ones. So maybe I have 5 QS encoded LPs. I got them not because I was looking for them, but I just came across them at goodwill or where ever. I do have Sly & The Family Stone's greatest hits in quad that I also have a stereo pressing of, and it's a pretty good record. A fun listen even if I'm not a rabid fan, but it's in SQ. Womp womp. As for CD-4, that's supposedly results in the best "real" quad experience because unlike the others which are matrix encodings (not true discrete 4 channel) CD-4 does actually encode the 2 additional discrete channels, but there''s a catch. (We'll ignore that stereo records do not contain a discrete left and right channel, but a left channel and a difference channel from which the right channel comes by applying it to the discrete left channel signal that requires no prossesing or demodulating or matrix mathing to get to the actual signal). The CD-4 signal is modulated to 38khz carrier signal (or something near that), which in itself isn't an issue. Demodulating carrier signals is how we get stereo over the FM frequency band and we all love how that sounds. The problem is that your average stylus is not designed to pick up frequencies that high. They go to 22khz maybe. So you need a special (read expensive) stylus of the finest teeny tiny point of contact that gets down and can pick up those frequencies. Then you need special "ultra low capacitance" phono cables so they don't accidentally filter out that frequency. once you got the very low high frequecy signal in your CD-4 pre-amp then you are set becaus the demodulation process is simple and you've got your 2 rear channels. That is if the 50 year old record still has the high frequency data and it hasn't been "scrubbed" off the grooves by your shity conical stereo stylus/cart that you have tracking at 5gms. I've heard that og dolby pro-logic (a 4 channel surround tech, FL. C. FR. RL and RR are just the same single read hannel) uses the same methods as CD-4 to get it's 4 channel signals, and so it can decode a CD-4 signal (I've heard. Could ne wring an evne so it's only the OG Dolby Pro logic version 1 that might work). I aint spending the $400 for a shibata styus just for Sly.
I'll say that as a gamer, it is sad to me that multi-speaker headphones are a rare nitch thing. I think that could all turn around fast if android or apple advertised bluetooth headphone to stream in 4.1 or 6.1 as a standard feature and got a streaming service on board with it.
I'm amazed how many people watch movies on their phone instead of a laptop or tv nearby. They select HD on youtube, so it seems logical to have auto surround sound too.
As a consumer I dipped back from 5.1 to stereo because it was always terribly done over the top in games and film. Half the time you had to manually set it to stereo to actually consume the media, and infact you got better positional audio too because it was actually done right instead of lazily as a gimmick.
You're totally right about it being all guys, and those guys work very hard to ensure it stays a boys' only club.
I used to call myself an audiophile, as a teenager who just thought it meant you appreciated good quality speakers and headphones. The Audiophiles laughed me out of online spaces because I hadn't spent £20k on an amp and wasn't putting the special felt marker on my CDs, and I was GASP using the analogue audio out on my CD player.
I never called myself an audiophile again even though I do certainly seek out the flattest frequency response curve in headphones and stuff like that - stuff I didn't know about as a teen but certainly was never informed about by those Audiophiles. It's musicians who taught me about all that. Musicians care to distinguish the snake-oil in a way those guys just don't.
Wow, the “.. and didn’t know that homeless people exist”-comment stunned me! That line made me immediately click the subscribe button and the like button! Well done, sir!
First time I hear someone actually repeating what I’ve been annoying my friends with since I was a child, basically saying ‘I have no problems with ridiculously rich people, I have a problem with ridiculously rich people living and staying (or becoming) rich in a world, or even in a community, with poor/starving people!’. There is no way around it, it is absolutely appalling and immoral. No one can make an honest case for the rich deserving to be rich while the poor should only blame themselves. Yet, financial bliss is still being treated as an accomplishment that demand way out-of-proportion respect and privilege. How can you defend having, let’s say, a billion dollar “knowing homeless people exist”?? You really can’t make do with 999 million? Or 99 million? Or 9 million? How high maintenance can a person get without crossing the line into actually seeming to be handicapped? If virtually everybody else (statistics) can make it with a fraction of a million, what damage is causing the need of x1000 that amount to keep a person alive AND well?
Sorry, rambling away here! Anyways, mad respect to you, sir!
Regards,
Not a bitter poor person! I’m actually by many standards rich myself living in Sweden, working as doctor (psychiatrist). Although many lengths away from the american wages that doctors enjoys there over the pond, I do get to enjoy tax-payed social welfare for me and my family like kindergarten, school, healthcare etc.. I mean, I didn’t have to pay a dime going through a world renowned and internationally highly rated medical school in Stockholm (Karolinska Institutet).
Much love to you!
This video *really* strikes a chord with me. Back in the day, I would use a 5.1 system for my games, and for the most part it would just work. Especially with PC games. Now, finding a 5.1 system or Atmos system that supports HDMI and is actually *affordable* is a real headache. There are SOOOOO many products out there that are complete junk, and even the ones that are "good" don't really compare to what I was using 15 years ago. It all took me completely by surprise when I went looking to buy a new sound system, because I foolishly assumed the surround ecosystem would have become a lot more streamlined and standardized by now. Silly me.
I got a $400 (probably $500 now) Yamaha bundle with an actual 5.1 avr and all 6 speakers. Works really well. Has 4k HDR HDMI and everything. I think Yamaha is the best entry point to actual AVRs, they have the same software as the high end models on the cheaper ones so they have fully fleshed out features.
So I have a device, that in theory.. will.. in theory.. with many extra steps that have insured it's not been taken out of the plastic.. switch RCA into HDMI.. theoretically... Apparently this is just something that they really don't want you to do LOL.. and I've never used HDMI for anything audio.... Especially as a PC gamer that's always had a sound card where the outputs have always been analog LOL.. like the HDMI thing happened and, it was like cool story bro.. that'll be great if I don't want to hook up speakers and I'm using a TV (which I do, but for displaying purposes, I treat it like a monitor which I wouldn't want to have audio anyways LOL just add more pass-throughs for heaven's sake LOL..)
What's really frustrating is I have a near perfect audio setup for to the point where I've set it up in a way that should I wish to improve it I would have to spend significantly more money and as long as I don't hear anything like that.. I'm at the top of where I need to be LOL.. and it was based around the problem of needing to find RCA for surround on my sound card..
No I don't like center channels and I don't like subwoofers.. I don't need them either LOL I have full range floor speakers that each have 12 in woofers.. and if I was going to set up subs, I would have to do a whole bunch of things that I don't want to do LOL when I can get at the very least consistent surround low channels in surround....
and also honestly like center channels are kind of pointless.. if I was doing a 5.1 setup then yeah I would wanta center channel probably because we're talking about midget speakers at that point.. and then yeah I would have to get a sub because it would need to start doing all the sub things to compensate for the fact that the center channel is almost universally going to be limited in range, just on the mixing and never mind the output end...
Of course, ghosting the center channel has never been a problem in PC world, as has full range surround never been a problem.. it just does the thing, but that translation is very sad that my production computer, has not so much lacking the DRM handshakes as all of the components in the chain have the DRM handshake of the Dolby and the DTs.. including the receiver.. including the television which is not in the chain and because I don't want to watch my content on a cell phone.. the best way to get quality is to either buy a Blu-ray or torrent a Blu-ray as streaming services don't really provide you with the surround sound on the computer.. or even the 4K or any number of things...
One of these days I'm going to set up XP, if I can figure out how to find that 64-bit version that I had always tried to get to work but never could.. and just see if I was just remembering things wrong.. I feel like I I wasn't, but it was because I wasn't looking for it, I wasn't told that it had it I just remembered it having it and I remember it not having it when unreal 3 got really popular.. LOL I just remembered that being jarring having somebody in a house on the floor above me sound like he was behind me.. I was like well that's bad sound design why doesn't it do up and down....lol.
@@jakedill1304 Yeah as someone who mixes and makes tracks, but also games, I use HDMI audio only when I am using my PC for youtube or am not playing a game where I need to listen for footsteps etc, or if I CBA to turn my speakers on, or it's late at night or something. It's useful to not have extra wires, but that's about it really. I had exactly the same experience with DVI+fiber optics digital out to my monitor except it had 2 wires instead of one (it's basically the same thing, HDMI = DVI+digital audio).
HDMI was invented to push HDCP copy protections onto consumer devices.
The read single cable AV standard is SDI using industry-standard 50 ohm coax with BNC connectors.
@@jamesphillips2285 HDMI and DVI-D are two standards for the transmission of digital image signals, each with different protocols, but in part the same type of conductor which, among other things, also makes them compatible with each other. The difference is primarily that DVI is a computer monitor standard and not prepared for sound transfer. The DVI protocol is somewhat more sensitive to noise and therefore cannot cope with as long cables as HDMI. HDMI is a newer standard and designed for multimedia transmission and the protocol therefore has more options and control signals than DVI (including things like HDCP).
Great video. I was weak and bought a Klipsch Atmos system. The ceiling reflections didn't come through at all, but I can say that listening to a 5.1 mix of an album where a skilled musician/mix engineer (eg Steven Wilson) actually mixed in 5.1 is a really cool albeit privileged experience.
Absolutely loving the swearing and honesty in this video. Both of those things are extremely rare in the world of audio where most people are just trying to sell you some new scam (AMP/DAC).
I cannot get over how amazingly made your videos are! I just found your channel, and everything is just executed so perfectly. Everything from the initial idea, scientific explanations, editing, engagement, etc. is done so well. Thanks for these awesome videos, and I'm excited to see more of your stuff in the future!
I really like Atmos as a concept - having ultimate flexibility with mixing and a (theoretically) better listening experience is something I'm all for. What I'm personally not such a fan of, with Dolby's implementation at least, is the proprietary nature of the format. I don't like the idea that I should have to license the way that I distribute my music, that personally doesn't sit right with me. From the little research I've done though, the ADM format (which Atmos uses to hold its data) appears to be open source, so there is some possibility there I suppose. Anyhow, the cost of entry having a system capable of using it professionally seems more than a little bit steep, which is my main reason for sticking to Stereo for now.
Agreed. It should really be dedicated to high end "pro" environments, primarily used in theaters, planetariums and billionaires' cigar rooms. At least the producers would know that the equipment being used would be capable of delivering what they are hearing during the mixing/mastering process. Having consumers needing to do so much and shell out money at every step is a sure way to degrade the brand.
I totally agree, It has uses and is a neat idea for a format. Makes surround sound not be limited to just surround systems. But this hyper aggressive marketing and forcing of the consumer to comply or miss out by slowly attempting to push for standard stereo to go into obsolescence is shady AF imo. No wonder Apple has got their mits all over this one.
I went speaker shopping with my bother a while ago and I knew those pictures on the boxes with the 3D reflections were crap!! Thanks for your research and detail!!! Super helpful! Helping the community a ton!
I'm not even three minutes in but I just have to say I love this set-up. You're clearly not only intelligent, but compassionate. Thank you!
Did you mean passionate lol
It just occurred to me to check after watching this and it turns out I have an Atmos soundbar on my TV. The clarity of bass frequencies when I'm watching Masterchef is unrivalled.
Do bass sound different than other fish when getting cooked?
@@tungtobak I heard they sing for their lives
@Jordan Rodrigues atmos doesn’t give the bass spatial depth but boosts the low frequency so it sounds more “rumbly”
its all about the bass knowledge
Feel sorry for the Atmos remixer who had to individually object-position each tomato so you could hear it being sliced in exactly the right location
I just canceled my Atmos speaker order because of this video, thank you for saving me money and the headache of trying to figure out why it didn't work as promised!!
The best video I've seen on UA-cam this year. Man, I really loved how hilarious you were while approaching this no reason audio trend. Good job.
Loved this! Thanks for pointing out that the emperor doesn't have any clothes on. And thanks, too, for reaffirming that the best system is the one that sounds best to you, the individual. So many different ear shapes, canal depths, room dimensions, varying surface angles & treatments, room contents, thin or thick curtains/fabrics, popcorn ceilings, stucco, textured plaster, nasal pressure, allergies, distance from the sound... ad nauseam.
You reminded me of the first AMAZING STEREO records with trains racing across your living room & planes landing or horses galloping. Then QUAD! Egads!
Just plug up your side head holes up with a decent pair of cans or buds, or a set of speakers that you really, really like and sit back and watch all the FOMOs go nuts getting the latest shiny toy.
Thanks again & long may you wave.
I have a 7.1 setup on my PC, all near field studio monitors. There have been so many times when I thought something was mixed in surround when it turned out to be just an incredible stereo mix, so much so that I had to rewind and power off the front channel to confirm nothing was coming from any other speaker. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the 7.1 setup when it does kick in, especially for games (oddly enough even titles from over 10 years ago), but don't underestimate the power of a good stereo setup and mix!
I already have a grudge with dolby for taking away true calculated hrtf audio for gaming by aureal, and they're just going further and further with this "virtual speaker" stuff.
Edit: yeah sorry, as pointed out by drinklava it was creative labs who bought aureal. But the point still stand that it shows they can trick us with the virtual surround sound.
That was creative labs, not Dolby.
@@IDrinkLava my bad, you're right
Windows breaking driver compatibility every 6mo is what killed creative. You can only take so many years of having to rewrite and refix stuff you've already sold before it's not worth it anymore.
This video introduced me to your channel and it's fantastic. You have no idea how satisfying it is to finally see someone crystalizing these ideas so eloquently and effectively.
Thank you for this vid! Was debating on retiring my venerable ProLogic IIx system for a newer Atmos system. Thank you for the least bias review on this platform and showing that while the tech is interesting it is heavily marketing hype and beyond expensive!
Great video. Thanks a lot! I had more or less the same experience figuring this out.
Recently I was enticed to invest in Atmos from the professional side. Let me tell you a little bit about my experience. I am mixing and doing audio post for a living and I noticed that there suddenly was a demand for mixing movies in Atmos. With extensive surround mixes I usually mixed in stereo and then added a couple of days for upmixing it on a sound stage. This is way harder with Atmos as the whole strategy for mixing in Atmos feels really different to me. In surround it is mostly not really useful to have things flying all around the speakers: surround works great for adding ambiance, extent the panorama a bit, and having the odd directional fx because it works good with the picture. In Atmos I find that a lot of people are really tracking quite a big part of the things that you see with all sorts of fx with the (Atmos) virtual objects through the perspective of the picture. This is not really easily and, most important to me, creatively being achieved in an upmix. Long story short: it is forcing me to buy a full Atmos setup and make major adjustments to the setup and treatment in my room.
About the music format I recently heard a rumor. Maybe you know if this is true. A lot of rights of music from the fifties and soon the sixties will expire. Atmos is supposed to renew these rights as it is technically a different format. Because it is theoretically possible to fold Atmos to a stereo mix, they might be able to replace the original stereo mix with the new Atmos file. I have not been able to confirm this, but I am curious to know if it's true.
Thanks again for all the work. This is great information I wish I found earlier.
Once more great content.
My only experience with Atmos is in Village Cinemas. That's it. So, every time i look at a movie with the Atmos logo on the ticket when I go to watch the movie in the theater I experience nothing special or extremely different. Nothing that I haven't experienced before with any older multichannel Surround system that we knew from years or decades ago. Except that ticket is a couple of Euros more expensive.
And those extra €2 is exactly why they made it ;) We can still immensely enjoy black and white films in mono from almost a century ago. Why? Because they were written, acted and directed as they should be. I don't need to hear the chopper hovering over my head if the screenplay sucks ;)
1:32 Oh man. That show knocked my socks off, I still to this day want to thank you for such an experience.
This is so perfectly timed for me, as I'm getting ready to move, and was literally looking into upgrading my surround sound system earlier today. Not that I'm planning on getting anything too advanced, but you've given me a lot of great information.
Always felt that money spent on a pair (or trio, with a sub) of really good stereo speakers is better bang for the buck.
@@EversonBernardes Honestly, that may be the way we go, as the house I'll be moving into has pretty much nothing but long, narrow rooms, and the room the TV will go in can realistically only be set up one way, so we don't even really have room for anything behind the couch.
This guy is a tool, if you are building a HT at home with a proper setup set it up for Atmos. After upgrading my 5.1 setup to add atmos speakers on the ceiling it was a notable improvement on well mastered atmos films.
@@sakumisan found one in the wild
@@bb-sw6ur He's not completely wrong. Benn Jordan makes a good argument in pointing out that slapping atmos on all sorts of shitty consumer products is literally just to fleece the customer since you cannot reproduce proper spatial audio without a proper setup. BUT, If you are able to put in actual ceiling speakers into your setup, atmos will sound awesome, and it's the format most content that's setup for "immersive audio" is going to be in.
I have a 5.1 setup myself, and I would never setup 7.1, or atmos, or whatever, because I am a poor and it's out of my budget. The problem here lies with making poor people think that they can reproduce accurate spatial audio with cheap consumer hardware to make more money.
Your budget should determine how you step up in the audio tiers, and yea you gotta do a little research to figure out what you should actually be getting, and stop letting advertisers sell you fancy buzzwords.
This is spot on.
When Apple Music did their big Lossless/ATMOS update I was extremely happy…to have lossless. I didn’t know much about ATMOS so immediately turned it off in my Apple Music setting. Apple Lossless is awesome! ALAC is just an uncompressed version of what the artist (and their mixer) uploaded. If they chose to upload in 24 bit 48kHz format, that is what my RME plays back through my amp to my headphones or stereo speakers. And that’s a LOT of what’s on Apple Music. Almost everything is at least lossless CD quality (16/44). And many artist do just upload at least 24 bit since that’s easy to get from their DAW.
A few times I have turned on ATMOS to see what all the advertising is about. Like when I purchased my new Apple AirPods Pro for working in noisy environments. I tried them in a quiet room listing to movies on my Apple TV. It’s OK for listing to movies, but honestly I’m happier with my old Pioneer 5.1 surround speakers. For me a lot of the immersion is the LFE effects shaking my feet.
If I A/B with ATMOS on/off for any music I love, I would choose the stereo mix 100% of the time. It’s just two mixes, and I like that I can choose the stereo mix. Hopefully artists will always upload both mixes. To me the ATMOS always sounds like someone just went to town with an EQ and reverb like a 1980’s teenager trying to blow away their buddies with their new Realistic EQ.
So just turn off ATMOS and love what Apple did with Lossless/ALAC. It’s one easy setting and it’s off forever. Apple Music Lossless is an awesome way to access an insane library of music at a very affordable monthly price. And honestly one of the best ways to hear it is with an iPhone 6s (available used for maybe $150) and a good pair of wired headphones like the Sennheiser HD 560S (available for around $180). For less than $350 you can have a listening experience that really is what the artist intended and may make you cry if you love music. Or with a newer phone/tablet without a headphone jack you can buy a nice headphone DAC for around $150 to connect to lightning.
"you can have a listening experience that really is what the artist intended" Unfortunately not accurate. Unless you are listening to bedroom mixes, chances are that mixing and mastering engineers have imprinted their opinion on the sound (and some of them have strongs opinions, and can be very decisive and act in a way that the artist feel they have some authority, despite many of them having quite huge gaps in understanding of hearing).
But even if the engineers nail the artists vision, or improve on it, so the artist is even more pleased with what they are hearing (and not what they should be told to like, and believe the engineer to be correct). Unless it is a bedroom production, and even then in many cases, the mixing and mastering will be made with nearfield monitors, and adopted for that. The issue with that, is that when listening to speakers in a room, there will be channel crosstalk, so sounds for the right and left respectively will also reach the opposite ear. That impacts the "soundstage" quite a lot. So the panning and balance will be made for that situation, not for headphones where each channel is discretely delivered to the ear. So the vision of the soundstage will be off (it will be for your home stereo speaker set-up as well, and the engineer in the sweetspot will hear it one way, the artists sitting behind or to the side, will have heard it differently as well, so basically it only translate to a similar listening position in a similar room... but that has been the case for several of decades, but possibly even more with headphones compared to speakers). This also extends to stereo reverbs, where the reflection may be discreetly delivered in the stereo signal, making it so that stereo reverbs sounds very unnatural. And then there is an issue that can in theory be dealt with, the low end; our hearing can't tell the direction of low end sounds, that is why it is fine to have a cross over for a subwoofer at 120Hz, if needed, but when bass is mixed in stereo, and listened to through headphones, you get this weird mono bass, that is completely unnatural, but there are tools to deal with this, making bass mono, and with speakers in a room, no one would suffer from that anyway.
So you are often not getting what the artist, or even engineer intended when listening with headphones.
And here, something like Atmos could have made sense, if one of the main goals and priorities was to ensure that a mix made on speakers would translate to headphone use. There are some tools to mix with headphones and making it sound a bit like being in a room, and they are better at it than Atmos for headphones. And Apple is even using their own, not the Dolby Atmos for headphones, but applying their own encoder on it, that according to some sounds worse, but ultimately, ensures that there is no single standard, so even if Dolby would vatly improve their Atmos for headphone algorithm to actually work for translating stereo speaker mixes to headphone, as long as Apple uses their own, there would not be a single way to reference the results.
As for proper Atmos mixes, I do feel it can be quite effective. There is the basic reverbs where the reflections are actually coming from different places, just like in a real environment. And it can be used to add environmental sounds, like rain or wind, in an immersive way. There are also some cool effects like "voice of god", for parts of the vocals, or as spoken words. You can make the soundstage wider, and for example placing a choir behind the listener. And you could also do a mix that sounds like the listener sitting in the center of a live recording in a studio. But there should be some intent behind it. I'm 100% sure the Beatles had they had access to Atmos, they would have used it, so would have Pink Floyd, probably Frank Zappa, it is just that today we do not know how, so it is hard to make immersive mixes where the artists (at the mental stage they were at when making the songs), can tell us how they would have made them. Sure there would have beeen swirling vocals, and percussion, and weird sound effects that they werent even able to record at the time, as it was such a hustle using multiple tapes.
But for everyday listening, the most important things we could ask of a new format, is to actually translate the mix between different playback devices, with different types of speakers and hedphone configurations, be that adding loudness compression, and distortion to the low end to generat audible bass on a device where the speaker(s) can't play back low end. Allt to make sure that the artists (and possibly engineers), could make a mix that sounds the best on the playback they intended it for, will maximum dynamics, and good bass balance, but still sounds reasonable on other playback systems (but really, I would like the whole industry to move to headphone first, as there are many benefits, not only as it translates better to how people that care about the sound will mostly listen, it also have a lot of benefits when mixing, as headphones remove the room, and the missalignment to the sweetspot between the speaker, that regurarely happens, when interacting with hardware, or simply accidentally move, or when adjusting seating position, as well as for everyone else in the room).
And atmos doesn't do that, and nothing suggest Dolby has any such plans.
And then DTS:X has a super useful tool that Atmos lacks, for home playback of films/series, the dialogue lift feature, where all dialogue objects can be tagged as such, enabling the listener to increase all dialogue elements, no matter what speaker they will come out off. It was unfortunately not made mandatory. And just like with music engineers, sound engineers for films, directors and all sort of other creatives in the industry, lack a lot of understanding of hearing, and completely lacks the fresh ears of hearing material for the first time, so they can't judge how it will actually be heard, but they believe they are the experts, and most would not accept giving the consumers control over the balance of audio, as they feel it would negatively impact their work.
@@TheJonHolstein You misunderstand one thing, human hearing doesn't become non directional below 120hz, the increasingly omnidirectional radiation patterns of speakers at lower frequencies particularly in a reflective room leads to non directional sound but we still have directional hearing capacity at low frequencies. You can most definitely feel the direction of impact from low frequency impulses well below 20hz in an open space.
@@JohnSmith-qt4pv Now you are clearly mixing up things. We don't hear below 20Hz, we feel it, a different sense. You also have to understand the different between being able to tell the direction of a sound, because of overtones in the sound, or generated by things vibrating because of the sound. If you think you hear direction of low end in a room, you are probably hearing direction of overtones, so centering a low end instrument is that what you would do, but you would center the low end of the instrument or the mix, and let he high end be directional. If we are talking about music mixing, a truly open space is quite irrelevant as well, they don't make for good listening situations.
@@TheJonHolstein have a like for the intelligent reply 👍
I disagree on one thing though: Open spaces, large sub arrays and heavy EDM works great together. Vibrate your insides levels of bass :)
ALAC is one of the rare cases that Apple made something open source so everyone can use the codec.
Although they could have just used FLAC.
I'm using a 7.2.4 system at home, in a special room, just for that with a 120" canvas.
It's absolutely mind-blowing, and i just LOVE it and I'm very thankful for every dolby atmos release out there. That being said, i totally understand why most people won't take this kind of struggle to get something similar at home. Standing 7 speakers perfectly aligned in your living room is a pain in the a** enough. But get 4 ceiling speakers going is another kind of struggle. Cable management is a nightmare, so is the alignment. And even then, you just have one spot in the room to really enjoy it.
In my cinema room I used over 100 meters of cable, for the speakers only. Along comes hdmi cables, (expensive) composite cables for the subwoofers, ethernet, toslink cables for some older tech, etc. It's a nightmare.
For me, it's perfectly fine, because i love this kind of stuff. But i totally understand anyone who doesn't even want to set up a 5.1 system. Most "normal" people got headaches by just seeing the tons of cables behind my AV reciever.
Same, but on a budget. Atmos 5.1.2 and 75". Our room is too small to handle a larger display and more speakers anyway. I absolutely love having this room when watching movies, but I never go there to listen to music and I've never tried mixing my own stuff in anything else than old school stereo. Have you found any music mixes where immersive sound adds any value? I'm thinking it could make sense for live recordings of acoustic instruments in a nice sounding room. Perhaps a jazz trio in a lively club or symphony orchestra in a large concert hall. Use it to add the environment, not in-your-face-FX.
@@carlkolthoff5402 Pink Floyd the Dark Side of the Moon, or Mike Oldfield Tubular bells are a prime example for good Atmos Music. Yello also has a special atmos album, and Billy eilish makes some decent tracks. Of course also a matter of your music taste ;)
@@carlkolthoff5402 Pink Floyd the Dark Side of the moon and Mike Oldfield Tubular bells are prime examples for good Atmos Music. Yello also has a special atmos album, and Billy eilish makes some decent tracks in Atmos too. But of course it all depends on your music taste
the best headphone experience I had was on a PS4 with some turtle beach stealths. It was on Far Cry Primal and the 3d was insane on it. DTX I think, but I could hear and track things without a UI just based on the sound alone. It was phenomenal. Tried switching to steel series and definitely not the same feeling. The headphones matter big time
CF : frequency response*
gaming headphones, lol. lmao.
The first time I heard immersive audio was at Galaxy Studios and it was their format, Auro 3D. It blew me away. Dolby Atmos has yet to impress me on the same level.
I fully agree with your assessment of Dolby Atmos-mixed tracks… some random panning and, on a number of tracks I listened to, some extra reverb, I guess to make it sound… spacious? Add in head tracking and it is just an unpleasant experience… I despise those mixes in the early days of stereo where the entire summit was sent only to the left channel along with the vocals and the guitar and bass in the right… why would I want this to happen whenever I turn my head? I want the music to stay in one place - in front of me, like I was at a show, watching the band.
"Sorry if this sounded ranty" HUH? SORRY? Why would you be SORRY, this was PERFECT!
To my mind listening to music is like eating food; I dream about beautiful, delicious high end meals in restaurants with great atmosphere and I imagine setting up a room in my house with a perfect surround sound system. But in the end I’m eating a granola bar at work and listening to music on the go through my 30 dollar Jlab earbuds.🤷🏼♂️
Huge W. I love this video so much man. End music gate keeping forever!
Also so cool that you scored films for planetariums! I love the depth of your musical background and resume.
Music maker to the stars
many years ago I talked to the the VP of Infinity audio who back in the day had arguably one of the best audio experiences anywhere and his fave way to listen to music was on a 12 inch full range MONO speaker in his garage. being a musician and sound designer after sitting in the middle of an orchestra I can tell you it's IMPOSSIBLE to remotely recreate the sound of of anything you originally hear with your ears, so just do what works for you!
As an owner of an Atmos capable sound system (upfiring speakers not overhead) I can say that I basically exclusively use it for film/series and gaming content. I wouldn't say it's exactly night and day between a good 5.1 system but it does tend to handle sound placement with a bit more precision. My system is not expensive by sound system standards but it's also not an entry level unit either. My favourite thing about it though is it's apparent ability to "upmix" stereo or standard surround content into "Atmos" content via the Dolby app on PC. Clearly a dedicated Atmos mix is going to yield better results but it does a surprisingly good job at emulating it particularly with games and software that don't feature Atmos support. I wouldn't say Atmos is a deal breaker but with the right system it's quite versatile.
How about mastered for itunes haha
Haha. Turn it down 1db and watch the quality explode.
I'm an audiophile and a home theater enthusiast. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a "bubble of sound" unless your room is in the literal shape of a bubble. Acoustics is THE most important thing. There are people with legitimate atmos systems that still don't sound right. You're not going to get there with a soundbar or ceiling reflecting speakers. Even commercial cinemas don't sound like a bubble.
It's a descriptor to provide a visual reference, just like it's impossible to feel like you are in the movie but you get the meaning.
As you rightly pointed out, atmos is insanely expensive and insanely picky but what that means is that your mid range (sub $1000) sound bar is more like an entry level product in this context. Unfortunately to get a reasonable experience with atmos, you need something like a atmos receiver, separate speakers and most importantly in ceiling speakers. And that’s going to be a lot more expensive than $1000. And even then the best experiences are going to be from a handful of movies that mix for atmos in a noticeable way. It really sucks but you’re right that you just need to spend more money and also maybe install it in a bit more of a rectangular room. So… yeah not really a mass market product at the moment.
The problem is that they're putting Atmos stickers on soundbars and earbuds. It's ridiculous.
@@drelephanttube yeah that’s definitely a pretty rough. I almost feel like there should be like a “true atmos” certification or better yet not give the option for substandard equipment to have atmos branding at all.
If only there was some kind of organisation that was in charge of atmos certification 🙃
As a conzoomer I endorse this program.
Conzoomers unite!!
CONZOOOOOOOOM!!!
Hahahaha I’m so glad I’m not the only one who heard this 😂
I remember the algorithm directing me to your channel a while ago. You've become a great Presenter on a series of really interesting topics, delved into with credibilty. I especially enjoyed the one on the Hum sound driving everybody nutz. Respect.
I just got really tired when I saw all the announcements and marketing about this ramping up. The base tech itself with independently moving sound objects seems very reasonable but having to install proprietary software/hardware to only play back audio correctly seems to go very much backwards in time for me. A future without licence free fully documented standards for the basic aspects of audio playback is not a direction I want to support.
DDP Atmos is backwards compatible with DDP 5.1 (2000s codec), but the big problem is that many streaming providers are locking any surround presentation, unless you have something new-ish & Atmos compatible.
@@junh1024 I want a fully open and license free standard so that everyone can implement their own codec for play back. It does not matter to me if a new standard can fall back to another older proprietary ac3 codec. I want to get rid of both, especially if this is going to start to apply to audio streams in general and just not movie soundtracks. Having a single company controlling everything or 2-3 companies with competing proprietary standards is bad for progress and compatibility.
An license free to implemnt AES standard would be a lot more interesting ... I believe there is at least some related work being done there (AES69-2022)
@@pleggli 1. DDP Atmos is well-documented in ETSI TS 103 420 " backwards compatible object carriage " , and Cavern implements DDPA some playback support.
2. Patents on AC3 & LC-AAC have expired, so there should be no fees to use them.
3. AES69-2022 AFAIK describes a format for exchange of spatial-related head data, but not spatial content itself.
4. Google is working on Caviar/IAMF with AOM , but again, probably mostly google-based.
5. There is ADM from BS.2076 , but it's mainly a production format & incredibly hard to implement the full standard.
@@junh1024 Weird that I haven't seen those documents before.. I still don't know if it is possible to implement a decoder and playback system without having to buy patent licenses from Dolby but if we put that aside having all this information published like this is a good start in any case. I guess the trademark name won't ever be free to use in a product but that's maybe less of a problem as long as the implementation itself is possible to develop.
One criticism: I work in the pop music world a lot and as I understand it Apple has been requiring spacial audio mixes of a lot of AAA level artists as of late if they want any sort of special treatment on Apple Music (banners, placements and so on). So there has been a huge upsurge in people doing apple spacial audio/atmos mixes (not sure if they're 100% interchangeable but I know they're both object based). I feel like listening to some of the big pop mixes using AirPods Pro/Maxes would be a worthy addition to this since there is a lot of care being put in it, and the setup is super smooth. That stated, the thing I've been most impressed by (by far) has been the Atmos classical mixes. Totally agree with the marketing bullshit part of all of it though, it's hard to take anything seriously when you see Atmos stickers slapped on a $200 sound bar at Best Buy. What I do think is worth consideration though is car manufacturers starting to add Atmos to their stereos. If that achieves widespread adoption (a big if, I know) then I think spacial is here to stay.
100% agree with this
Apple uses Atmos, but they have their own headphone decoder, and do no use Atmos for headphones.
@@TheJonHolstein Makes total sense. I felt like they would have had Atmos logos all over the plugins if it had actually been Dolby
@@jessemcinturff1268 The Dolby Atmos plugin for Logic, I would believe says Dolby Atmos, it did at least when they introduced it, at the bottom.
Finally, someone telling us the truth about Atmos. I'm a classical music lover and love trying to recreate the live Orchestra Hall sound, since I can't go to concerts. I thought of upgrading to Atmos and buying 4 more speakers for height, front and back. Then I discovered that only one classical release has been done in Atmos and it was artificially recreated from a 1960's 2 channel recording of Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic of Beethoven's symphonies. No thank you. I'll stick with MDG's 2+2+2 almost real sounding 3-D surround recordings on SACD using 6 channels 2 front + 2 front height + 2 rear speakers. Also, SACD's 5.0 (and 5.1) surround is pretty good too, as long as the rear channel speakers are a couple feet above the ear level behind you. I have one chair in the center of my listening room in the sweet spot for me only. Total cost after saving for about 4-years was about $6,000 for a used Denon SACD multi-channel player, used Denon receiver and good set of 7 speakers plus a sub-woofer in 2009. The 7.1 speakers took up 80% of the budget. It took a lot of thinking to make it work right and be able to switch between MDG's 2 + 2 + 2 set-up and a standard 5.1 set-up easily. I really love the way classical music surround sound SACD's sound on my system. I will not be "upgrading" to Atmos!
I remember when Atmos was first introduced in cinemas, film sound mixers really liked that it would automatically downmix to smaller systems. So one mix could just be run through a series of renderers and produce 2-channel, 5.1, 7.1 mixes etc. Would be nice if that was highlighted more and/or the rendering software available en masse were better? I've noticed the difference in going to lots of movies, often seeing some movies in Atmos rooms and 5.1 rooms to compare the experience. It's largely positive. It benefits music in this film mixes too, because the freedom from channels gives the mixers the ability to more precisely separate music from sound effects and dialogue during busy sequences
All this is just what I've read and heard for myself, and again, is largely biased towards the cinema experience. But good Atmos mixes in movie theaters sound incredible, and I'm still hoping that those benefits can make their way into consumer music world
yup.
I saw A Star is Born in theatres and the music really did sound amazing.
When you got to describing the experience of hearing your own music through this gimmick, I was nodding profusely. Exactly that! 100 %! Thanks for this breakdown.
It isn't a gimmick at all. It just isn't for everyone. The cost prohibitive part of it is real, but it DOES do exactly what it says it does if used properly by somebody that knows what they're doing.
@@JustinLesamiz Fair enough. The only time atmos has sounded good to me was listening to music in the mixing studio of friend who does movie atmos music mixes with absolute pro gear in a pro room. Any simulation with headphones etc. seems kind of pointless to me, but you do you.
As a Pure Consumer I am really glad to have had my feelings and findings validated by your little rant. I am very late to the immersive sound pursuit having only just added an AVR and upgraded to 5.1 a couple of years ago. So far I've discovered that I have to really work hard to find any source material that gets my rear channels doing anything at all. Most movies make no use of the rears. Most of my streaming is UA-cam and that's all in stereo. The surround speakers don't make a peep unless some virtualization software somewhere decides to synthesize something for them.
But one really good thing has resulted from going 5.1: that center channel makes movie dialogue clearer for me. So 3.1 would have been all I need.
Recently I decided to try the cheapest AVR that could get to grok Atmos (an Onkyo 7.1 AVR) just to see if I could get *something* surround-ish sounding. I run 5.1 on it, ignore the two extra channels and let the AVR do "virtualization". I found have exactly one disk that shows this off well: Mad Max Fury Road. Stunning sound.
Just super glad I never tried adding more surrounds, ceiling speakers, and all the other crap.
we need more of this in the music yt scene!