https://immersiveaudioalbum.com/202...e-grammy-award-winning-immersive-mixing-team/It's always a pleasure to do these interviews - if you've checked out any of my other pieces published over the last year or so, this will probably seem like pretty standard stuff by now. Kennedy & Wallace are responsible for several of WEA's genuine Atmos singles, including The B-52's "Love Shack" and Faith No More's "Epic". They were really willing to talk about the whole binaural vs. speakers issue with Atmos, which is always interesting.
Another fabulous interview. I really appreciate you prodding them to ID some of their mixes--and to talk about the compromises involved in having to mix primarily with Atmos for headphones in mind (and the additional challenges of having to mix for Apple Spatial Audio on top of that). Between this, the conversation with Clearmountain & Ernster that we saw earlier this week, and various disparaging comments that have slipped out in other interviews with other veteran mixers, it really seems as though the pros' reservations--maybe outright dissatisfaction--with the Dolby/Apple universe are beginning to bubble to the surface.
How much of a trade-off is there between the Atmos mix as heard on your 7.1.4 speaker array and the binaural render? Do you find you have to change things radically when checking on headphones?
Matt: To say it’s a trade-off would actually be understating things. Will and I have really been struggling for these last few weeks to reconcile the mix in the room and the binaural, which can actually sound really similar played through the Dolby Renderer. Once it goes to Apple, it’s a completely different thing because their Spatial Audio algorithm is different.
Will: [. . .] For stereo, there’s always been a kind of acceptance that the stereo mix on headphones is a different experience than on speakers. We’re comfortable with those differences, but with this it’s not exactly the same. Something is changing in a way that's not that's not translating between the speakers and the headphones. We’ve got to think about our audience, and the biggest audience by far is going to be people listening on headphones. So we’ll do what we have to do to get the headphone mix reined in, even if it comes at the expense of the mix on the speakers. Plus, the mix for Dolby’s binaural system is a little different than the mix we have to do for the Apple system. So there's a lot of compromise that's going on with the headphone situation right now [. . .] I know Apple’s pushing a lot of updates to their system right now. They’re trying to make it better, but as the situation stands today, it’s a lot of work to get the mix to sound good in both places. It’s probably the biggest compromise I’ve ever made as a person mixing music.
