Count me firmly in the "excited about Atmos" (and other object-based surround) camp.
A while back I sat through an Atmos demo at a an electronics retailer here in the city, and I was completely wowed, and it was on a system with the upward firing type of speakers (which are apparently not even as good as the ceiling mounted ones) and as someone who's really picky about imaging and localisation, I wasn't left wanting at all. The demo included some bits from a nature documentary where a magpie flew toward you and as it went "over" you it squawked, and the effect was so realistic I involuntarily recoiled downward slightly and looked up. There was also a music video for some electronica group that was fully discrete with stuff ping-ponging and swirling around like some modern-day Enoch Light mix or something.
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@markshan (whose
post in the other thread really summed up everything I was thinking) I'm surprised at all the negativity about it here, because I see pretty much only positives.
Dolby and UMG are pumping money in to this because they want to build a market for it - Dolby for encoding fees, and UMG wants people to come and use their Atmos mixing facilities. This is the kind of chicken-and-egg scenario that befalls every new technology or format, people won't buy the hardware if the software doesn't exist, but companies won't put out the software if no one buys it because they don't have the equipment to play it on. So UMG and Dolby are growing eggs in a lab (by doing all this remixing before there's a market) to get the whole ball rolling. I also wouldn't worry about the wording of a press release - "thousands of tracks" sounds a lot more impressive than "a few hundred albums".
Speaking of 'chicken and egg' scenarios, the complaints that "there are only a few good surround mixers"? If the prerequisite for being a surround mixer was having previous experience as a surround mixer, there wouldn't be any at all. When I spoke to Arthur Stoppe - who worked at Sigma Sound in the 70s and engineered (or assisted on) most of the PIR quads, which I think are some of the best ever done - a while back, I asked him if they had any training, or instruction or anything on how to mix in quad, and he basically said "no, we just did what we thought sounded good". As much as I love Elliot Scheiner and Bob Clearmountain and Steven Wilson, surround mixing needn't be the preserve of septuagenarians...with apologies to Mr. Wilson who's only in his 50s. My hope is that with this new technology, and the push to popularize it will attract a whole new generation of mixers that want to try new things and who don't accept all the accepted dogma about how things "should" be done.
I actually think the whole concept of object-based mixing could (and should) lead to MORE adventurous surround mixing. I think most of us have found that the majority of 5.1 mixes tend to be front-centric, or front heavy at least, and I think that's a subtle (or not so subtle) byproduct of the fact that mixers were sitting there looking at a 5.1 montoring setup that had three big speakers in the front, and two smaller ones behind them, so they thought "big sounds in the front, smaller ones behind". The neat thing about object-based mixing is that it's essentially setup agnostic, so the speakers themselves don't become a consideration, you don't have to worry about the size of the speakers the end user has, or if they're full range, how much bass to redirect to the subwoofer, etc. You're free to put the sounds where you think they should be heard, anywhere inside a 360 degree sphere.
And speaking of that....the "height" effect, as I mentioned earlier, was remarkable - ever since I went to that demo, I've been thinking about the practical applications for music, and there are a million of them. This isn't like "let's put a guitar in the ceiling!" type stuff...although maybe someone will do that...imagine if the opening string bends in Iron Man descended from above you? Awesome! But take drums as a simple example, for decades we've lived with drums in mono, or in stereo-width, but no height to them. Then quad comes along and we get all kinds of weird arrangements that don't actually make logical sense, but are fun anyway - drums in stereo in the rear, drums in 1 speaker, half the kit in the front but the cymbals behind you, drums spread diagonally from one front to the opposite rear. Now imagine drums with height - let's say you have them in front of you like a standard stereo mix - but you can have the crash cymbals up high, rack toms and snare drum kinda 'belt level' and the bass drum and floor toms down low...for the first time ever a "four on the floor" beat can actually be on the floor for the listener. Then add back wall and ceiling reverb and you're actually 'in' the listening space - imagine John Bonham's 'When The Levee Breaks' drums and it actually sounds like you're inside the stone stairwell at Headley Grange. Imagine you're listening to Steely Dan's 'Peg' and not only are Michael McDonald's glorious backing vocals behind you, they're arrayed so it sounds like they've stacked all the "virtual McDonalds" vertically as well as spreading them horizontally in stereo, like he's in rows of choir pews. The possibilities for what you can do are almost limitless.
Also, I don't see the proliferation of soundbars as a bad thing at all. I remember the last time I had to set up my surround system and it took almost a whole day to arrange the equipment, and figure out all the cable routing and wiring (as I got more and more fed up) it was like I had a direct insight in to why this isn't for everyone. I have lots of friends who are more "casual" about audio and have equipment like soundbars etc, and they're really happy with them - everyone listens to music differently, and if someone who buys an Atmos soundbar, loves it, and then buys some Atmos music, it's still one sale the same as it is if someone with a $50k 11.2.4 system buys the same music.
Is there any point (from a surround music standpoint) in going out and getting all outfitted for Atmos right now? Probably not, unless you're independently wealthy. But I feel like right now is kinda like the equivalent of the summer of 1970 for surround lovers - equipment manufacturers made all kinds of announcements about new Q8 decks, and there were a trickle of discrete quad releases (Vanguard, Liberty, etc.) but it was that big announcment from RCA of 70 Q8's in November 1970 that really kind of said "quad has arrived". Were those early RCA quad mixes perfect? No, but there were lots of gems, and they were the start of something great. My hope is that this big UMG announcement is something similar. Sony is apparently waiting in the wings with their own object-based format called "360 Reality Audio," and while I don't think anyone wants another format war, the more companies that are competing to sell surround music the better.
So with my current surround system DOA, as I save my pennies toward a new one (and lust over a lot of equipment I can't afford presently) I'm watching all these new developments with great interest. I don't think I've been this excited about the possibilities for "new" surround music since the initial DVD-A announcement in 2000.