Atmos’ killer app? Sounds like, amusingly, headphones

The article author doesn’t particularly focus on the multispeaker part of it. As he notes, there’s nothing special about multispeaker setups. 

If you *read* the article, he’s blown away by the *music*. 

Apparently, when done properly, Atmos delivers a great musical sound.  The author and the producers note that the software can help deliver discrete tracks (assuming they were recorded properly in the first place) to the listener. I don’t know if receiving two different waveforms is actually any different than receiving one convoluted one (and allowing the brain to pick the tones apart) but I’d like to see. 

Again, the author notes the headphone experience isn’t equal to speakers, but he mentions that it’s *close enough*.  And if enough music comes out with Dolby Atmos mastering, maybe that can help it gain acceptance. 

If Atmos was just about giving me more “swoosh” effects (which the author pans in the first paragraph) I was happy to pass. If, on the other hand, it can actually render a better sound stage, it’s somthing to consider. 

Again, I’d recommend reading the article. But do what you will. 

The author even mentions that the remastered REM recording doesn’t sound 3D. In fact, he says it’s still basically stereo. But the detail and ability to pick out instruments is the real magic with Atmos. Granted, it could be a puff piece, but the website isn’t an audio website or interested in selling stuff. I read it for science news. 

Again, for the author, it’s about the sound. NOT about “surround sound”.

One last nugget: I’m not quite sure how Atmos can generate individual waves with headphones and have them arrive at the same time, and neither does the author. I think we have to assume the headphone experience is using mashed up waves, but again, if it’s just 85% of the experience with speakers, a lot more people will appreciate that over folks who have more complex hifi setups like ours. *if* atmos mastered music can sound better, imagine Dolby Atmos mastered audio on Apple Music or Tidal. The reach could be massive. 

Not trying to evangelize anything about Atmos. I just thought this article would be a nice nugget for thought. 

The article talks about a BluRay audio remaster of an REM CD. It has little to nothing to talk about 3D effects.

quote: “Dolby Atmos wasn't converting this song into a surround-sound frenzy of "hey, over there!" sound effect placement. This still felt like a carefully constructed stereo mix. The biggest difference was more low- and high-end frequencies could comfortably sit next to each other at each given point.”

I think - and admittedly, I could be wrong - but as in the article, it appears that music *remastered* for Dolby Atmos can take advantage - even in stereo - of how atmos can push different portions of the music to you via different paths. Current surround systems only use this for the “gee whiz” effects in movies. But it looks like at least one producer (for the remastered REM CD) used the timing differences to apparently send multiple streams of music from different instruments to the same “location”. 

If we think about what what this means...currently if I record and then playback two instruments at the same time, with a normal sound processor you get a convoluted waveform arriving at you, simulating the combined sound arriving at you at the same time. You don’t get separate sounds per instrument because the system a) isn’t programmed to do that and b) the music likely wasn’t mastered as such.

The REM remaster seems like it was pushing differently recorded instruments through different speakers, all arriving at the listener at the same time. So, he could clearly distinguish sounds. It’s interesting. 

It doesn’t seem like this should be impossible even for a 5.1 system...assuming the producer records instruments separately, the right software should be able to do this even for a DD5.1 setup.