NY Times article from yesterday: “Dolby Atmos Wants You to Listen Up. (And Down. And Sideways.)”

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

“True believers in the immersive audio format say it could restore a musical appreciation lost to a generation that has come up during the streaming era.”

Click here for the article

One part that annoyed me a little:

{“The recording industry went from mono to stereo decades ago, and it didn’t move from there,” John Couling, senior vice president of Dolby Laboratories, said in a phone interview.

There have been efforts to convince the public to adopt new advanced technologies in the years since, ‌including Quadraphonic sound in the ’70s ‌and 5.1 surround sound in the ’90s, but with little success. “We’ve changed formats, we’ve changed delivery methods, we’ve changed all sorts of things,” Couling said, “but it was still fundamentally the same sound. Atmos is a completely new experience.”}

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what he is trying to convey but to me it almost sounds like he’s saying that after mono there was stereo, then quad & 5.1 were released but they were all fundamentally the “same sound”.
Look I realize Atmos can be great but c’mon, …a great quad or 5.1 mix sounds nothing like stereo.

 

[sjcorne]

Also - with regards to the Chic albums - would it have killed them to credit Steven Wilson with those instead of just mentioning an anonymous “team”?

 

[mkt]

“evolutionary and biological reasons that sound sources coming from behind and above listeners can be unsettling or anxiety inducing”
My lizard brain tends to agree.

 

[humprof]

“True believers in the immersive audio format say it could restore a musical appreciation lost to a generation that has come up during the streaming era.”

Click here for the article

One part that annoyed me a little:

{“The recording industry went from mono to stereo decades ago, and it didn’t move from there,” John Couling, senior vice president of Dolby Laboratories, said in a phone interview.

There have been efforts to convince the public to adopt new advanced technologies in the years since, ‌including Quadraphonic sound in the ’70s ‌and 5.1 surround sound in the ’90s, but with little success. “We’ve changed formats, we’ve changed delivery methods, we’ve changed all sorts of things,” Couling said, “but it was still fundamentally the same sound. Atmos is a completely new experience.”}

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what he is trying to convey but to me it almost sounds like he’s saying that after mono there was stereo, then quad & 5.1 were released but they were all fundamentally the “same sound”.
Look I realize Atmos can be great but c’mon, …a great quad or 5.1 mix sounds nothing like stereo.

Thanks for posting! (Looks like it won't be in the print edition of the paper till Sunday.) Interesting that it centers on Brad Wood, whose name I was just invoking earlier today. He did a great Atmos mix for Liz Phair's latest album, Soberish. Hoping we get a 30th-anniversary Atmosized Exile in Guyville tomorrow!

 

[humprof]

Also - with regards to the Chic albums - would it have killed them to credit Steven Wilson with those instead of just mentioning an anonymous “team”?

To be fair, it was Nile Rodgers who failed to single out SW. (Although granted, the author could have filled in that gap.) But this:

“There was no appreciation of the art and work of sound engineers and mixing and mastering,” Schusser said over a video call this spring. “That really pained us. We wanted to fix that.”

You could start by actually crediting those engineers in the metadata and/or elsewhere, Oliver.

 

[humprof]

“evolutionary and biological reasons that sound sources coming from behind and above listeners can be unsettling or anxiety inducing”
My lizard brain tends to agree.

I dunno...I've always been dubious of that claim. Sounds pseudo-scientific. (No disrespect to your lizard brain, @mkt.)

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Thanks for the article. There’s a lot of good information to digest. I found this link in the article about Quadraphonic sound from the NYT dated August 5, 1971:

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/05/...ytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

 

[stevendive]

I dunno...I've always been dubious of that claim. Sounds pseudo-scientific. (No disrespect to your lizard brain, @mkt.)

Not exactly pseudo-scientific in that humans are prey animals, as well as being predators, adaptated for reflex reactions to unexpected sounds. When listening to (eg) music or movie tracks, we are not being threatened but movies often have surprises designed to make us jump.

 

[dabl]

“True believers in the immersive audio format say it could restore a musical appreciation lost to a generation that has come up during the streaming era.”

Click here for the article

One part that annoyed me a little:

{“The recording industry went from mono to stereo decades ago, and it didn’t move from there,” John Couling, senior vice president of Dolby Laboratories, said in a phone interview.

There have been efforts to convince the public to adopt new advanced technologies in the years since, ‌including Quadraphonic sound in the ’70s ‌and 5.1 surround sound in the ’90s, but with little success. “We’ve changed formats, we’ve changed delivery methods, we’ve changed all sorts of things,” Couling said, “but it was still fundamentally the same sound. Atmos is a completely new experience.”}

Maybe I’m misunderstanding what he is trying to convey but to me it almost sounds like he’s saying that after mono there was stereo, then quad & 5.1 were released but they were all fundamentally the “same sound”.
Look I realize Atmos can be great but c’mon, …a great quad or 5.1 mix sounds nothing like stereo.

Agree 100%.

Couling is simply spinning the argument to make it sound like Dolby is doing something revolutionary, which they are in several ways, but yeah, saying a quad or 5.1 is fundamentally the same sound as stereo and that Atmos is lightyears different is a specious argument.

 

[dabl]

Not exactly pseudo-scientific in that humans are prey animals, as well as being predators, adaptated for reflex reactions to unexpected sounds. When listening to (eg) music or movie tracks, we are not being threatened but movies often have surprises designed to make us jump.

I don't disagree about the psychoacoustic aspects in listening to music but my take on what Susan Rogers said is that she is one of the many engineers who were getting less and less work, particularly after Prince died, then, when it was clear the Prince estate was not going to involve her in any of the jobs of going through the archives she moved on to a different career, teaching, where an advanced degree was required.

She has made many statements about how she has intimate knowledge of the material surrounding the Prince albums she worked on that would be invaluable putting together special editions and clearly wants to be part of that process.

Her “knee-jerk reaction was ‘do not want,’” she said. “But over time I may learn to like it.”

Meaning: 'If you ask me to mix anything I worked on by Prince in Atmos, I'd jump at the chance'

Having said all that I'm not in any way putting down Susan or attempting to diminish the work she did. I admire how she's maneuvered her career. Very sensible.

 

[AYanguas]

It must be said that, although the first two surround music attempts (Quad and 5.1) did not achieve massive success, this third attempt of immersive music will indeed have it.
Why? Because it's something "different." And furthermore, there are very strong companies behind it: Dolby and Apple.

Not bad if it achieves the objective, BUT…This way of explaining it sounds too much like political election campaigns to me.

Many people are familiar with "Dolby" because of the theaters, and with “Apple” because of the iPhones. That's something important. Very few people know Steven Wilson. Why mention him?

 

[barfle]

Not exactly pseudo-scientific in that humans are prey animals, as well as being predators, adaptated for reflex reactions to unexpected sounds. When listening to (eg) music or movie tracks, we are not being threatened but movies often have surprises designed to make us jump.

Yep. I remember watching a movie in a theater when someone off-camera said “Excuse me” from ine of the surround speakers, and my first thought was that some jerk in the audience wanted to be noticed. It was all part of the show, but it sure broke the experience for a moment or two.

 

[key_wiz]

I don't disagree about the psychoacoustic aspects in listening to music but my take on what Susan Rogers said is that she is one of the many engineers who were getting less and less work, particularly after Prince died, then, when it was clear the Prince estate was not going to involve her in any of the jobs of going through the archives she moved on to a different career, teaching, where an advanced degree was required.

She has made many statements about how she has intimate knowledge of the material surrounding the Prince albums she worked on that would be invaluable putting together special editions and clearly wants to be part of that process.

Her “knee-jerk reaction was ‘do not want,’” she said. “But over time I may learn to like it.”

Meaning: 'If you ask me to mix anything I worked on by Prince in Atmos, I'd jump at the chance'

Having said all that I'm not in any way putting down Susan or attempting to diminish the work she did. I admire how she's maneuvered her career. Very sensible.

I dunno. A recent conversation with an engineer friend of mine had him saying almost exactly the same thing as Rogers said: he talked about psychoacoustics and he doesn't believe humans have evolved to listen to music in anything other than the more 'natural' position of it spread out in front of them.

But also that he's considered upgrading his studio to accommodate Atmos in order get more work.

Also, she stopped working with Prince around 1988 and got out of the business altogether in 2000. So I'm hesitant to chalk up her opinion to just sour grapes over being left out of the Prince work.

 

[humprof]

I dunno. A recent conversation with an engineer friend of mine had him saying almost exactly the same thing as Rogers said: he talked about psychoacoustics and he doesn't believe humans have evolved to listen to music in anything other than the more 'natural' position of it spread out in front of them.

But also that he's considered upgrading his studio to accommodate Atmos in order get more work.

Also, she stopped working with Prince around 1988 and got out of the business altogether in 2000. So I'm hesitant to chalk up her opinion to just sour grapes over being left out of the Prince work.

What makes me dubious whenever I hear a claim that "the human brain is hard-wired for x" is the long history of biological explanations for all sorts of things, often involving race or gender, that turn out to be pseudo-scientific rationalizations for maintaining a status quo which some privileged group or other has an interest in maintaining. There may be plenty of situations where I'm startled to hear an unexpected noise behind me, and no doubt my prehistoric ancestors walking through the jungle would quite reasonably have been startled to hear such sounds, too. But that doesn't prevent me from taking intense pleasure in listening to surround mixes, where I both expect and want to hear things from behind. Anyway, I don't think Dolby needs to factor some allegedly "natural" aversion to surround sound into its calculations.

 

[key_wiz]

What makes me dubious whenever I hear a claim that "the human brain is hard-wired for x" is the long history of biological explanations for all sorts of things, often involving race or gender, that turn out to be pseudo-scientific rationalizations for maintaining a status quo which some privileged group or other has an interest in maintaining. There may be plenty of situations where I'm startled to hear an unexpected noise behind me, and no doubt my prehistoric ancestors walking through the jungle would quite reasonably have been startled to hear such sounds, too. But that doesn't prevent me from taking intense pleasure in listening to surround mixes, where I both expect and want to hear things from behind. Anyway, I don't think Dolby needs to factor some allegedly "natural" aversion to surround sound into its calculations.

As a surround music fan I obviously don’t agree with the “it isn’t natural” arguments. If anything , I believe the opposition is true.

But if that is some people’s reaction to it then I’m not going to tell them they are wrong. It could be that they are simply more unnerved by sounds coming from behind them than you or I are.

I’ve noticed my wife is always more startled by rear action when we are watching movies than I am. So maybe it’s just a difference in how the two of us are “wired” or trained to listen.

 

[kap'n krunch]

As a surround music fan I obviously don’t agree with the “it isn’t natural” arguments. If anything , I believe the opposition is true.

But if that is some people’s reaction to it then I’m not going to tell them they are wrong. It could be that they are simply more unnerved by sounds coming from behind them than you or I are.

I’ve noticed my wife is always more startled by rear action when we are watching movies than I am. So maybe it’s just a difference in how the two of us are “wired” or trained to listen.

XXs have much better hearing than XYs!

 

[mkt]

But if that is some people’s reaction to it then I’m not going to tell them they are wrong. It could be that they are simply more unnerved by sounds coming from behind them than you or I are.

This is me. I am firmly in the "more speakers, more channels, more better camp" but there are well-regarded mixes of music that I like but whose rear content makes me not enjoy it as much as I would expect otherwise

 

[gene_stl]

thank you @Methuselah’s Grandpa for sharing the article.

As I mentioned in a different thread there have been a bunch of Atmos pushback videos on YouTube lately.

I find it hard to imagine Atmos having success outside of earbuds and phones. I am doubtful that many will be willing to have two four or five spikkers (may as well have Auro 3 D capability too right??) in their listening rooms unless they are hard core home theater enthusiasts. I would not mind being totally wrong on this. I also have been concerned about automated upmixes being released as Atmos mixes. and it's use to promote streaming over physical media. and , and.......

 

[Kal Rubinson]

A recent conversation with an engineer friend of mine had him saying almost exactly the same thing as Rogers said: he talked about psychoacoustics and he doesn't believe humans have evolved to listen to music in anything other than the more 'natural' position of it spread out in front of them.

Of course not. Humans have not been listening to music, especially reproduced music, long enough for that. However, live music performed anywhere (except in an anechoic chamber) is experienced as a three-dimensional perception because the direct sounds of the instruments and/or voices are transduced along with their reflections from the surfaces and the resonances of the space of the performance site. So, the issue really is whether listeners, who have been conditioned to listening to reproduced music via stereo headphones, mono speakers or, even, stereo systems, are prepared to accept a different listening paradigm which may be closer to reality or even enhanced beyond that.

 

[Methuselah’s Grandpa]

I dunno. A recent conversation with an engineer friend of mine had him saying almost exactly the same thing as Rogers said: he talked about psychoacoustics and he doesn't believe humans have evolved to listen to music in anything other than the more 'natural' position of it spread out in front of them.

As far as humans “evolving” to listen to music, …there hasn’t been enough time for that if you’re talking about recorded music. As far as live music, …people have sang together for thousands of years, & all those voices have not always been in front of the listener. Drums in Africa pre-date all recorded music, who’s to say that they always played directly in front & not spread out and around an audience?

The most common way people listen to music now is probably headphones & I’d argue that headphone listening is the most un-natural way to experience music, if any method of music listening would go against our evolution, it would be that.