Listening to in Dolby Atmos Streaming, via Tidal/Apple/Amazon

[key_wiz]

Enjoying the surround mix of the new album by this neo-soul artist. Nice “chill” album with good mix.

 

[himey]

The last two Heads albums have been added to Tidal, More Songs and Tongues.

 

[Quad grant me serenity]

The ‘Speaking In Tongues’ is off the radar… So good! We’re talking Kraftwerk level!

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better mix than Burning Down The House. It is mindblowing!

 

[~dave~~wave~]

By the way: this story says that "Talking Heads guitarist/keyboardist Jerry Harrison oversaw the Dolby Atmos mixes."

Please post this over in the rant thread: Warner Music Dolby Atmos Upmixing (Unacceptable!)
This is what we're talking about, artist involvement.

And of course, it was Jerry Harrison who mixed the 5.1s.
Guess that's another good reason to hang on to the collectible brick box I bought for a small fortune.

 

[ted_b]

How different are these TH Atmos mixes than the 5.1 from the Brick collection? Brick's Speaking In Tongues was a real standout. Are the Atmos mix use of heights good/gimmicky/nonexistent?

 

[benfolds5]

There we go;

Little Creatures by Talking Heads
True Stories by Talking Heads
Naked by Talking Heads

Speaking In Tongues & True Stories are still in stereo in my area

 

[César]

How different are these TH Atmos mixes than the 5.1 from the Brick collection? Brick's Speaking In Tongues was a real standout. Are the Atmos mix use of heights good/gimmicky/nonexistent?

I just sampled two tracks (And She Was and Road to Nowhere) and heights are used discreetly and wisely. Need to compare with the Brick mixes though, but these songs in Atmos are very good

 

[fripppp]

How different are these TH Atmos mixes than the 5.1 from the Brick collection? Brick's Speaking In Tongues was a real standout. Are the Atmos mix use of heights good/gimmicky/nonexistent?

I dont have the extra heights so I can't comment for that, but I know for a fact that even the 5.1 bases were rebuilt from the ground up and are not recycled from the brick. Pulled Up is a perfect example, the new mix has vocals completely isolated in the center, very discrete, while my copy from the brick has bass and drums in the center channel too. This is certainly a new mix, and in my opinion, a much better one.

EDIT: Heres a comparison

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I went to play Tom Petty's Mary Jane's Last Dance yesterday and it was only available in stereo. Tried to find American Girl, and the same, stereo only. Are they gone from Apple? I hate that $h*t.

 

[jamesc]

Listening to some Talking Heads last night (Tidal) there were some huge volume differences between tracks on same album (Little Creatures in particular). Anyone find same on Apple?

I noticed major volume differences between tracks on the two INXS releases on Tidal. I get there will be volume differences between albums but not sure why they'd allow such wild swings in volume within an album.

 

[himey]

How different are these TH Atmos mixes than the 5.1 from the Brick collection? Brick's Speaking In Tongues was a real standout. Are the Atmos mix use of heights good/gimmicky/nonexistent?

According to the DR#s, the Atmos mixes are a bit more dynamic.

 

[humprof]

How different are these TH Atmos mixes than the 5.1 from the Brick collection? Brick's Speaking In Tongues was a real standout. Are the Atmos mix use of heights good/gimmicky/nonexistent?

My hot take on the first two to appear (77, FOM) was that they were "enhanced 5.1": i.e, 5.1 with fronts and rears doubled, respectively, in the front and rear overheads--maybe with the volume lowered slightly and bit of reverb added. That's still my impression after a quick listen to all eight, but I'd gladly be convinced otherwise by a more careful listener. @himey's DR report is encouraging, as is @fripppp's illustration of the differences between 2005 and 2022. As overjoyed as I am to see these appear, though, I was kind of expecting more discrete surprises in the heights, especially on more densely orchestrated albums like RIL, SIT, and Naked. It would be great to hear various bleeps and bloops on tracks like "Born Under Punches" or "Houses In Motion" scattered across the ceiling, a la Fritz Hilpert, or to hear percussion and/or horns spread around more discretely on "Mr. Jones." Still love them all, though.

The story I linked to above cited Jerry Harrison as "overseeing" these mixes, but I still wonder, like @steelydave, if Eric Thorngren wasn't also involved. Harrison has done a lot of producing but doesn't have other Atmos mixing credits that I know of; Thorngren does. @sjcorne: let's have an interview!

 

[Audiowannabee]

Please post this over in the rant thread: Warner Music Dolby Atmos Upmixing (Unacceptable!)
This is what we're talking about, artist involvement.

And of course, it was Jerry Harrison who mixed the 5.1s.
Guess that's another good reason to hang on to the collectible brick box I bought for a small fortune.

Well that n WHO knows how long the Atmos will be available too listen to on streaming with their here today gone tomorrow policy???

A month? A year? What about 3 yrs 5 yrs???

 

[popshop]

Re: Petty. There's an announcement this coming Wednesday and then a release Oct. 14. Not sure what.
@LuvMyQuad Mary Jane's is still in atmos on that goofy Road Trip comp but indeed the 4 from Greatest Hits are back in stereo for now.

 

[Audiowannabee]

Re: Petty. There's an announcement this coming Wednesday and then a release Oct. 14. Not sure what.
@LuvMyQuad Mary Jane's is still in atmos on that goofy Road Trip comp but indeed the 4 from Greatest Hits are back in stereo for now.

Atm in time Tom Petty 4 songs from Greatest Hits Still in Atmos here in FL

 

[perzon57]

My hot take on the first two to appear (77, FOM) was that they were "enhanced 5.1": i.e, 5.1 with fronts and rears doubled, respectively, in the front and rear overheads--maybe with the volume lowered slightly and bit of reverb added. That's still my impression after a quick listen to all of them, but I'd gladly be convinced otherwise by a more careful listener. @himey's DR report is encouraging, as is @fripppp's illustration of the differences between 2005 and 2022. As overjoyed as I am to see these appear, though, I was hoping for more discrete surprises in the heights, especially on RIL, SIT, and Naked.

The story I linked to above cited Jerry Harrison as "overseeing" these mixes, but I still wonder, like @steelydave, if Eric Thorngren wasn't also involved. Harrison has done a lot of producing but doesn't have other Atmos mixing credits that I know of; Thorngren does. @sjcorne: let's have an interview!

I don't consider myself a careful listener, but I listened to Remain In Light last night as it's my favourite TH album, and I love the mix. It may be an upmix of some sort from the 5.1, but if so it's tastefully done. The heights are used in full and my meters was in the reds all the time. Good use of the SB speakers too. It really lift the music so to speak.

 

[~dave~~wave~]

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better mix than Burning Down The House. It is mindblowing!

Holy Cow! It's a stunner, for sure.

Very interesting mix. I demoed it in both 5.1 and 7.4.1.
Appreciate that the center channel is full of drums and synths and only enough lead vocal to fill in the spread across the wide fronts.
Drums all around the room.
In 7.4 they fly up to the height speakers in full range & full strength, maxing the signal meters.

I'm using" full-range" 80-watt bi-amped JBL powered "studio" near-field monitors with 5-inch ported woofers for my Atmos height experiment.
This is by far the hardest they've worked from anything streaming on Apple I've thrown at them so far.

If everybody mixed like this, it would negate the theory that "ceiling" speakers don't need to be full range, since there's never that type of content in them.

Now open to suggestions for other tracks that make the height speakers thump.
Other than EDM or hip-hop, not my cup of tea, old fart that I am.

 

[humprof]

The guy who did the Talking Heads 5.1 mixes, E.T. Thorngren, also did the Atmos mix of Kenny Wayne Shepherd's The Traveler, so it wouldn't surprise me if he's working his way through the Talking Heads catalogue now.

These kinds of re-remixes are kind of low-hanging fruit, because all the (costly) legwork of finding the original analog tapes, transferring them to digital, lining them up and doing the edits, etc. is already done, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of this kind of thing for "catalog" Atmos remixes, before they start really trawling the vaults for things that have never been remixed at all.

Interesting piece from Mix Online where Thorngren & Michael Romanowski talk about their approach to that Kenny Wayne Shepherd album, by the way:
https://www.mixonline.com/recording...in-immersive-audio-dolby-kenny-wayne-shepherd
And--totally unrelated--a cool roundtable where Thorngren & others discuss reverb. Ain't Google wonderful?
https://www.uaudio.com/blog/reverb-roundtable/

 

[El Goodo]

I don't consider myself a careful listener, but I listened to Remain In Light last night as it's my favourite TH album, and I love the mix. It may be an upmix of some sort from the 5.1, but if so it's tastefully done. The heights are used in full and my meters was in the reds all the time. Good use of the SB speakers too. It really lift the music so to speak.

I don't have any streaming subscriptions at the moment so I can't check, but here's one way we might tell if this is an upmix: in the song Born Under Punches at about 90 seconds in, during the line "Some of you people just about missed it", in the stereo mix there is a little marimba or xylophone riff that plays quietly in background, which is completely missing in the 5.1 mix. If it's back in the Atmos mix, that would be one way to tell that it isn't just upmixing the 5.1.

Another difference between the stereo and 5.1 to look for in the Atmos mix: during the fade out of Seen and Not Seen, the 5.1 has some random mumbling from David Byrne that was edited out of the stereo mix.

 

[beerking]

Unfortunately, I don't get the time I would like to spend on Apples Dolby Atmos new releases.

But the time I do have has just been spent listening to Talking Heads....and Fear of Music in particular.

It certainly is using all of my 7.1.4
setup!!

PS: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE...JUST WOW!!