Subject: Why you get pushback from some people about Atmos

Hey Bob,

Consumers listen to music, which includes sound. Engineers listen to sound. which includes music.

People whose priority is music don’t really care about the delivery system.

Craig Anderton

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I stood down on this one though I’m with you and awaited the responses. Ezrin is where I’m at..

Michael Fremer

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Ezrin nailed it.
Joe Solo
Producer

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It’s about the money, not the sound!

I’m sure you know this. The best way to sell new devices is to add features that the old ones don’t have. Apple knows this, headphone manufacturers know this, studios know this, engineers know this, Harman knows this, record labels know this. They all profit from new technology purchases. Please buy new things, download new files, compare, opine, and prove how good your ears are.

Everyone in the audio business thanks you.

I agree with Bob Ezrin on almost every point, but I also believe spatial audio has it’s place in the experiential marketplace. As a fan of mono I haven’t invested the time to critically listen yet, but I expect that tracks created with the new format in mind are going to sound a whole lot better than old analog masters phased out of their minds.

Thanks for keeping the dialog relevant.

Victor Levine

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Wow. Bob Ezrin has turned into the old guy who doesn’t like change. But two ears? Really? Yes there is a lot of crap out there calling itself immersive. But when it is done right, from people like Bob Clearmountain or Steven Wilson or Alan Parsons or Elliot Scheiner, it can be thrilling. It’s like hating music videos because the visual is a distraction from the music. Maybe it is sometimes. And sometimes, 1+1=3.

Bruce Greenberg

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I listened to a couple sample Apple spatial remixes of Sgt. Peppers when they were released. It was THE worst thing I’ve ever heard. An abomination and crime against The Beatles. And us. What do you expect from a company that paid a billion dollars for Beats (they sound like doo-doo)?

Knox Bronson

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Ezrin nailed it. The rest is just a big wank.

Hugo Burnham

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This is not necessarily about Atmos specifically, but it’s related. I still have my wired EarPods from my iPhone 6, and they work great. I tried the wireless ones and they simply died within a year. Then I tried the enhanced ones with the spatial audio and it drove me nuts. The sound adjustments that were being made completely messed with the original mix and with my perception of the music. The mid range sounds nearly took my head off, but all of the lows and nice clean high end sounds completely got obliterated. The texture of the music was gone in favor of this boomy fake surroundsound that was hitting my skull.

Music is dynamic. Over compressing mixes, infusing technology that alters the sound in between the creator and the listener, completely distorts the human experience of enjoying the music in context, and from a personal point of view.

Music has a flow. Ups and downs. Energy and digression. Intensity and serenity. We have reached a point where sonic loudness and everything pushed to the hilt is absolutely destroying the ability of a listener to hear what was the originally created.

Sucks. That’s why I went back to vinyl. I still stream and I use my nine year old EarPods when I’m out walking, but I want to hear the music the way it was created, not interpreted by a bunch of nerds in a sealed pristine environment.

Jimmy Becker

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Hello Bob.  I want to throw up.  Audio masturbation is the category for Atmos.  That’s what I need, media vampires telling me what I like to hear.  Yeh, right.  rwhake

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Hi Bob, I’ve had good experience with ATMOS. I put together a room last year and it’s been enjoyable to listen to and mix in ATMOS. I have Dante Virtual Soundcard in my laptop and I’m able to play discrete ATMOS mixes from Apple Music directly into my system. If it’s on Apple in ATMOS I’m able to listen to it. I do think the binaural mode is a little underwhelming but listening on speakers is quite an enjoyable experience. Perhaps you’d like to come by the studio  on Olympic and check out some tracks? I’d be happy to host you and give you a tour.

Have a Great Day! Peter A Barker

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I agree with Brian Malouf. He has been on both sides (label and production).

Gen Zs and beyond, brought up in the gaming world, hear music differently than most do.  Their tastes and expectations are different.

The most impressive immersive sound i’ve experienced (and there are many in LA, including Sony’s at Paramount, Atmos configurations at Spotify and at the Mix Lab studios) is Björk’s multifaceted retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art –an immersive audio and video installation entitled ‘Black Lake’.  To duplicate that, including its 44 speakers, in our homes is pretty far-fetched now or in the near future!

I also respect highly credited mixers like Niko Bolas, Greg Penny, Matt Wallace and Sylvia Massey who are keeping an open mind and ear working in this arena.

Every generation has a sound revolution, not always for the better, but it’s a revolution and with new technologies on the horizon,  it’s best to listen. And heck, if it’s helping move music and people, that’s icing on the cake!

Claris Sayadian-Dodge

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Just yesterday I got to listen to spatial audio in a custom listening room, with tracks by a variety of both legacy artists (Elton John, Marvin Gaye) and new acts (Billie Eilish, A Star is Born soundtrack). As a musician and producer I think ambisonics, when done well, are wonderful and make the listening experience much more interactive and dynamic and the creative process interesting. I also must point out the technical fallacy in the comment above, that simply because audio formats were previously designed in a stereo R/L manner, that stereo is “natural.” Stereo sound is a massive reduction of the entirety of sound that we can hear in any environment we’re in. You can hear things behind you, which is why you turn your head to look, for example. Just as mono was the dominant format until stereo became more available and engineers got familiar with it, spatial will eventually become standard. It’s going to get to the point where people can’t believe we ever limited ourselves to only a right/left pan environment. Having ears on the right and left side of our head doesn’t mean we can only hear to those two directions. Our ears are powerful instruments and one of the features of spatial is that the technology can scan your head size and position and detect movement and continually adjust to deliver the sound in the best possible way for ultimate listening clarity. It’s a really cool technology!

Kela Parker

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Typical of the music business “ if man were meant fly he would have had wings.” There are some great stereo mixes and some real crap the only thing that saves a crap mix is a great song. Joe public doesn’t really care about the mix. Same with ATMOS some amazing mixes some not so good. Like anything. It’s another option I guess that’s terrible? The stereo does not go away. If you don’t like ATMOS listen in stereo. For those who have not heard a good ATMOS mix you need to get out more. What’s funny is back in the day everyone complained about MP3’s compared to PCM. Same thing, this is  another option on headphones, sound bars, huge home systems and cars, Your choice. As soon as an after market car system is available for my restored Pinto I’m getting one.

Dave May

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If you own a MacBook Pro and are NOT wearing headphones, here’s a test:

1) Open Apple Music, go to Settings > Playback and make sure Dolby Atmos box is either “Automatic” or “Always On”.

2) Search for the song, “Something Just Like This” by Chainsmokers and Coldplay and cue up the first result (upper left).  Don’t play it yet though.

3) Open YouTube and go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7MFYoylVs

4) On YouTube, wait for the ad to go by and then listen to the first minute of the song.

5) Now switch to Apple Music and listen to the Atmos version.

Which do you prefer?

For me, the Atmos mix has the vocal quite buried, especially in the crucial first 30 seconds, so the song doesn’t connect with me emotionally as much as the normal YouTube stereo mix.

NOW, I don’t know if the problem is 1) the Atmos process itself (blame the technology), 2) simply a bad Atmos mix (blame the engineer) or 3) if the label had an intern run the original mix through some sort of Atmos plug-in (blame the label).

Doing the same comparison on headphones, at least the Atmos vocals seem louder than they did over my MacBook Pro speakers.

However, this is only MY opinion.  Does the general listening audience care?  And/or, are we heading towards a TikTok world where people don’t even care to hear an entire song but rather just a snippet?  Maybe Atmos will become the new normal and either the technology and/or engineers and/or labels will improve as time goes by.

I tend to believe that Atmos as it relates to music is largely hardware manufacturers wanting to sell more equipment and record labels wanting to create some excitement especially for catalogue product.  I mean, I venture to say that hearing that song over my MBP speakers in Atmos kind of sounds like ass.  Is this the future of Atmos over stereo speakers?

I do love the sound of multichannel in a room with a proper speaker setup, but I’m not at all convinced that younger people will *ever* be installing lots of speakers in their homes.  The world has never adopted multi-channel sound in its many earlier attempts.  Besides, my wife won’t let me put more than two speakers in our Palm Springs condo AND I’M IN THE FUCKING BUSINESS.

And probably most of us on this thread are music/audio people by trade and probably grew up in an era where, because music was all we had pretty much, we really cared about the quality of the sound.  I don’t see that in the TikTok – or even Spotify – generations whose lives are more focused on social media in general, and especially Insta and TikTok which are visually oriented.

John Van Nest

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Bob,

 

For what it’s worth….

 

I’ve been through this multichannel stuff for 20+ years, mostly on the research and playback assessment side, and not entirely on the creative side.

 

Perceptually we are all gifted with ability to perceive sounds pretty much the same way. I’m not talking just from a frequency perspective but also from level and direction.

 

As I like to point out in my seminars, our ears are like warning devices. They often help to verify what we can’t see. If there is danger above and behind, we should all get the same idea where it’s coming from, either static or moving – speed included. If we are interested in a sound, we can focus on location and further evaluate its importance.

 

But given all heads, torsos and ear shapes are different, how is this all done so accurately and with such similarities? Well, for those without a belief in divine evolution, we depend on research. And there is a lot of research dedicated to this. Modern day Head Related Transfer Function filtering – HRTF, is a big piece of the puzzle, but not the complete puzzle.

 

I agree as one of your writers wrote we are often steered to look for the sound source, especially if it is not expected. But if you are in a concert hall, one can close their eyes and just appreciate the music and acoustics. In this type of environment sounds are highly externalized. Envelopment is enhanced by subtle differences in timing arrivals in low frequencies being slightly or greatly out of phase. This is a delicate topic, and I’ll leave it at that.

 

Headphone reproduction is quite the opposite where most everything is internalized. Attempting to externalize the listening experience is difficult but having a good HRTF filter and a way to use it is a step in the right direction. Ear canal resonances, researched extensively by Dr. Dave Griesinger, can help equalize the headphone system to be more linear and make better use of the HRTF for binaural reproduction. Head tracking is another dimension that complicates the headphone recipe.

 

If you consider for the moment that attempting to shrink the natural world around your head into a pair of headphones, you’d think it was an impossible idea. We can play tricks for starters, (and have been for years) but the real test of where this is headed is the goal of making something that is supposed to be rendered in front of you, whilst listening over headphones actually sound is if it’s in front of you, not over, on top of your head.  We are still a bit away from that, but once it’s achieved, trust me, all the other pieces will fall into place.

 

As for the streaming business, the distribution as vastly easier for immersive platforms, rather than the old 5.1 platform which only could be played back over speakers and a CD/DVD.  I think the record companies are within their right to explore other options for playback.  If you don’t like it, listen to the stereo track.

 

Virtualization is just that….virtual.  A properly calibrated monitor system is the valued starting point on the creative side, but any mixer will tell you, you must rely on the headphone rendering to check what is happening at the consumer level.  Headphones will always be the final arbiter. Which headphones…? I have no idea. None of them have been accurately linearized for my ears or yours.  Sony has an interesting approach to putting the mixer close to their Renderer.  They will come to your mix room and measure your ear response to the immersive monitor setup in your room.  They will then also measure your ear response with their headphones on. They then cross correlate the two in order to provide the mixer with as good a starting point as possible when you switch between your monitor system and the headphone.  Sony consumers are instructed to take pictures of their heads and ears to which Sony then models and selects a somewhat “personalized” HRTF that lives on your phone while listening to Sony 360RA releases.

 

While in LA last week, I happened to pass by the Lucid dealership at the Westfield Mall in Century City. I stepped into the car, rolled up the windows and listened to a Dolby ATMOS playback – the first I’ve ever witnessed. I can tell you it’s hit or miss with a lot of mixing results.  But the cut I cued up was “Let’s Talk About It” by Queen Naija, and the playback experience was actually really good. But this is just another flame in the fire. (on the flip side the stereo playback of Huey Lewis’ “Power of Love” sounded no better than a decent car stereo.)

 

It’s a new world with regards to playback technology Bob.  You and I may not live long enough to witness front facing sounds to appear to be in front of you over headphones, but someday it will and along the way there will be other iterations of immersive audio to either admire or curse.

 

Br,

 

Will Eggleston

Even NBC can’t get our attention.

That’s why the network is rebooting “Night Court,” which was not a “Seinfeld” level show (although little is), even though it was on the legendary Thursday night schedule as part of “Must See TV.”

I might have seen a half hour of “Night Court” tops, when you add in all the time I was flipping and came across it. Then again, even in the eighties I was time-shifting and not watching commercials. I taped everything. I had this amazing NEC VCR that you programmed right on the remote, there was a little window with the prompts and results, it was easy and amazing.

Actually, I can’t tell you what’s on network television these days. I can’t even remember the last time I watched it. As for football… I’ll probably watch the Super Bowl, but I distanced myself from the game three or four years ago, maybe longer, because I just don’t want to feed this CTE-inducing gladiatorial sport.

So why am I aware of the “Night Court” reboot?

Because the paper had a story on John Larroquette, because he played the doofus heavy in “Stripes,” my favorite stupid movie.

I read a couple of lines, and Larroquette admitted he did it for the money. I mean why not? Everybody can use more money.

But does anybody need to see this show?  Certainly not me, even if it got good reviews, which it didn’t. I’ve been taught over the past two decades that nothing worth watching is on network. It’s just not edgy enough. Did you read that story in last week’s “New Yorker” about the programmer at Netflix?

“How Much Netflix Can The World Absorb? Bela Bajaria, who oversees the streaming giant’s hyper-aggressive approach to TV-making, says success is about “recognizing that people like having more.”: https://bit.ly/3Hd70Fx

It scared me, because they fired the woman who brought the high rent shows to the streaming giant and put the choices in the hands of this woman who… It’s kind of a golden gut thing, it’s hard to quantify what will work, but by time I finished this article I was not a believer. I want more highbrow stuff, otherwise Netflix is going to be the new Elon Musk and Tesla. You need people to believe. Which is another problem with their essentially dead on arrival advertiser-supported tier. Apple, the world’s most valuable company, makes their products for the elite and charges accordingly. And you may hate them, but those who buy them adore them and will defend Apple to the nth degree, even though it’s inanimate.

Sure, there might be a good show on network, but if it’s that good I can ultimately watch it on a streaming outlet sans commercials. I don’t watch commercials, period, life is too short. All the time people say “You know, like in that commercial.” But I don’t know. It’s evidence how mass has decreased in the internet era yet so many see the new world through the old lens.

The most valuable real estate in entertainment is the Netflix homepage. You see it when you log in. You can’t avoid what is proffered, even if it’s different for different people. The homepage show makes an impression. There’s no impression like this on NBC. If you don’t go to the channel, you’re usually unaware. And ever notice how HBO affixes trailers for new shows to their hits? That’s how hard it is to reach people. As for people seeing movie trailers in the theatre, like network television you must partake, and if you don’t…it’s like it doesn’t exist.

We don’t have an equivalent homepage in music. Spotify is made for the phone. I’ve got the largest iPhone available and I never ever see the promoted track/album/artist.

Radio used to be the music business’s homepage. Especially in the heyday of Top Forty radio. Many fewer than forty records were spun, and if you tuned in you were aware of them. An act could go from zero to hero nearly instantly if it had a contagious track.

But we haven’t had that spirit here…for at least a decade. I don’t care how great your track is, crossing audiences, never mind reaching your main audience, is nearly impossible.

As for reboots… None of the dinosaurs has released a new album anywhere near as good as their old, classic material. To the point where when you hear an act has a new album you laugh and don’t even bother to listen to it, in the same way I, and many others, don’t watch network television. So the reboot formula is not working.

So how do you get a project started in music?

Well, you can be featured on a hit act’s track. Rappers pioneered this, rockers have still not caught on. Rockers are doing covers albums, a formula that is now dead on arrival. Hear anybody talk about the Springsteen record recently? Of course not. It was superfluous, unnecessary. None of the tracks were in the league of the originals, never mind that the arrangements were faithful. It seemed like an exercise at best.

So what can you do?

Well, you can put on an amazing live show and hope that the word spreads. The 15-20,000 in the arena are a captive audience. They watch and experience it all. If you can wow them, they’ll tell others. And you can increase your business. Or you can play a favorite album live. But there are only so many of them.

So we can’t reboot music.

And acts’ new material can’t get noticed.

That’s the problem.

We have no equivalent to the Netflix homepage, never mind much more product. TV is much more expensive to make, we’re talking about hundreds of shows, not hundreds of thousands of tracks uploaded to streaming services every week.

Also, we haven’t had an act that we could all get behind in years. Adele was the last one. The twenty first century is mostly arid. You can’t have guilty pleasures because there’s just not enough that’s pleasurable.

But the ship keeps rolling along, no one is trying to fix the underlying problem of the marketing of new music. Everybody has thrown up their hands, it’s too damn difficult. They want someone else to do it.

The music business could have one priority a week. That all streaming services got behind. Well, that might raise an antitrust issue, but couldn’t Spotify have an artist of the month, just like the burgeoning book clubs, and promote it to everybody?

A brand new act, or one without serious traction. That people could listen to and talk about. One with credibility. This is how the entire streaming paradigm began. Netflix paid more than any traditional outlet for “House of Cards” and when it was aired… You’ve got to say one thing about highbrows, they talk, they spread the word. You’ve got to reach the right influencers. And if people believe in a record, like they believe in their iPhone, they’ll talk about it all the time.

But if NBC is so hard up that it has to reboot a mediocre decades-old show… Then how hard is it for your new work to be recognized and heard?

Very hard.

Bob you are 100% right about spatial audio. I learned a lot about this during my time with the ill-fated QSound.

Not only do we only have 2 ears but they’re programmed to turn and FACE the source of sounds. It’s a primitive, autonomic survival mechanism – can’t be bypassed or tech-tricked into not working. New sounds from behind us or off to the side make us want to turn to face them.

While we can use that mechanism to create feelings of surprise or to focus attention on certain things in an environment, what we can’t do is make the limbic system stop functioning.

So these technologies that put sounds all over the place – around, behind or beside us – are like a carnival ride: fun and cool, but fundamentally so because they disturb our natural state.

Experiencing music is a visceral and very natural process. We “hear” it with our ears, brains, hearts and bodies. It is most effective when we let it wash over us and we invest our entire selves in the process. But when we are distracted, even unconsciously – when peripheral sounds put us in a state of limbic high alert – we simply cannot connect with it completely.

Add to this that a lot of the spatial trickery has to do with playing with phase which imposes a kind of diaphanous quality on some elements of mixes and what you have is a fundamentally uncomfortable way of experiencing music.

From my point of view these are cool technologies in search of a valid reason to exist beyond the commercial one. The geek in me loves playing with them – but the music lover in me finds them distracting and counter productive.

Bob Ezrin

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You’re right about Atmos sounding terrible.
I recently finished an Atmos mix of a popular classic hard rock record from the mid 80s. The original mix wasn’t great in the first place, so a stereo remix was absolutely needed before even attempting Atmos. Having listened to dozens of Atmos records, I concluded that it’s not good for music. They all sound terrible. They sound like rough mixes with bad reverbs.
Sometimes spatial audio is the version Apple plays first, rather than the original, which is unfortunate.
Apple headphones can reproduce it to a point, and 99% of the listeners are going to be hearing these on headphones anyway.
Who do you know that has a 14 speaker Atmos set up at home?
When it was first announced and I was approached by people from Dolby and some of the labels, I was very excited. Then I realized what most of the final results sounded like and was disappointed.
Apple Music unfortunately doesn’t do anywhere near the streaming numbers of Spotify. And Spotify has yet to support the format.
When it comes to straight stereo mixes, Apple sounds far superior.

Jay Ruston

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The key point for immersive (binaural) music on headphones, is that it sounds different to LR stereo.  Any consumer can immediately hear it, and it has a wow factor.
Of course it’s not really about music or fidelity, but about presenting an experience.  But unlike Hi-res the punters can hear the difference straight away.  This is certainly Apple’s belief, and why it might take off.

 

Kind Regards

 

Crispin Herrod-Taylor

Managing Director, Crookwood

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You sound like me before I actually heard Atmos. Have you heard it – on speakers?

From my perspective in regards to Dolby Atmos/Immersive mixing, I’ve heard many comments both for, and against the format. The two groups of professionals affected by the revolution begun a few years back when Universal began stealthily mixing hundreds of records in Atmos, shape their opinions by and large on how this tech/format switch affects them personally. We can all understand this.

Will this format survive public scrutiny/interest?  Immersive Audio – Dolby Atmos (Apple calls it “Spatial Audio”) and Sony 360R – have yet to register in the consciousness of the general public in a big way, but the same could be said of many technological revolutions that have taken place over the past few decades only 18 months after early adopters discover them. (Apple declared its support of the Dolby Atmos format in June 2021, sparking an industry-wide stampede to mix in this format).

The main players in this shift (consumer electronics manufacturers, pro audio manufacturers, record labels, streaming platforms, etc.) are playing the long game, and because of the software’s unique ability to simultaneously create and stream binaural and speaker versions of a mix, this immersive revolution has a tremendous chance of sticking around.

The obvious reason for this is that consumers do not have to rush out to make an equipment change to listen. We can listen to immersive mixes as we normally would in headphones – ALL manner of headphones now – and this is significant because industry surveys have stated that 80% of streamed music is consumed over headphones. And car systems are beginning to arrive…over the speakers we listen to most.

The LONG GAME: Next time a person moves house, or revamps their system to the latest technology, those audio and video systems will no doubt be Atmos/Immersive capable systems – that’s the long game, and the industry is well prepared to wait for the format to mature. Consumers can stand by!

All my best,

Brian Malouf

Brian Malouf

Producer | Mixer

Associate Professor of Practice

USC Thornton School of Music

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Hi Bob,

I wanted to point out a few things regarding immersive (spatial) audio.

You’re correct in that it’s been tried multiple times, and by any commercial standard has failed. A bit of history – Quad was mainly an experiment, a proof of concept if you will. 5.1 and 7.1 surround (90’s) died due to a number of factors, primarily needing 6 (or 8) loudspeakers with the space to properly place them, and the format war fought out in the industry between DSD and DVD-Audio (later Blu Ray Disc) as the carrier and format of choice. In the Beta vs VHS war, VHS won out despite being an inferior format. In the DSD/DVD-A war, everyone lost out and they all died (BluRay is still around as a niche format). Ambisonics has largely been the domain of academics and universities, but has gained growing acceptance in the game audio industry and has also seen a lot of development lately.

There are a few key factors today that suggest current immersive formats (Dolby Atmos, Sony 360 Reality Audio and possibly Auro-3D being the prime candidates) might have a better chance of succeeding this time around. First is as you note – consumers no longer need a boatload of speakers carefully placed around their listening room (although there are still those individuals with enough space and money to do so, it isn’t required), as research has improved the ability to virtualize a listening room and deliver that experience convincingly over headphones or earbuds. It’s gotten a lot better in only the last few years, and will only improve as time goes on. Many companies are also actively doing research to improve their algorithms and personalize them to each individual listener (both Sony and Dolby offer to take a picture of your pinnae – the outside part of your ears, and head to create a more personalized HRTF, the calculations used to simulate the space as it would sound to you). Second is that we appear to be moving towards a more spatial experience in other areas – gaming and cinema being two prime examples, people are much more accustomed to it and come to expect it more and more. Third is that we have a real battle on our hands in the industry, mainly between Dolby and Sony who are both vying to be the defacto standard across the board, so both are pumping money into marketing, R&D, creating new content and repurposing old (to varying degrees of success as you rightly point out), and with full support of multiple streaming platforms – Apple music, Tidal, Amazon, Deezer. Some of these will play the spatial version by default, unless you tell it not to. The user base is there.

So you’re correct in that people only have 2 ears, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed yourself, despite having only 2 ears, you have no problem hearing sounds all around you, above you, below you, etc. Not just in front of you between where a left and right speaker would be ;-). We can recreate that same perceptual experience in headphones. The better the HRTF measurement, the more accurate the result. Or if you prefer, and you have the space and money, you can buy a bunch of speakers and set up the same experience in your home. It isn’t nearly as mobile or convenient though, and we all know convenience trumps everything else!

As you pointed out, not all of these reissues or new productions benefit from or are improved by being done in immersive. I would argue that the same thing applied back when CDs were new and labels were scrambling to release content, often from the vinyl eq’d masters, rather than going back and doing a proper CD version (ideally with the artist and producer involved). Same thing happened with some of the 5.1 surround material that was released in the 90’s and 2000’s. However, there was also some amazing material released, both remixes and new content, that blew everyone’s mind and really served to spotlight the strengths of the new format (3 of my favorites that were redone in 5.1 are Beck “Sea Changes”, Beatles “Love”, and The Flaming Lips “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”). I would say the same of Atmos and 360RA, some of the content can sound gimmicky, or just doesn’t really need or benefit from the additional space, but there are releases that are completely riveting experiences as well (check out Fantastic Negrito’s “Have You Lost Your Mind Yet?”, Alicia Key’s “Alicia” , Stewart Copeland & Ricky Kej “Divine Tides” or Jane Ira Bloom “Picturing the Invisible – Focus 1” all recent or current Grammy nominees/winners).

Yes, it’s still a niche and a tiny market compared to the overall music market. But it appears to be growing, and there does seem to be a market for it (last I checked Mercedes-Benz has 3% of the automobile market, they seem to do just fine).

Finally and more importantly, it affords artists and creators a much larger, expansive pallet on which to create, play, experiment, stretch and explore in order to bring new experiences to fans which would be impossible in stereo. My experience working with artists is that new ideas, new technology and new formats all tend to be welcomed as additional opportunities to get into a creative space and explore what happens. So far, it seem that is exactly what’s happening in immersive audio, with more to come. More music can’t be a bad thing, can it?

Hope you’re staying dry in all this rain!

Best regards,

Thor Legvold
—
Sonovo A/S
Immersive + Surround Mastering & Production
Stavanger, Norway + Los Angeles, California

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God you are so wrong about Atmos. Yeah we have ‘’two ears.” Put those two ears surrounded by speakers in front, back, center and above and put on Tom Petty’s ‘’Wildflowers” or The Beatles ‘’White Album” or ‘’Abbey Road’’ or ‘’Aqualung” in Atmos and tell me you are not blown away. That you are not ‘’immersed’’ in the sound like never before. It is an unbelievable experience. Not to mention what movies and shows in Atmos can do. BIG DIFFERENCE.

Yes there are crap atmos mixes for streaming music, mostly perpetrated by Warner Music. But the good ones done by Ryan Ulyate and Giles and Steve Wilson etc are unbelievable.

Please stop pontificating about what you obviously know nothing about nor have experienced correctly. It is an insult to professionals who are changing the way we listen to music. And man is it cool.

Sure you won’t print this because I’m not name dropping some celebrity or record biz exec you slobber over, and I don’t really care and rarely if ever do I respond or post anywhere, but this kinda pissed me off. There is enough misinformation out there as it is. On every level. Don’t contribute to it.

Thanks

Jim Cortez

https://amzn.to/3Xl8d3u

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Then the first half of this book is going to freak you out.

Did me, in the middle of the night, or morning, however you label 4-7 AM. I was doing the final stage of my colonoscopy prep and…

I’d wasted too much of the day before on TikTok and Instagram and surfing the web and it became unfulfilling so I decided to go deep during this three hour window.

You see they’ve changed the prep. Well, you can go old school and drink that vile liquid, but now they’ve got pills. But you’ve got to wake up seven hours before the procedure and take the rest of the pills over 45 minutes and then spend two and a quarter hours thereafter drinking fluid accordingly.

Ergo my middle of the night hejira.

As for the colonoscopy… I can’t reckon how these people do the same thing day in and day out. Oh, it pays spectacularly well, and the doctor has a piece of the establishment, but… Well, maybe the doctors also do something else, but I talked to the nurses, this is their gig, the same thing, every day.

I had “mini polyps.” Literally the doctor’s words. Not to worry.

But I don’t expect any prostate problems, my numbers are low and barely change You see we all get something, you’ll realize this as you age. None of us get out of here alive, but if you want to live longer you’re going to have to address all kinds of things, like the Big C, one of my struggles. As for those men afraid to go for a colonoscopy… You’re too macho? With the pills it’s really no big deal. You need to get one.

So I reserved “Demon Copperhead” from the library, even though I couldn’t get into any Barbara Kingsolver book previously. And Felice started it before me and talked about the language. You see it’s written in the style of someone…let’s just say he doesn’t have a full education. Didn’t bother me so much, but I did note it. And I was reading a few pages a night, the book never called out to me. I wondered if I was going to finish it.

And then there was that three hours in the middle of the night, that hooked me.

It was a bizarre book at a bizarre time. I don’t mind staying up until 4 AM, I don’t mind getting up in the middle of the night to go on a trip. But to get up and stay home in the quiet house while it’s dark out…it disorients you.

So what we’ve got here is a story set in western Virginia. Poor people. You know, the Oxycontin belt. And Demon is like too many in America, not nurtured but on his own and then fully on his own.

But I don’t want to reveal too much. As I’ve said before, I read for plot, and that’s what eventually hooked me. To the point where I spent seven hours straight finishing the book yesterday, I just couldn’t put it down, I couldn’t stop.

But if you buy “Demon Copperhead”…

It’s not that it’s hard to read, but the first forty percent or so didn’t call out to me, and that’s what I’m looking for first and foremost, a book I not only want to read, but need to read.

And then…

There are big themes in this book, but it’s not typical literary fiction, caught up in each sentence, so dense it’s unreadable.

And the book ultimately does make you think about some of these issues, interesting to get the perspective of those with a different background.

And one could say it’s the underbelly of the country, those who are sick of being talked down to and voted for Trump. And that’s there, but ultimately “Demon Copperhead” is the story of life, and death.

Where did I read just recently, the key to happiness is relationships?

Which brings me to Bonnie Raitt. I know that’s quite a segue, but I’ve been thinking about this song off “Home Plate” for days now, “Pleasin’ Each Other,” written by Little Feat and now Doobie Brothers keyboardist Bill Payne and his first wife Fran Tate.

“You don’t care about money

You don’t care about time

And our love keeps rolling, rolling along”

Wow have things changed since the seventies. Money was not as important then. Then again, life wasn’t so hard. The financial equation in relationships, at least at first, was not key. You were just looking for the right fit, someone who got you.

And that’s what everybody is looking for in “Demon Copperhead.” Everyone is just living their life. Then again, the lack of opportunity causes the younger generation to turn to drugs and…

I usually only recommend books that are slam dunks, that will grab you from the very first page, and that was not my experience with “Demon Copperhead.” But there came a point…

And I think you’ll get there too.

It is a commitment, 556 pages, but you’ll ultimately want the book to be longer.

You could download it right now and make a dent in it during the holiday before the world starts back up on Tuesday.

Or maybe not…