Dolby Atmos - Corporate Power Grab - Greed

this is Studio talk and I'm Barry Johns I recently watched a video on Dolby Atmos by another person who's also a Studio owner as well as a YouTuber his name is Josh Sewell and his YouTube channel is see well Studios he did what I thought was the very best comprehensive uh perspective from an audio engineer's perspective but also kind of bringing in the consumer's perspective at the very best video I've seen on it and really well thought out and he did an outstanding job of getting his points across he made several points there in his video that really got me thinking um I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist or something like that but something has not seemed right from the very beginning to me about this whole process and the way that it's unfolding you would think at the end of the day that if something were so compelling we wouldn't need it shoved or forced down us right I mean if it's really that good aren't the consumers naturally going to want it so why is it this seems to be shoved down our throats I can understand why audio manufacturers have a game in this okay they could ultimately sell more products a speaker manufacturers going to sell more speakers all right obviously online dealers are going to sell more products related to this so that's just part of it and so when I say corporate grab you know I'm not talking about those folks I'm talking about the powerful people in this world that seem to be the ones behind it and what is it exactly they have to gain by all of this I think if there's anything we've learned about major corporations is they simply use us like pawns so they can make more money so let's start out with some fundamental aspects that he touched on in this video and we're going to go through a couple of different points to really for me to be able to lay my perspective on all of this together for you I want to thank you Josh for doing your video as outstanding and although I walked away from it probably in a way that you didn't anticipate that I would it certainly got my mind thinking and I'm curious if anyone else out there thinks the same way so let's start with topic number one for my take on this video and let's talk about the artist let's see what he has to say about the potential artists who are doing their own music promoting their own music non-record label Associated folks you know who are coming to their local studio and ultimately hiring them to be able to record their music what is it they want out of all of this and I reached out to the artist and said hey I'm going to start doing some Atmos mixes would you be interested and they both were basically like uh no thanks and I'm like hey I'm not trying to upsell you on anything I'm actually going to do these for free because it's new to me and I'm learning and they were just they checked into what it would cost extra for the distribution and they were just like hey I appreciate it but we just don't want it right now so that's kind of interesting isn't it and that's a perspective quite honestly I didn't even consider before so now we've got the artist being put in a position to where if they go down this rabbit hole it's going to cost them more money ultimately more money now here we have Josh who's wanting or who's willing to actually do this for free you wouldn't imagine that most folks out there are willing to do that and certainly not long term so from an artist's perspective they're seeing the potential of this not only costing more for distribution but also costing more to have their music mixed now we'll touch on that just a little bit later in the video next up what we're going to talk about is is your studio compatible with Dolby Atmos in other words is your interface the right interface do you have enough speakers how much are you going to have to invest and is your studio space even practical for an Atmos mixing environment let's see what he points out about this we just don't want it right now so I was like oh man that's weird you know you think you're getting excited about something you would just assume that excitement would kind of flow through society and I didn't find that to be the case at all at that time I was just going to do it on headphones because again I had no idea if I even liked it I only liked it on like two percent of everything that I checked out and so I'm not gonna change my whole setup and buy all these speakers and everything but I did do a hypothetical pricing out I would have to get a new interface because unfortunately my Lynx Aurora 16s and my Avid hdio 16 at least in my knowledge to this day are still not at most compatibles those were both going to be between like three and four grand depending on you know buying used or the best deal you could find and then the most unobtrusive and most affordable speaker brand that I could find that I had heard before that I had some trust with was the ik multimedia iloud series to get those was going to be another four to five five grand so we're easily 10 grand in now to just have a Bare Bones Atmos setup I can't drop 10 grand on this I have no idea if this is going to stick around for starters and I'm going oh man you know you're looking at these setups that are fifty sixty thousand dollars for a atmos speaker setup all right so we're talking about just getting in the door with it we're talking about the bare bone basics of it whether or not you agree with this interface choices or his speaker choices that's not the point it's going to require a significant investment by your local Studio because this whole digital world that we live in things that enable a guy like me to sit at home and have all of this and be able to record my own music and really record it at a high level has changed so much and it's already put so many of your local and Regional Studios out of business for good so the ones that are left you know they're not exactly making the money from that they did back in the Heyday all right they can they can have if as long as they've got a good reputation and they've got enough clientele behind them they can make a profit but I can assure you most of them are not making a ton of profit doing this if they're focused in the world of audio somebody like Josh as an example does a lot of video and post-production work as well if you check out his uh his website for his studio so you know for the local audio guy what does this mean it's going to even pinch them even further and we don't even know if it's going to take off but let's say for the sake of discussion all of this is going to be forced down our throats whether we like it or not and we're gonna have to just embrace it because there's too many powerful people at work here but ultimately ask yourself is it compelling enough for the end consumer that's a very questionable thing so now you've got the additional expense of bare bones having to get into this that's a lot of money that quite frankly your local Studio owner uh simply is not likely to be able to afford and the question becomes is there going to be an Roi associated with it in other words are they going to get a return on that investment so let's see kind of what Josh has to say about that and then we'll continue from there we have the issue of the interface cost whether or not yours is compatible if you have to buy something new we have the issue with the physical placement of the speakers in a room because my room and and most people's rooms were not created with Atmos in mind because it wasn't a thing yet and we have the issue of artists not being interested at least that I was working with and then we go all the way down the line to the consumer The Listener and I found less interest there than I found with the artist and I was asking around to some other engineers and you know I have a couple buddies and Nashville they were like man we might be able to get maybe like 12.50 additional on a mix for an Atmos version well then it was 500 and then it was 350 and then it was about 250 and then it was like we're having a hard time getting the labels to pay anything extra they expect an Atmos mix to just be delivered with the stereo mix all right so I guess that answers a question about return on investment now we're going to assume that his numbers are correct and they're pretty Universal but we all know how this goes ultimately if that's not the case for everybody out there it will become the case for that so not only do you have to make a significant investment considering the cost of operating a local Studio you got to make a significant uh investment in infrastructure obviously capital investment and additional equipment to be able to just be able to do it and then on top of that you're not going to make any more money from it well next here's where my conspiracy thought kind of comes in if that's the case is that going to get you more artists coming to your studio is that where your return on investment is going to be that they need to come to your studio to be able to do it or is this something else so let's talk about Apple and I'm a happen to be a very big Apple fan by the way I know there's a lot of haters and when they're haters they're big time but I've always enjoyed Apple products but let's face it they're in business to make money and they stand to benefit by doing this if you don't think they've got some technology they're working on right now in the pipeline that's going to be able to take advantage of this later on I think you'd be kidding yourselves we all know that if anybody's going to come out with something they're likely to come out with these kinds of things first and ultimately again this is not about the experience the experience could be over the top amazing that's not the point of this the whole point is if it was that compelling why is it being forced down our throats well here's the bigger side of it if your local Studios can no longer no longer be able to stay open to be able to to be able to provide these services at a cost and what's that going to mean for the artist you've got a lot of artists today that have are really changing the way and have changed the way the entire recording industry worked no longer no longer are these big fat cats sitting in big chairs taking 85 cents out of every every dollar of every recording and then forcing the artist to have to pay most of what they made back due to production costs and marketing cost and promotion all that stuff we've all heard the horror stories about how these people just sucked up blood out of every artist along to the point the only way they could make any money is by touring so what do they stand to gain by all of this well if if you can't go to a local Studio to get your music recorded and if Sony and ultimately Spotify and apple won't won't allow your music to end up on any playlist that's going to get any kind of circulation unless it's Dolby Atmos where does that leave you back at the mercy of the recording companies not the recording companies the record companies It's Gonna Leave You with their Mercy again that's where I think this is nothing but a power grab of greed they're gonna fight tooth and nail to get back to the way things used to be they don't like this idea that you can become a YouTube sensation produce and record your own music bypassing their old school model they don't like that one bit and that's why I think this is being shoved down our throats again it could be the greatest thing ever invented but the greatest thing ever invented doesn't need to be shoved down our throats we shouldn't need to be forced to do any of this so I am very suspicious if you like the things I talk about do me a favor leave some comments down below and subscribe to the channel leave some comments either way you know there's a lot of outrage about this you know I've done several videos on atmosph so far but this was the first one that like really went ding ding ding ding ding even though Josh didn't mean to necessarily get this idea in my head it certainly hit and it and it felt like a sledgehammer when when it hit me I said I think I finally got this I've got this there's a lot of outrage about this a lot of it out there overwhelmingly 90 I'm not I can't give you actual statistics but I bet you 99 of all the comments that I've gotten as well as other YouTubers have gotten have been negative this whole process yeah you'll get your supporters in there you'll get them and like I said I'm not saying whether you should or should not support the idea of this technology but I think we should all be suspicious about how and why is exactly and what the end game is because there's always an end game until next time have a great day bye-bye

Channel: Barry Johns Studio Talk

Views: 14,983

Keywords: avid, protools, protools hdx, protools ultimate, hdx, avid omni, avid hdx, avid hybrid engine, avid carbon, avid hdx hybrid engine, cubase, logic pro, studio one, universal audio, daw, studio, recording, recording studio, home recording, post production, avid.com, avid DUC, duc, Digidesign DUC, presonus, uad, control surface, plugin, plugins, compressor, delay, reverb, uc1, ssl, solid state logic, neve, microphone, preamp, eq, 500 series, a designs, warm audio, cable, cables, atmos, dolby atmos

Id: O1J9tQb1K80

Length: 13min 58sec (838 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 18 2023