Immerse yourself in audio

You may have noticed terms such as "Dolby Atmos" and "Spatial Audio" knocking around recently. So what are these exciting new formats and more importanatly what can they do for you and your music?

Immersive audio formats have been around for years and were famously first experimented with by Alan Parsons at Abbey Road Studio's in London 1973 where he originally mixed down "Dark Side of the Moon" in Quadraphonic. By being able to control 4 speakers instead of just two, Parsons was able to put sounds behind you as well as to the front of you, left and right. At the time however, with record needles only having two sides, the Quadraphonic version of Dark Side was never comercially available. Fortunately for us, this original Quadraphonic mix has been remastered in Dolby Atmos and is currently available to listen to on Apple Music and Amazon Prime.

Alan Parsons mixing Dark Side of the Moon 1973

Family of 5

"Five Point One" or "Surround Sound" as it was more commonly known was the first comercially available emmersive sound format. The prototype for this five channel sound system was called "Quintaphonic Sound" and was first used on the film "Tommy" in 1975 famouse for it's incredibly immersive sound-track and music by The Who. What we now know as Dolby 5.1, the evolution of this became avialable in Cinemas and first used to full effect in "Logan's Run" (1976)

"Logan's Run" film poster 1976

Dolbly 5.1 is known as such because of the speaker set-up. A speaker front-and-centre where all the main dialogue is focussed, a front pair Left & Right, a rear pair Left & Right and of-course a sub woofer (the "point one") which only generates low frequncies below 80hz. Everyone remebers where they were the first time they heard real sub-bass.

Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound giving cinema goers a more imersive experience

Since the early days of surround sound, there has been huge leaps, from analogue, to digital to THX to 7.1 to Pro Logic 2. But all of this progression has happened in the movie space and as home cinema systems have bought big sound-tracks into small homes but during this time music mastering has largely remained in plain old stereo.

Jurrassic Park 1993 used state of the art Dolby Digital for a very immersive experience

Enter Dolby Atmos, In 2012 the first Dolby Atmos cinemas started emerging. Atmos is a widely supported object-based system with up to 128 individual tracks and 64 speaker feeds. In Atmos, a mix engineer is not only able to place sound objects infront of you and behind you, but also above your head.

Dobly Atmos uses an object based system to place sounds in a 3D space

As you can see, a simple speaker set-up for working with Atmos becomes quite intense. Below is a diagram from Genelec demonstrating their most simple Dolby Atmos monitoring system consisting of 12 seperately controlled, professionally installed speakers.

Green Speakers at ear height, blue speakers on the cieling and a sub on the floor

Dolby Atmos would then later be converted to a playback system for Apple EarPods known as Spatial Audio in 2020 that use head tracking to give you the experience of a fully 3D space. The vurtual sound objects can then be positioned in that 3D space.

The Immersive Experience London Philharmonic Orchestra, Ben Gernon

Thanks to this new flexible format we are all able to enjoy original music mixed in Dolby Atmos Surround Sound whether we're out on a walk, sitting at home infornt of Netflix, at the cinema or playing comptuter games. Now available on most major streaming platforms, Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio mixes are some of the most exciting things to happen to music technology since the advent of streaming itself.