We Need To Talk About ATMOS

Devin Graves coming to you once again from Studio D and today we need to talk about Atmos [Music] not too long ago I watched a YouTube video from one of my favorite audio YouTubers his name is Colt caparoon and he was talking about how Spotify and apple music both changed their policies to where in order for your songs to be submitted to these platforms they have to also be available in an Atmos format now if you don't know what Atmos is you're familiar with stereo left and right speaker two channels well Atmos has left and right and a center a rear left a rear right a side left side right four speakers overhead two in front two and back plus subwoofers so a guy like me that just invested money he'll probably never see again into the finest studio monitors I could afford the idea of getting one more pair like this is I don't see that happening in the near future let alone getting say another 9 to 11 of these so this is supposed to be this total immersion immersive listening immersive music is what we're getting with with Atmos the speakers in all directions give you the ability to place musicians anywhere in the room you want effects anywhere in the room you want and actually at face value that sounds kind of cool for a guy like me a music like mine or let's say your Pink Floyd's of the world or your Peter Gabriel's of the world or Devin townsends of the world people that have these really layered types of music could really blossom in this Atmos format and I've watched these YouTubers that are also producers In These Fine Atmos Studios having their first Atmos experience the mixing engineer would be saying like sit right here because all those speakers are placed and positioned to be right in this one sweet spot and when you sit there you have an amazing experience playing music that is old classic music that's mixed in this new way and everybody walks away just going wow that's amazing and I started even thinking about maybe creative ways I can spread speakers around this room um using ones other than these these focals that I have here I even have other speakers that I have sort of semi-retired that maybe I could put those back in action and so when I first thought about this I was a little bit excited about it I thought this is sounds this sounds really like something I'd like to try but the next day I had kind of a sick feeling inside over it I actually couldn't sleep very much it was bothering me it was bothering me I guess mainly because at this point where I sit now where it comes to stereo recordings I feel like I have everything I could ever want ever need and I don't have to think about that anymore I could just make music and just use what I have and now I have this feeling like I need a whole bunch of speakers and as it turns out a whole new audio interface that does Atmos and the Very Baseline cheapest way to do that is about ten thousand dollars ten thousand Euros investment for the speakers and the interface and that's for the cheapest speakers you could spend way more if I had speakers of the quality of these Mains that I have here well God sixty thousand dollars is something just for speakers and then you have apple and Spotify saying well this is the way it's got to be or you're not even going to be accepted by our platforms but I start to think what about the end user here what is going to be the venue for this if music is made this way where's the venue for it in the home because the way we listen to stereo music you could do it in so many ways headphones Boombox listening to it on a stereo system you know sound bar whatever stereo stereo is Stereo you know it's going to be a different experience depending on the quality of the speakers and stuff but you're going to have more or less the same experience despite what you're listening to it on first of all mixing stereo left and right is perfect for most music because what we hear we can also associate visually if you look at a band on stage the drummers in the middle the guitar players are out on the edges you know just like the mix the singers in the middle bass players in the middle and when you mix you you pan things in that reasonably in that order so for most bands most rock bands most applications where it's just guys playing instruments that that familiar stereo format makes the most sense now there are some opportunities you could have with music like this with a system like this making music that is meant for this experience you know like I said you're Peter Gabriel's or Pink Floyd's might lend themselves really well to this and my own music included but the experience that I would have mixing in this room if I had speakers put everywhere would not be the experience it would ever be heard in I went and I did some research on Amazon just to check out these Atmos systems and I didn't find any systems where there are 13 speakers placed all around the room I found over and over again a sound bar with multiple speakers on it pointed in certain directions a pair of satellites that would go behind and maybe a subwoofer and so on the sound bar they have left right and Center that are pointed at you and then the ones for overhead they have speakers pointed up to reflect off the ceiling and the ones from the sides they have speakers pointed to reflect from the walls so you would actually have to have the perfect room geometry to where this can actually effectively reflect to your listening position wherever that may be maybe to the left you you have a bigger space with a kitchen and to the right of you you have a wall or maybe the wall is right behind you because you're sitting at a couch that's in the on the opposite end of the room is the TV for example so having this sound bar reflect sound off walls seems to be it seems to be an empty promise I don't think it's really going to work unless you're super super super lucky with the room you're in and most people aren't and right now you have a just a TV with a sound bar it doesn't matter where you stand in the room you hear the movie or the music or whatever if you listen to music that way I don't I don't listen to music on a surround sound system I don't listen to music on a sound bar I listen to it either here in the studio or with headphones um but you know watching movies is kind of cool like that I had a 5.1 system before and and I enjoyed that but when I got this new TV this OLED TV I got rid of the stereo it was no longer really compatible anyway and it has a good sound bar on it that just gives me decent sound and if the movie's good I enjoy the movie you know if I want some immersive experience I could just put on headphones and watch the movie I think that's pretty good 5.1 never took off Dolby Surround never took off THX never really took off in the home Arenas because nobody had the space for all these speakers and it seems like they're trying to get around that with this clever design of things bouncing off the walls and they also say oh you can finally hear music the way the artists intended you to hear it but none of us ever intended you to hear our music bouncing off a wall when we build our Studios that's the one thing we're completely trying to avoid with all our acoustic treatment is that the sound doesn't bounce off the walls that you hear it just direct from the speaker now if you have an Atmos system you're hearing everything directly from the speakers and it probably will blow your mind but the way I see it is no consumer is ever going to hear it that way okay if there's a venue made for it like say they take Dark Side of the Moon and make it this immersive version of it and then you go in and see I don't know some lasarium in a domed a screen or some sort of venue where you can kind of see everything all around and hear everything all around then that would make sense but even when you're watching a movie you're still watching forward it kind of makes very little sense even in 5.1 that you see something on the screen and in front of you and you hear it behind you that that's it's only good at the most for like some little effects some little ear candy but it's not a critical experience for the perception of what you're seeing even and even in cinema but that does give the opportunity for venues to exist where people actually go and pay money and listen to Pink Floyd you know coming from all around them that that sounds completely viable it just doesn't make sense to make it the way all music has to be produced because most music it just doesn't need that you know if the song is good if the mix is good if the performance is good two speakers or plenty because we listen to music on an emotional level not on this level about like oh which direction is the sound coming from it might be an interesting experience at first but eventually it might get in the way it might get boring you know 3D TVs fell off the face of the Earth along with Dolby Surround Pro logic 5.1 THX now we're talking about Atmos and we're talking about what appears to be the worst way to deliver music by bouncing it around your room off the walls and then I thought a little more about this or why why would they be doing this this is kind of maybe a tin foil hat sort of a tangent to go off of but I kind of think there's something to it because the record industry the music industry used to be owned by the industry the record labels the major Studios MTV radio that was all heavily gate kept and the only way to get in was to be one of the lucky few when I started making music with psychotic walls the only way to even get a quality recording would be to go into an expensive Studio because they had an infrastructure that just wasn't within the reach of the common person these were businesses that invested heavily in infrastructure so that they could make recordings and once recording became affordable and then even super affordable the recording studios were the first ones to not be needed and shortly after that the whole industry wasn't needed because you had Spotify and apple music and YouTube and any of those streaming services that people can just make their music at home in the format that is the standard in the quality that is standard you could say they could just rule their own careers people's success could be more based on how hard they work and how good their ideas are rather than whether or not they were lucky enough to be discovered and it seems to me that this Atmos thing is a way to gatekeep again because the infrastructure is so expensive that none of us can afford to put this in our homes you know you need to spend what they used to have to spend to build a studio now we have to spend that just to have an Atmos system and so if you don't have it then you're not in the game and you can't be distributed YouTube hasn't made any decision about this so far but you know Spotify and apple music apparently require at most mixes now whether or not an Atmos mix is what's good for the music also the atmos algorithm is licensed it's not something that you own we own stereo I own my left and right channels but Atmos is a licensed thing and I don't know what that means uh as an artist do we have to pay the license fees is it going to be included if we buy the program that we need to mix in Atmos is it going to be something we're going to have to subscribe to it just seems like a way for the big studios to get leverage again and for the record industry to be kind of re-conquered by the big businesses but it doesn't have to be that way because there's a lot of things about Atmos that I've never heard anyone talk about even the people who are praising it when it comes to mixing a record for example there's two really big things about mixing that a lot of people depend on one of them is called top down mixing where they put equalizers compressors what have you on the stereo mix bus and then they mix from there well if you're doing Atmos there is no stereo mix bus there's this multi-channel mix bus it's everywhere what about compressing on the mix bus this is a big part of getting a sound especially with rock music but with anything if they put compression on that mix bus most people do and that gives them a certain sound that they don't have without it and if you're spreading your sound across all these speakers there's no stereo mix bus anymore so you don't have mixbus compression anymore that's a loss that's a terrible thing also what about vinyl vinyl is coming back in a big way with our stereo recording setups we can we can produce final out of these things and vinyl is only going to be a left and right stereo format it may Force us out of apple music it may Force us out of Spotify where the major labels then take those things over and only the biggest stars get on that system but I don't think it's much of a loss I really don't because they're not really paying artists very well not even the big artists but artists like people like myself pennies just pennies for digital delivery we get nothing selling CDs was lucrative it looks like that selling LPS could also be lucrative but what is the carrier these these CDs LPS tapes these are all called the carriers of the published work these are the carriers what is the carrier for an Atmos recording it's purely digital it's like in thin air it doesn't really it's not something you can ever hold when they were doing 5.1 mixes of bands when 5.1 was trying to make its rounds there were bands that were hiring Engineers to mix their old classic records like Elton John like Queen mixing them in 5.1 surround there were engineers mixing Engineers that were taking old catalog and repurposing it in 5.1 what about that those came out on a DVD I have Queen not at the Opera mixed on 5.1 I never listened to it like that never I never once listened to night at the Opera in 5.1 because it was never intended to be heard that way it was intended to be heard it was mixed for stereo and all this other stuff is just gimmickry I don't need to be sitting in the middle of the band if I'm looking at a band I'm looking at it from the vantage point of from the audience to Stage perspective if I'm listening in 5.1 or in immersive it's like I'm sitting on the stage and the players are beside me in front of me behind me and I don't want to hear music that way necessarily I wouldn't mind experiencing the right music like that but I don't need to hear all my music like that that would get annoying really quick I think okay let's take one step further because this is really important to know let's say that it's going to be the Cinematic standard okay and it seems like it's pretty pretty good thing your Atmos mix of your music is not going to come out all those speakers the front left and front right is the only speakers in an Atmos this is now this is according to Trevor Horn Trevor Horn is a very very well respected producer one of the top names in all producers and he cannot get permission to have his music placed outside of the front left and front right in any motion picture soundtrack the back is reserved for effects even the subwoofer is for a low frequent LFE as they call it that's for dinosaur steps explosions not music so even if you did mix your music in Atmos and it did end up in a venue like a theater you're gonna be folded down to a stereo left and right for that music so think about that this isn't about whether or not Atmos is a good idea or whether or not it's an awesome format I'm here to say actually I think it sounds like a lot of fun at least to experiment with and I'm the kind of artist that actually could make some pretty cool use of it but I have to consider will my Atmos mix ever be heard by anybody ever ever and it seems like the answer is no and if it is it's either going to be convoluted by bouncing off of the ceiling and the walls maybe finding the target to their ears maybe there's going to be headphones that make big strides maybe Apple will invent a an immersion pod that's like a chair where the speakers are around you and maybe where you're sitting has um one of those vibrating uh it's it's not a subwoofer it just vibrates to low frequencies so it makes you feel it and makes you perceive these low frequencies even though they're not being heard so everybody can have their own little pod that's that's doable I suppose maybe cool for movies again for music is it really necessary is it really gonna be the way people want to hear music from then on maybe with some genres yes maybe if I was listening to Hip Hop it might be cool to have the perspective that I'm surrounded by gangsters rapping at me and threatening me from different directions that might be a kind of cool experience but whether or not the music is good isn't going to be dependent on that factor it just might be an interesting fun experience once or twice but I just don't see it really being a practical way for consumers to hear music movies fine but even then in the home venue I don't see it I really don't see it do you know anybody with an Atmos system have you heard Atmos in a home setting have you heard it in a studio setting I'd really like to know tell me what you think about it tell me what you think about why Atmos is becoming this exclusive standard and let's see how far it goes but we can push back because we don't need to support the streaming platforms that are demanding this of us if we want stereo we can make stereo and we can release it some way or another the internet is a very friendly place for that sort of thing and we always have vinyl and LPS I think at most that Dolby Atmos is going to be this kind of Rubberneck experience like an experience for everybody when they first hear it or like wow this is really cool but then they'll either get used to it to where it just doesn't do anything anymore and that's just what they expect or be more realistically that they realize that their old stereo system sounds better that their old records sound better that their CDs sound better that they're MP3s in stereo sound better because the speakers are pointed in the direction they're supposed to be so I really want to hear what you think about this I want to hear what you think about Atmos if you would invest in it as a mixer and I do want to throw another thing out there if if you really wanted an Atmos mix of your music all you could make the stereo mix in your place and all you have to do is print stems of your instruments and you can send that and hire out an Atmos Studio to do an Atmos mix and since the heavy lifting will already have been done by you and your studio with regards to the tones and the balances and the effects and all that you can just have somebody figure out where to put them in the room and or get a set of those Apple iPod Pros that are supposed to be directional and have this immersive ability I don't know if those work or not I'd be willing to try it because the way the way I see it I could either buy for 300 Euros the the Dolby Atmos plug-in as as it were or I could just put the stems in logic and logic already has this Atmos this immersive capability within logic I don't know how that plays out with the interfaces I already have if I need to buy new interfaces I I don't think I'm going to make that kind of investment I don't know if you still need those interfaces if you're just doing it on headphones all this stuff is unconquered territory but if it is possible to fake it with a pair of headphones you might be able just to fake it and get your music put out there but is that how you really want your music heard I mean you really don't know what you're delivering if you're hearing some psychoacoustic version of what you're mixing so what do you think about all this what do you think do you think it's a good idea A Brave New World as they say or is this just a way for the industry to get its leverage back is that going to be effective I don't know what do you think so let me know in the comments please like if you like this video please subscribe if you haven't already subscribed and if it's in your heart to do so but I really want to hear some feedback on this topic because there are people that are really really in to the idea of Atmos and I can't help but notice that most of those people that are so enthusiastic are also sponsored by Sweetwater who is in the business of selling equipment so what do you think is this just kind of a scam is it a flash in the pan or is it going to be something that we all need to worry about let me know what you think until then I'll see on the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Devon Graves-Studio-D

Views: 21,147

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Id: 68g-Y1Sy91I

Length: 24min 42sec (1482 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 22 2023