Interesting thread. I use Audez MM-100 phones to check binaural fold downs, and Apple Airpod Max for checking Apple Spatial fold downs. Neither are other-worldly expensive, but both sound very, very good. And with the Max's, I'm comfortable knowing that the people that curate Apple's various playlists are likely listening to them (so important to artists/managers/labels). Many (most?) of the indie artists I mix for evaluate their mixes on headphones of some kind. Lots of airpods out there for sure. So - I spend a fair amount of time listening my ATMOS mixes on phones and toggling to the original stereo master for comparison. It can be challenging, as artists will have listened to their stereo masters many, many, many times prior to hearing the binaural/spatial mixes they get from me...so they're very keen to hearing differences. In particular, if the original stereo masters have mid-side/wideness things going on, the stereo version can sound very wide on headphones...and an ATMOS mix that is spread beautifully across the whole immersive sound stage on speakers can actually sound narrower (less immsersive?) than the wideness-enhanced stereo master. So there are panning tricks and others, including using the object distance parameters in the Dolby downmix settings that can really enhance the spatial presentation over headphones. Things really get interesting when the stereo master was mastered from stems, as opposed to from a stereo mix. Then, all kinds of processing can happen on individual stems (drums, vox, etc) as opposed to the whole mix. When done well the resulting stero mix can be very immersive and truly great-sounding on headphones. Ferreting that out and developing a surround mix that can compete with that on headphones is challenging, tbh kinda fun. 'ah shit...so that's what they're doing' moments... My thoughts on headphone fold downs: 1. Do no harm (they can't sound worse than the stereo mix on phones) 2. They should be distinguishable from the stereo mix on headphones 3. Hopefully the headphone mixes will sound better. 4. Don't try to compare headphone mixes to the ATMOS speaker version, as they aren't remotely the same thing for the consumer. Lastly, lately I've been doing whatever I can to get artists in an ATMOS room to hear their material in all its glory. Just last week I sent Richard Houghten to Todd Burke's
The Listening Room LA in LA to hear his new album that I mixed recently. He also got to hear another album I did for him a while back on Apple Music. And, just the other day he bought a pair of Airpod Max - and he's pretty excited about the quality of Spatial mixes (some, anyway!) on those phones. I think he's a convert at this point - I may lose him as a mix client as he's now conjuring how to record/produce in ATMOS as opposed to the remix route....ok with me as I'm all for moving the format forward!