An immersive Dolby Atmos version of Panopticom has been released today. This is the 'In-Side Mix'.
The In-Side mix has been created by Hans-Martin Buff in the Red Room at Real World Studios & his own studio Aural Majority Pad, Boofland.
Much like with the Bright and Dark-Side mixes, all the tracks from i/o will get the In-Side treatment too, and can be heard on Apple Music and Amazon.
Buff is doing these immersive mixes for Atmos and doing a wonderful job. The way people consume sound, songs and music now is 60-70% through headphones so that gives us, as creators, a chance – especially with these headphones that allow you some kind of three-dimensional illusion – of putting people right inside the three-dimensional space. What’s amazing about that is with stereo you’ve got some senses of up and down but how do you fill that space across? In this three-dimensional world it’s like you’re taking off in a balloon and you can suddenly see all around and you can position things very carefully and make events happen in space. A spatial composition. I think Buff has a great attitude to all that, so I’m learning, and I hope some of you get a chance to check these mixes out.
Buff and Peter have used the technology specifically as a creative tool, as Buff explains further:
3D music, as presented in Dolby Atmos, is SO much more than moving sounds all over the place. It’s not just a new way of mixing, it’s a way of making music that’s bigger and more rewarding than anything that came before. Peter gets it. To him, stereo and 3D versions don’t have to match, they just “both have to be great.” and to me, that is a creative dream come true. I get to bring anything to the table I can possibly imagine in order to fill Real World Studios’ Red Room with music. I get to streamline, I get to focus, I get to embellish, and I get to rough up the sounds that make up Peter’s arrangements. I get to emphasise, to hide, and I even get to record specifically for the immersive Peter Gabriel, and in the end, Peter will be in the room to be the judge of what’s best for his new songs. “When people want to know what great Atmos can be, I want them to listen to this,” he says. I think we’re well on our way.
Both the Apple Music and Amazon platforms require us to link a stereo version, with the same name, to all Atmos audio mixes, allowing listeners to swap between the two.
This has provided a bit of a challenge for us because our Atmos audio In-Side Mix has no stereo equivalent, yet we're obliged to have one. In order to release the Atmos mix - and the eagled-eared amongst you might have worked this out - we have used the Dark-Side Mix as the linked stereo version.
So, if you listen to the In-Side Mix in Atmos you get the new approach from Buff and Peter, but if you listen in stereo you will hear Tchad Blake’s Dark-Side Mix under another name. It's a bit confusing, we know, but it’s our best work-around for now..
Regardless of that, we hope you enjoy this 3D listening experience.
