Apparently Dolby's Atmos Media Blitz Hasn't Reached Everyone in the Media...

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humprof

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Aaugh! (Insert sounds of forehead-smacking, teeth-gnashing, and hair-pulling.) From today's Times (5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now), emphasis added:

Natasha Barrett: ‘Heterotopia’ (Persistence of Sound)

It’s easy to get caught up in technical details when talking about Natasha Barrett’s work. She uses ambisonics to compose and mix music in 3-D formats. Some of her live performances — such as at Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) in Troy, N.Y. — use dozens of speakers arrayed around an audience in a precise dome that could intimidate an IMAX theater’s sound system.​
But what use is all of that at home? Not much, Barrett has recognized. While some of her releases use binaural mixing — in an attempt to get that immersive, spatial sound to work over a pair of headphones — she’s also game to produce a more typical mix of her work. That’s the case with “Heterotopia,” whose title track is a reference to Foucault’s idea of otherness. You don’t need a complex setup to get into it; just fire up your best speakers and press play.​
The nine-minute “Urban Melt in Park Palais Meran” begins as a field recording of an amiable outdoor table tennis match. But within the first minutes, you can feel the plink-plonking tones entering into a sonic multiverse — splitting apart, doubling, with different iterations of the game cascading over one another. This works well in a space with dozens of speakers, like EMPAC. But Barrett’s overall conception of the piece — with the audio documentary feel giving way to passages strewn with resonant drones and whipping, trebly textures — makes for compelling drama when heard in stereo, too.​

Memo to Seth Colter Walls (and Natasha Barrett, and Persistence of Sound Records): so some people actually have more than two speakers at home. And as for "immersive, spatial sound": um, there's this thing called "Atmos," see, and it's actually designed for more than just headphones. . . .
 
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I'm not an NYT subscriber - I haven't found an email addr yet in order to send a politely worded email about Quad - Atmos - and the QQ forum.

Anyone post the contact emails (article author, NYT in general)?


Kirk Bayne
 
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