Dolby Atmos Upmixing on the Streaming Services (Unacceptable!)

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No Kidding. When I went to the youtube video with Alan Han and George Massenburg, another video was recommended:

Here is a George Massenberg quote from that video: "What the requirement is for immersive mixing is that we get back to doing good mixes, high quality mixes. Not just pressing buttons on plugins, but mixing where you grab a fader. This thing where you use plugins is bullsh**."

Ouch. If Han actually is using "plug-ins" (or their AI equivalent) for any of these mixes, then his old teacher just burned him!
 
No Kidding. When I went to the youtube video with Alan Han and George Massenburg, another video was recommended:

Here is a George Massenberg quote from that video: "What the requirement is for immersive mixing is that we get back to doing good mixes, high quality mixes. Not just pressing buttons on plugins, but mixing where you grab a fader. This thing where you use plugins is bullsh**."

fantastic video! thank you for sharing! 💘

George Massenburg isn't a legend in that sphere for nothing, he is so so right about mixing for Atmos!

the secret to good Atmos is not such a mystery but to do a good mix with a feel for the music, using faders not buttons and plug-in's!!

love it!! think this Warners chap (if it
is indeed him behind all the fake upmixes) might want to schedule some FaceTime with his Teacher.
 
Hi all,

I opened an account just to respond to this thread. I’ll try to do my best to share some insight to the Atmos creation process and present possible solutions. It’s very apparent there is a lot of admirable passion for the music here, but please don’t go and attack/harass individuals you may think are responsible. Specifically, I see some tracking down the Atmos engineers. I’ll explain in more detail below, but those actions are only going to be harmful to the music community.


For those of you who want the TL;DR: Labels and artists simply don’t have budget allocated for the cost of making an immersive Atmos experience.


Some insight into the Atmos creation process as it stands:

1) A song/album gets approval for an Atmos mix. Note: even for new releases, the song/album will already have been mixed, mastered and at least approved for release in stereo, if not already released.

2) The Atmos mixing engineer (most times this will not be the original stereo mixing engineer) receives the original files. Ideally these are mixed stems (individual splits of instruments/elements), but this is dependent on the song/album in question. Older songs may only have a few mixed stems or even only a stereo master file, especially if they had to be previously digitized from an analog format.

3) Atmos mix is completed. In an ideal world, the Atmos mix will be sent to a mastering engineer for proper final touches. Most often, the budget won’t cover the cost for mastering.

4) Atmos mix/master is sent to the label for distribution.


The major pain point here is budget & cost:

As much as we would love for every release to have a “proper” Atmos treatment with a fully-immersive surround experience, cost & budget rarely allows for this. The only real exception is if the artist is invested in the format and has their own budget to allow for this. They probably will not see a return on their investment, so this is as much out of passion as anything.

Some cost insight:

To ADD Atmos capability to an existing mix studio, the cost is easily over $100,000 USD (speakers, additional DAC, networking, installation). The cost to rent an Atmos-capable mixing studio is at least 3x the cost for a non-Atmos-capable room. Add the additional cost for an engineer to work on making a proper Atmos mix, and you have a budget that is quite a lot higher than what it cost to mix the album in stereo.

As a result - at least at present - record labels are only looking to add Dolby Atmos to their roster for the hype. The ability to have their artists on more playlists (“Made for Spatial Audio”) is marketing and visibility. A “proper” Atmos experience will simply cost too much and is really only reserved for film budgets (Rocket Man comes to mind).

In the current state of music, record labels (and more importantly, the artists) are not going to make any financial return on an Atmos investment. This may only make sense for artists with die-hard audiophile fans like Pink Floyd, Rush and a select few classic acts. Modern artists likely won’t have these kinds of fans, unless there is a massive shift back to quality in music listening formats (and the way we listen to music). As much hate as Apple probably gets here, Spatial Audio is the closest thing I’ve seen to making that happen for younger listeners.

If there isn’t much budget for Atmos to be created, mixing & mastering engineers aren’t getting paid to do a wonderfully customized mix in a wonderful space for the world to hear their favorite artists swirling around the ceiling and cool instruments and effects coming at you from every direction. Current budgets only allow for a basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music can be placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field and surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you. Anything more creative requires a lot more time (and therefore money), and IMPORTANTLY, isn’t necessarily the direct vision of the artist. Which brings up the fact that the artist is rarely involved in this process. While many of these Atmos mixes aren’t simply “upsampling” a stereo file, it’s not some grand creative collaboration that we all wish could happen.


Possible solutions:

• Contact your favorite artists. Start campaigns to fund awesome Atmos interpretations of your favorite songs/albums. If there is enough support behind at least a good handful of these artists, it may create a bigger drive for labels to support the format with less hesitance/risk. This type of grassroots movement is probably the best way forward.

• Contact the labels with positive messages in support of Atmos. Attacking the problem with negativity will rarely cause a corporation to magically throw more money towards the cause. This doesn’t mean you cannot express disappointment, but try to ultimately show your passion and excitement. There are music fans working at these labels too, who are trying to push the cause, but don’t necessarily have the ultimate say in these things. Providing their views with support may prove helpful, but I can see it being much more difficult to make actual change.

**Friendly reminder: the people you may contact for both labels and artists are just individual humans who are tasked with fielding emails and are probably not in charge of decisions to change anything. Be nice!

• DO NOT contact people credited for making the Atmos mixes or masters to complain. As much as it may make sense that “they are in charge of the sound, therefore it’s their responsibility,” these individuals rarely have control over the current state of things. They’re doing the best they can with the resources given to them. They are also music fans and have just as much excitement and passion as the rest of us.


I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas how to constructively move forward.
 
Hi all,

I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas how to constructively move forward.
thank you for dropping by.

i don't need to know who you are or who you work for but you didn't say what role you play (if any) in the creation of Atmos Music mixes but i guess if you have some influence over the future direction of Atmos Music i shall firstly respond to your final comment in this way;

the best way to constructively move forward is to please stop upmixing Stereo tracks to fake Atmos for albums where there are multitracks.

moreover, you mention the additional overhead to studios to mix in Atmos and i take this on board.

however, i wonder whether you might consider an end user, such as myself. i absolutely did not spend thousands of pounds on purchasing additional equipment and so forth (speakers, amplification, 4K Apple TV, Apple Music Subscription, etc.) to listen to Atmos Music and to then have to endure fake upmixed Atmos rendition, after fake upmixed Atmos rendition, after fake upmixed Atmos rendition.

no, i invested what are to me not inconsiderable sums of money to listen to genuine Atmos mixed from multitracks. that was not only a hope, it was an expectation because Dolby and Apple had said that Atmos upmixes of Stereo material were not allowed.

i have much more to say on the matter but for now i will say, sincerely, the case presented that it is too expensive to properly mix genuine Atmos Music is weak in my opinion and is simply not good enough.

consumers are paying costly monthly subscriptions to hear these fakes, we're not getting them for nothing.

if things continue in this way i will be cancelling my Apple Music subscription, i have zero interest in paying for Atmos upmixes, i have neither the budget for it nor the inclination.
 
I opened an account just to respond to this thread. I’ll try to do my best to share some insight to the Atmos creation process and present possible solutions. It’s very apparent there is a lot of admirable passion for the music here, but please don’t go and attack/harass individuals you may think are responsible. Specifically, I see some tracking down the Atmos engineers. I’ll explain in more detail below, but those actions are only going to be harmful to the music community.


For those of you who want the TL;DR: Labels and artists simply don’t have budget allocated for the cost of making an immersive Atmos experience.


Some insight into the Atmos creation process as it stands:

1) A song/album gets approval for an Atmos mix. Note: even for new releases, the song/album will already have been mixed, mastered and at least approved for release in stereo, if not already released.

2) The Atmos mixing engineer (most times this will not be the original stereo mixing engineer) receives the original files. Ideally these are mixed stems (individual splits of instruments/elements), but this is dependent on the song/album in question. Older songs may only have a few mixed stems or even only a stereo master file, especially if they had to be previously digitized from an analog format.

3) Atmos mix is completed. In an ideal world, the Atmos mix will be sent to a mastering engineer for proper final touches. Most often, the budget won’t cover the cost for mastering.

4) Atmos mix/master is sent to the label for distribution.


The major pain point here is budget & cost:

As much as we would love for every release to have a “proper” Atmos treatment with a fully-immersive surround experience, cost & budget rarely allows for this. The only real exception is if the artist is invested in the format and has their own budget to allow for this. They probably will not see a return on their investment, so this is as much out of passion as anything.

Some cost insight:

To ADD Atmos capability to an existing mix studio, the cost is easily over $100,000 USD (speakers, additional DAC, networking, installation). The cost to rent an Atmos-capable mixing studio is at least 3x the cost for a non-Atmos-capable room. Add the additional cost for an engineer to work on making a proper Atmos mix, and you have a budget that is quite a lot higher than what it cost to mix the album in stereo.

As a result - at least at present - record labels are only looking to add Dolby Atmos to their roster for the hype. The ability to have their artists on more playlists (“Made for Spatial Audio”) is marketing and visibility. A “proper” Atmos experience will simply cost too much and is really only reserved for film budgets (Rocket Man comes to mind).

In the current state of music, record labels (and more importantly, the artists) are not going to make any financial return on an Atmos investment. This may only make sense for artists with die-hard audiophile fans like Pink Floyd, Rush and a select few classic acts. Modern artists likely won’t have these kinds of fans, unless there is a massive shift back to quality in music listening formats (and the way we listen to music). As much hate as Apple probably gets here, Spatial Audio is the closest thing I’ve seen to making that happen for younger listeners.

If there isn’t much budget for Atmos to be created, mixing & mastering engineers aren’t getting paid to do a wonderfully customized mix in a wonderful space for the world to hear their favorite artists swirling around the ceiling and cool instruments and effects coming at you from every direction. Current budgets only allow for a basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music can be placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field and surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you. Anything more creative requires a lot more time (and therefore money), and IMPORTANTLY, isn’t necessarily the direct vision of the artist. Which brings up the fact that the artist is rarely involved in this process. While many of these Atmos mixes aren’t simply “upsampling” a stereo file, it’s not some grand creative collaboration that we all wish could happen.


Possible solutions:

• Contact your favorite artists. Start campaigns to fund awesome Atmos interpretations of your favorite songs/albums. If there is enough support behind at least a good handful of these artists, it may create a bigger drive for labels to support the format with less hesitance/risk. This type of grassroots movement is probably the best way forward.

• Contact the labels with positive messages in support of Atmos. Attacking the problem with negativity will rarely cause a corporation to magically throw more money towards the cause. This doesn’t mean you cannot express disappointment, but try to ultimately show your passion and excitement. There are music fans working at these labels too, who are trying to push the cause, but don’t necessarily have the ultimate say in these things. Providing their views with support may prove helpful, but I can see it being much more difficult to make actual change.

**Friendly reminder: the people you may contact for both labels and artists are just individual humans who are tasked with fielding emails and are probably not in charge of decisions to change anything. Be nice!

• DO NOT contact people credited for making the Atmos mixes or masters to complain. As much as it may make sense that “they are in charge of the sound, therefore it’s their responsibility,” these individuals rarely have control over the current state of things. They’re doing the best they can with the resources given to them. They are also music fans and have just as much excitement and passion as the rest of us.


I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas how to constructively move forward.
Welcome and thank you for your insights. You touch on several points I mentioned previously in this thread (lack of budget, artist interest, etc).

As I mentioned above, Andrew Scheps and Steve Genewick discussed the concept of artists going in knowing they will make both a stereo and atmos mix, allocating budget for both and using the same mixer (thereby saving money). I understand that the labels might not take that approach for everyone, but for huge names (e.g., Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, etc) who already have the majority of their catalog in Atmos this would make sense both financially and artistically.

I do have a question, though. Beyond the budget issue, what explains the huge disparity in the quality? Do some mixers essentially put in unpaid overtime while others are just running a plug-in to get something they can call Atmos even if it is just the stereo track with reverb added to all the surround channels? Or are they just mixing for people wearing AirPods without consideration to those who are actually listening in dedicated Atmos rooms? Is this the unfortunate byproduct of Dolby trying to make atmos everything to everybody?

While you say the mixers are doing their best, mixing is as an art form and either some are clearly better at it than others, or some are just checking a box without asking if what they are submitting is even a good mix (or even both).

Appreciating that you catch more flies with honey, I understand your recommendation writing to Dolby or the labels and complimenting great mixes. Nonetheless, I don’t think things will improve without comparing and contrasing great mixes and poor mixes in as constructive a way as possible.
 
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Contact your favorite artists. Start campaigns to fund awesome Atmos interpretations of your favorite songs/albums. If there is enough support behind at least a good handful of these artists, it may create a bigger drive for labels to support the format with less hesitance/risk. This type of grassroots movement is probably the best way forward.

All of your comments and information are great. They mirror what I've been told as well. The paragraph I quoted above is likely the most important in my opinion. I've ben thinking about ways to do this as well. I've contacted a couple artists and have established relationships with people at a couple record labels in my effort.

It would be great if there was a way to crowd fund or pre-pay for great Atmos mixes. We are talking about art that is very important to music lovers and has a positive effect on many lives for many years. A great Atmos mix is worth every penny, even if I have to purchase a $100+ super deluxe box just to get the Atmos mix. I'd rather just purchase the Atmos mix, but that's a story for another day.

We need a way to take the risk out of doing quality Atmos mixes. Pre-paying is certainly one way. Rather than reissue and remastering record labels like MoFi or Analogue Productions, perhaps we need a label that specializes in remixing for Atmos. If the artists and labels don't want to do it themselves, a boutique label could do it. Not ideal, but the current situation isn't ideal either.
 
thank you for dropping by.

i don't need to know who you are or who you work for but you didn't say what role you play (if any) in the creation of Atmos Music mixes but i guess if you have some influence over the future direction of Atmos Music i shall firstly respond to your final comment in this way;

the best way to constructively move forward is to please stop upmixing Stereo tracks to fake Atmos for albums where there are multitracks.

moreover, you mention the additional overhead to studios to mix in Atmos and i take this on board.

however, i wonder whether you might consider an end user, such as myself. i absolutely did not spend thousands of pounds on purchasing additional equipment and so forth (speakers, amplification, 4K Apple TV, Apple Music Subscription, etc.) to listen to Atmos Music and to then have to endure fake upmixed Atmos rendition, after fake upmixed Atmos rendition, after fake upmixed Atmos rendition.

no, i invested what are to me not inconsiderable sums of money to listen to genuine Atmos mixed from multitracks. that was not only a hope, it was an expectation because Dolby and Apple had said that Atmos upmixes of Stereo material were not allowed.

i have much more to say on the matter but for now i will say, sincerely, the case presented that it is too expensive to properly mix genuine Atmos Music is weak in my opinion and is simply not good enough.

consumers are paying costly monthly subscriptions to hear these fakes, we're not getting them for nothing.

if things continue in this way i will be cancelling my Apple Music subscription, i have zero interest in paying for Atmos upmixes, i have neither the budget for it nor the inclination.
Hi fredblue,

To be clear, I'm not in any way advocating for, nor do I find it acceptable to upmix from stereo or even 5.1 to Atmos, regardless of budget. I haven't yet encountered true stereo upmixes in my research (I'll look into the ones posted earlier in the thread), but I have come across what sound like 5.1 mixes converted for Atmos format and they are lackluster.

When I mention a "proper Atmos mix," I personally equate that to an immersive experience where creative liberties have been taken to create new and interesting ways to enjoy the music that was previously not available. Most Atmos mixes I've experienced are simply the same song, placed in a slightly more ambient space, with none of the excitement. As a fellow music lover, who has also invested great sums of time, effort and funds on these things, I can wholeheartedly relate, and for the sake of music enjoyment, I do hope the future of Atmos can prove to be better than it currently is.

Welcome and thank you for your insights. You touch on several points I mentioned previously in this thread (lack of budget, artist interest, etc).

As I mentioned above, Andrew Scheps and Steve Genewick discussed the concept of artists going in knowing they will make both a stereo and atmos mix, allocating budget for both and using the same mixer (thereby saving money). I understand that the labels might not take that approach for everyone, but for huge names (e.g., Ariana Grande, The Weeknd, etc) who already have the majority of their catalog in Atmos this would make sense both financially and artistically.

I do have a question, though. Beyond the budget issue, what explains the huge disparity in the quality? Do some mixers essentially put in unpaid overtime while others are just running a plug-in to get something they can call Atmos even if it is just the stereo track with reverb added to all the surround channels? While you say the mixers are doing their best, mixing is as an art form and either some are clearly better at it than others, or some are just checking a box without asking if what they are submitting is even a good mix.

Appreciating that you catch more flies with honey, I understand your recommendation writing to Dolby or the labels and complimenting great mixes. Nonetheless, I don’t think things will improve without comparing and contrasing great mixes and poor mixes in as constructive a way as possible.

Hi harync,

Yes, the big artists expecting to deliver a stereo + atmos mix AND allocating budget for both is absolutely an essential part to keeping the format alive. And I will say, for both examples (Ariana Grande and The Weeknd) the quality shows in their Atmos mixes.

I cannot speak for every case, but I believe the disparity in quality is partially due to it being a new format and the early examples being of quite questionable quality. I expect to see a much better quality now, due to the nature of collective time and experience. Regarding low budget Atmos deals, if a Atmos mixing and mastering engineers want to create anything truly exceptional with the money and deadlines given, they 100% have to go above and beyond, of their own prerogative and at their own expense of time and especially their own money, to do this. I think it's unfair to expect someone to do this, especially the idea of spending their own money to fund projects that aren't their own, regardless of their profession.

I honestly don't know what the solutions are, but if I had the power to change these issues, I absolutely would. I'm certainly just as underwhelmed with a large amount of the current available Atmos offerings. My suggestion to write the labels is probably the least productive, but there's enough negativity going around that adding more negative connotations to an already fragile topic can't be helpful. I would hate for the labels to say, "people aren't happy, it's not profitable, we are no longer funding any formats other than stereo" - which I fear could be a real possibility if these things aren't solved in the next few years.

All of your comments and information are great. They mirror what I've been told as well. The paragraph I quoted above is likely the most important in my opinion. I've ben thinking about ways to do this as well. I've contacted a couple artists and have established relationships with people at a couple record labels in my effort.

It would be great if there was a way to crowd fund or pre-pay for great Atmos mixes. We are talking about art that is very important to music lovers and has a positive effect on many lives for many years. A great Atmos mix is worth every penny, even if I have to purchase a $100+ super deluxe box just to get the Atmos mix. I'd rather just purchase the Atmos mix, but that's a story for another day.

We need a way to take the risk out of doing quality Atmos mixes. Pre-paying is certainly one way. Rather than reissue and remastering record labels like MoFi or Analogue Productions, perhaps we need a label that specializes in remixing for Atmos. If the artists and labels don't want to do it themselves, a boutique label could do it. Not ideal, but the current situation isn't ideal either.

Hi AudiophileStyle,

Agreed, and as much as I don't believe that the consumer should be required to invest money into up-and-coming projects, ever since the labels were spooked by the digital audio revolution, they simply don't take gambles like they used to. In their eyes, it's up to the artist to prove their worth. Then and only then will labels consider funding "riskier ventures." Unfortunately, it seems Atmos is in the risky category.

I like your idea of a boutique Atmos label. There is definitely not a lot of care in the end product on the label side right now, and it's entirely up to the engineers to make sure everything is 100%. Everyone is still trying to figure this whole thing out, and I fully support having more investment in the quality and standards of the format.
 
Hello @phasepace welcome to QQ! Bad mixes are going to happen and that's fine. This thread is only about upmixes.
They're not allowed by Apple, and for good reason.
For some reason, the vast majority of these mixes are coming from Warner. Warner also have released some fantastic titles recently (Grateful Dead, Aha, Fleetwood Mac, Enya) so it would seem there's an issue with file submission or process? Maybe some don't know that upmixes aren't allowed, or maybe some don't care.
Apple and Dolby need to know that they are using something they don't allow. It is unclear how to best communicate that to them.
I get that budgets are tiny. I mix in Atmos too. I've been trying to find artists/labels/albums to work with for years and it's tough. When I found the engineer who has "mixed" 800 songs I knew something was not right.
If these upmixes continue to appear - and no one does anything - it lowers the standards of surround music.
Do you have any suggestions for politely getting our concerns to Apple, Dolby, or Warner?
 
Hi all,

I opened an account just to respond to this thread. I’ll try to do my best to share some insight to the Atmos creation process and present possible solutions. It’s very apparent there is a lot of admirable passion for the music here, but please don’t go and attack/harass individuals you may think are responsible. Specifically, I see some tracking down the Atmos engineers. I’ll explain in more detail below, but those actions are only going to be harmful to the music community.


For those of you who want the TL;DR: Labels and artists simply don’t have budget allocated for the cost of making an immersive Atmos experience.


Some insight into the Atmos creation process as it stands:

1) A song/album gets approval for an Atmos mix. Note: even for new releases, the song/album will already have been mixed, mastered and at least approved for release in stereo, if not already released.

2) The Atmos mixing engineer (most times this will not be the original stereo mixing engineer) receives the original files. Ideally these are mixed stems (individual splits of instruments/elements), but this is dependent on the song/album in question. Older songs may only have a few mixed stems or even only a stereo master file, especially if they had to be previously digitized from an analog format.

3) Atmos mix is completed. In an ideal world, the Atmos mix will be sent to a mastering engineer for proper final touches. Most often, the budget won’t cover the cost for mastering.

4) Atmos mix/master is sent to the label for distribution.


The major pain point here is budget & cost:

As much as we would love for every release to have a “proper” Atmos treatment with a fully-immersive surround experience, cost & budget rarely allows for this. The only real exception is if the artist is invested in the format and has their own budget to allow for this. They probably will not see a return on their investment, so this is as much out of passion as anything.

Some cost insight:

To ADD Atmos capability to an existing mix studio, the cost is easily over $100,000 USD (speakers, additional DAC, networking, installation). The cost to rent an Atmos-capable mixing studio is at least 3x the cost for a non-Atmos-capable room. Add the additional cost for an engineer to work on making a proper Atmos mix, and you have a budget that is quite a lot higher than what it cost to mix the album in stereo.

As a result - at least at present - record labels are only looking to add Dolby Atmos to their roster for the hype. The ability to have their artists on more playlists (“Made for Spatial Audio”) is marketing and visibility. A “proper” Atmos experience will simply cost too much and is really only reserved for film budgets (Rocket Man comes to mind).

In the current state of music, record labels (and more importantly, the artists) are not going to make any financial return on an Atmos investment. This may only make sense for artists with die-hard audiophile fans like Pink Floyd, Rush and a select few classic acts. Modern artists likely won’t have these kinds of fans, unless there is a massive shift back to quality in music listening formats (and the way we listen to music). As much hate as Apple probably gets here, Spatial Audio is the closest thing I’ve seen to making that happen for younger listeners.

If there isn’t much budget for Atmos to be created, mixing & mastering engineers aren’t getting paid to do a wonderfully customized mix in a wonderful space for the world to hear their favorite artists swirling around the ceiling and cool instruments and effects coming at you from every direction. Current budgets only allow for a basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music can be placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field and surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you. Anything more creative requires a lot more time (and therefore money), and IMPORTANTLY, isn’t necessarily the direct vision of the artist. Which brings up the fact that the artist is rarely involved in this process. While many of these Atmos mixes aren’t simply “upsampling” a stereo file, it’s not some grand creative collaboration that we all wish could happen.


Possible solutions:

• Contact your favorite artists. Start campaigns to fund awesome Atmos interpretations of your favorite songs/albums. If there is enough support behind at least a good handful of these artists, it may create a bigger drive for labels to support the format with less hesitance/risk. This type of grassroots movement is probably the best way forward.

• Contact the labels with positive messages in support of Atmos. Attacking the problem with negativity will rarely cause a corporation to magically throw more money towards the cause. This doesn’t mean you cannot express disappointment, but try to ultimately show your passion and excitement. There are music fans working at these labels too, who are trying to push the cause, but don’t necessarily have the ultimate say in these things. Providing their views with support may prove helpful, but I can see it being much more difficult to make actual change.

**Friendly reminder: the people you may contact for both labels and artists are just individual humans who are tasked with fielding emails and are probably not in charge of decisions to change anything. Be nice!

• DO NOT contact people credited for making the Atmos mixes or masters to complain. As much as it may make sense that “they are in charge of the sound, therefore it’s their responsibility,” these individuals rarely have control over the current state of things. They’re doing the best they can with the resources given to them. They are also music fans and have just as much excitement and passion as the rest of us.


I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas how to constructively move forward.
Thanks for joining and sharing your thoughts. I hope those involved in the creation of Atmos mixes will check out the examples listed in the first post so they're aware of a potential trend that could hurt the perception and adoption of immersive audio going forward. Yeah, I'm frustrated that some of my favorite artists' first surround releases sound like upmixes but I'm more worried about the future of the format. I finally upgraded my setup late last year so I'm very late to the Atmos party but I don't want the party to end prematurely.

I love the idea of crowd sourced Atmos mixes and will gladly pitch in. Hopefully, there will be artists and labels who are enthusiastic about the idea.
 
Hello @phasepace welcome to QQ! Bad mixes are going to happen and that's fine. This thread is only about upmixes.
They're not allowed by Apple, and for good reason.
For some reason, the vast majority of these mixes are coming from Warner. Warner also have released some fantastic titles recently (Grateful Dead, Aha, Fleetwood Mac, Enya) so it would seem there's an issue with file submission or process? Maybe some don't know that upmixes aren't allowed, or maybe some don't care.
Apple and Dolby need to know that they are using something they don't allow. It is unclear how to best communicate that to them.
I get that budgets are tiny. I mix in Atmos too. I've been trying to find artists/labels/albums to work with for years and it's tough. When I found the engineer who has "mixed" 800 songs I knew something was not right.
If these upmixes continue to appear - and no one does anything - it lowers the standards of surround music.
Do you have any suggestions for politely getting our concerns to Apple, Dolby, or Warner?
Hi popshop,

Thanks for the clarification! Sorry to derail the conversation :)

Yes, I completely agree regarding upmixing. It adds nothing, takes away everything, and shouldn't be done. I'm not sure how to best communicate this other than to write the labels. Even for those who are well-connected, it's quite unclear how to reach anyone with any influence to actually make a difference - a bit like the wild west. I hope and believe things will get better as Atmos standards and workflows become more common.

Thanks for joining and sharing your thoughts. I hope those involved in the creation of Atmos mixes will check out the examples listed in the first post so they're aware of a potential trend that could hurt the perception and adoption of immersive audio going forward. Yeah, I'm frustrated that some of my favorite artists' first surround releases sound like upmixes but I'm more worried about the future of the format. I finally upgraded my setup late last year so I'm very late to the Atmos party but I don't want the party to end prematurely.

I love the idea of crowd sourced Atmos mixes and will gladly pitch in. Hopefully, there will be artists and labels who are enthusiastic about the idea.
Thank you jamesc,

I feel like most people involved in the Atmos process are aware, but that could just be apparent from my little corner of the world.

Ultimately, I believe overwhelming enthusiasm at the fan-to-artist level will be the only way to create lasting demand. Right now it's just streaming services + labels and a handful of enthusiastic artists (and engineers) driving the format on a logistical level. And that's not enough to keep the format alive if the listeners aren't excited about it.

if i had a hundred grand's worth of mixing gear i'd hate to waste it doing fake upmixed nonsense all my life, wouldn't you! 😫😂
Yup! I can't imagine anyone in that position working like that. The sole exception being given a very, very old recording with no available multitrack. At which point, why bother trying to make it in "surround?"
 
this discussion... 😔 ..its almost as ridiculous debating like there's any justifiable validity to any kind of counterargument for faking it! 🤨

i mean, the notion its even remotely acceptable to fake Atmos on this kind of scale, seriously??

honestly, i don't have a great deal of sympathy for the "poor old" record companies who haven't got enough money to do proper mixes, they should have some integrity for Heaven's sake.

if multitracks are missing, or even if they are available and mixing from scratch isn't financially viable in certain circumstances, they should forget faking Atmos in those situations and focus their efforts and resources on reissuing out of print Quads and 5.1's on streaming services instead. there's loads of those they could do. almost all genuine Surround. many quite desirable to this day.

the practice of needlessly faking it needs to stop ASAP before it destroys the legitimacy of Atmos.

you know, people have berated Quad and 5.1 over the years, well here's the news;

Quad and 5.1 may have been many things but they never produced so many fakes combined in the last 40 years as have been churned out in Atmos by Warners in the last few months!!!

UGH!!! 😡
 
Hi all,

I opened an account just to respond to this thread. I’ll try to do my best to share some insight to the Atmos creation process and present possible solutions. It’s very apparent there is a lot of admirable passion for the music here, but please don’t go and attack/harass individuals you may think are responsible. Specifically, I see some tracking down the Atmos engineers. I’ll explain in more detail below, but those actions are only going to be harmful to the music community.


For those of you who want the TL;DR: Labels and artists simply don’t have budget allocated for the cost of making an immersive Atmos experience.


Some insight into the Atmos creation process as it stands:

1) A song/album gets approval for an Atmos mix. Note: even for new releases, the song/album will already have been mixed, mastered and at least approved for release in stereo, if not already released.

2) The Atmos mixing engineer (most times this will not be the original stereo mixing engineer) receives the original files. Ideally these are mixed stems (individual splits of instruments/elements), but this is dependent on the song/album in question. Older songs may only have a few mixed stems or even only a stereo master file, especially if they had to be previously digitized from an analog format.

3) Atmos mix is completed. In an ideal world, the Atmos mix will be sent to a mastering engineer for proper final touches. Most often, the budget won’t cover the cost for mastering.

4) Atmos mix/master is sent to the label for distribution.


The major pain point here is budget & cost:

As much as we would love for every release to have a “proper” Atmos treatment with a fully-immersive surround experience, cost & budget rarely allows for this. The only real exception is if the artist is invested in the format and has their own budget to allow for this. They probably will not see a return on their investment, so this is as much out of passion as anything.

Some cost insight:

To ADD Atmos capability to an existing mix studio, the cost is easily over $100,000 USD (speakers, additional DAC, networking, installation). The cost to rent an Atmos-capable mixing studio is at least 3x the cost for a non-Atmos-capable room. Add the additional cost for an engineer to work on making a proper Atmos mix, and you have a budget that is quite a lot higher than what it cost to mix the album in stereo.

As a result - at least at present - record labels are only looking to add Dolby Atmos to their roster for the hype. The ability to have their artists on more playlists (“Made for Spatial Audio”) is marketing and visibility. A “proper” Atmos experience will simply cost too much and is really only reserved for film budgets (Rocket Man comes to mind).

In the current state of music, record labels (and more importantly, the artists) are not going to make any financial return on an Atmos investment. This may only make sense for artists with die-hard audiophile fans like Pink Floyd, Rush and a select few classic acts. Modern artists likely won’t have these kinds of fans, unless there is a massive shift back to quality in music listening formats (and the way we listen to music). As much hate as Apple probably gets here, Spatial Audio is the closest thing I’ve seen to making that happen for younger listeners.

If there isn’t much budget for Atmos to be created, mixing & mastering engineers aren’t getting paid to do a wonderfully customized mix in a wonderful space for the world to hear their favorite artists swirling around the ceiling and cool instruments and effects coming at you from every direction. Current budgets only allow for a basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music can be placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field and surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you. Anything more creative requires a lot more time (and therefore money), and IMPORTANTLY, isn’t necessarily the direct vision of the artist. Which brings up the fact that the artist is rarely involved in this process. While many of these Atmos mixes aren’t simply “upsampling” a stereo file, it’s not some grand creative collaboration that we all wish could happen.


Possible solutions:

• Contact your favorite artists. Start campaigns to fund awesome Atmos interpretations of your favorite songs/albums. If there is enough support behind at least a good handful of these artists, it may create a bigger drive for labels to support the format with less hesitance/risk. This type of grassroots movement is probably the best way forward.

• Contact the labels with positive messages in support of Atmos. Attacking the problem with negativity will rarely cause a corporation to magically throw more money towards the cause. This doesn’t mean you cannot express disappointment, but try to ultimately show your passion and excitement. There are music fans working at these labels too, who are trying to push the cause, but don’t necessarily have the ultimate say in these things. Providing their views with support may prove helpful, but I can see it being much more difficult to make actual change.

**Friendly reminder: the people you may contact for both labels and artists are just individual humans who are tasked with fielding emails and are probably not in charge of decisions to change anything. Be nice!

• DO NOT contact people credited for making the Atmos mixes or masters to complain. As much as it may make sense that “they are in charge of the sound, therefore it’s their responsibility,” these individuals rarely have control over the current state of things. They’re doing the best they can with the resources given to them. They are also music fans and have just as much excitement and passion as the rest of us.


I’m interested to hear your thoughts and ideas how to constructively move forward.
Hey phasespace,

Welcome to QQ generally, and thanks for joining this conversation specifically (and thoughtfully). If you spend some time here--and I hope you do--I think you'll find that this place isn't populated with the bands of trolls, hotheads, egomaniacs and know-nothings that can drive people away from other, similar sites. If people occasionally get exercised here, it's precisely out of the passion for the music you spoke of, but also out of a deep knowledge of what's entailed in surround mixing of all kinds. We do in fact express our appreciation for good work, and we support--and sometimes even incite--efforts to get good mixes out onto the market. That's not to say we haven't been hard on the occasional industry insider who has now and again dropped by for a cup of coffee, only to run away after being bombarded with a thousand questions and complaints. But I think that's because it's otherwise so hard to figure out how to actually get any good information from behind corporate walls, let alone identify and get through to the people who are making what we might feel are bad decisions or engaging in questionable practices. (That's what's so infuriating about "customer relations" in general these days, right? Not only is it impossible to figure out who's responsible for anything, it's even more impossible to reach them--and that's all by design. At best you get to talk with an underpaid flak-catcher halfway around the world who can only dutifully follow their script and promise vaguely, and unconvincingly, that they will send your feedback up the ladder. As you say: no point in taking out your ire on them!)

That said: most of us here are broadly, painfully aware of the economics around Atmos mixing, including the fact that artists and mixers mostly don't have much say in what the big guys ultimately decide to do. Like @fredblue, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the argument that said big guys are on a budget: Sony, WEA, and UMG aren't hurting, and if they feel they can't afford to pay for a "proper" Atmos mix, then instead of pleading poverty they shouldn't do one at all. Doing otherwise will just sully the Atmos "brand." At any rate, in this thread we're not concerned primarily with merely-mediocre mixes by current artists. What we're trying to figure out in this instance is why Warners seems to be encouraging--or at least countenancing--the wholesale "upmixing" of tracks by legacy artists from their back catalog. If only these tracks had what you describe as a "basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music [are] placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field [with] surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you." Instead, what we're getting is a gloried version of "all-channel stereo." That's just insulting--to fans, to Dolby, and to the streaming services--even more so in cases where perfectly good 4.0 or 5.1 channel mixes already exist, and Warners could simply convert those to Apple's "Dolby Audio" format (as Sony has done with some of its historical quad and 5.1 mixes).

So...yeah. I think the excitement over piecing together the likely mixer of many of these tracks has to do with at last identifying an actual human, rather than a faceless unaccountable corporation, who was involved in this. For my part, I don't want to pile on this guy or pillory him. Assuming he's not bound by an NDA (which he probably is), I just want to get some good information so that, hopefully, we can constructively intervene, correct the situation, and praise everybody concerned for Doing the Right Thing.
 
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Hey phasespace,

Welcome to QQ generally, and thanks for joining this conversation specifically (and thoughtfully). If you spend some time here--and I hope you do--I think you'll find that this place isn't populated with the bands of trolls, hotheads, egomaniacs and know-nothings that can drive people away from other, similar sites. If people occasionally get exercised here, it's precisely out of the passion for the music you spoke of, but also out of a deep knowledge of what's entailed in surround mixing of all kinds. We do in fact express our appreciation for good work, and we support--and sometimes even incite--efforts to get good mixes out onto the market. That's not to say we haven't been hard on the occasional industry insider who has now and again dropped by for a cup of coffee, only to run away after being bombarded with a thousand questions and complaints. But I think that's because it's otherwise so hard to figure out how to actually get any good information from behind corporate walls, let alone identify and get through to the people who are making what we might feel are bad decisions or engaging in questionable practices. (That's what's so infuriating about "customer relations" in general these days, right? Not only is it impossible to figure out who's responsible for anything, it's even more impossible to reach them--and that's all by design. At best you get to talk with an underpaid flak-catcher halfway around the world who can only dutifully follow their script and promise vaguely, and unconvincingly, that they will send your feedback up the ladder. As you say: no point in taking out your ire on them!)

That said: most of us here are broadly, painfully aware of the economics around Atmos mixing, including the fact that artists and mixers mostly don't have much say in what the big guys ultimately decide to do. Like @fredblue, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the argument that said big guys are on a budget: Sony, WEA, and UMG aren't hurting, and if they feel they can't afford to pay for a "proper" Atmos mix, then rather than plead poverty they shouldn't do one at all. Doing otherwise will just sully the Atmos "brand." At any rate, in this thread we're not concerned primarily with merely-mediocre mixes by current artists. What we're trying to figure out in this instance is why Warners seems to be encouraging--or at least countenancing--the wholesale "upmixing" of tracks by legacy artists from their back catalog. If only these tracks had what you describe as a "basic Atmos mix, where elements of the music [are] placed in different, stationary areas of the spatial field [with] surround reverbs, delays and effects panned around you." Instead, what we're getting is a gloried version of "all-channel stereo." That's just insulting--to fans, to Dolby, and to the streaming services--even more so in cases where perfectly good 4.0 or 5.1 channel mixes already exist, and Warners could simply convert those to Apple's "Dolby Audio" format (as Sony has done with some of its historical quad and 5.1 mixes).

So...yeah. I think the excitement over piecing together the likely mixer of many of these tracks has to do with at last identifying an actual human, rather than a faceless unaccountable corporation, who was involved in this. For my part, I don't want to pile on this guy or pillory him. Assuming he's not bound by an NDA (which he probably is), I just want to get some good information so that, hopefully, we can constructively intervene, correct the situation, and praise everybody concerned for Doing the Right Thing.
Thank you for so eloquently putting this all together. I definitely understand and agree with everything you've said (and yes, even including the lack of sympathy for the "big guys on a 'budget'"). I'm honestly just as shocked that upmixing is happening so frequently - a sentiment you can see unfold in real time through my few comments here. I don't really have the exact fix-all solution aside from helping to bring light to these issues to my small part of the surround world, which I will happily do.

Appreciate the warm welcome!
 
Thank you @phasespace

Welcome to QQ!

Your posts are a reminder to us all about the realities of todays music business and the time/money involved in delivering ‘real’ Atmos to fans.

I’m very appreciative of your comments. Please make time to hang out here regularly!
Thanks to you and the others who have commented as well! It's uplifting to see how passionate this community is about the format. I hope to help shift things further in the right direction in my [redacted] works, and it helps to hear from others who are actually listening in surround with an expectation of the highest quality. I'm not alone!
 
A few mixes that I remember seeing reported as fakes have just become unavailable on my tidal playlist. West End Girls from Pet Shop Boys also certainly disappeared, among a few others I can't find anymore.
Is this a good sign that this scandal is being recognized by someone?
Can anyone report how it is on other platforms?
 

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A few mixes that I remember seeing reported as fakes have just become unavailable on my tidal playlist. West End Girls from Pet Shop Boys also certainly disappeared, among a few others I can't find anymore.
Is this a good sign that this scandal is being recognized by someone?
Can anyone report how it is on other platforms?
Wow, That sounds encouraging. I had put together a couple of playlists on Apple Music to highlight the differences of real vs upmix.
Hopefully they keep taking them down from the latter and dig further... And then do them properly hopefully!

Discrete ‘real’ Atmos from Warner….

Upmixed Atmos from Warner...
 
Wow, That sounds encouraging. I had put together a couple of playlists on Apple Music to highlight the differences of real vs upmix.
Hopefully they keep taking them down from the latter and dig further... And then do them properly hopefully!

Discrete ‘real’ Atmos from Warner….

Upmixed Atmos from Warner...
You're performing a huge service here, Mr. S!
 
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