“Apple Music has their own binaural mixdown codec,” says Lewis. Speaking to Lewis, it quickly becomes clear that he sees an awful lot of potential in Atmos, but stresses that the format is still very much “in development”. That’s mix engineer James Lewis, who’s currently installing an Atmos system in his studio. But now I’m looking at Atmos and I feel like there’s so much to discover.” “It’s hard to remember not having a really full understanding of stereo, of the infrastructure, the interfaces, the routing of patch bays. But what do mix engineers feel about it? Image: Sony How is it changing things for mixing engineers? It’s undoubtedly a huge step forward in consumer ready immersive audio. If you’re listening on speakers calibrated for Atmos, it automatically balances the mix to account for the number of speakers and their placement in the room. How does Dolby achieve this marvel? When it comes to headphones, Atmos generates a binaural mixdown using what is called ‘head related transfer functions’ to mimic the natural way the human ear perceives the location and movement of sounds. Furthermore, Atmos promises – at least in theory – to offer the same spacious sound no matter how simple, or complex, your listening environment is. A song mixed and rendered using the format will automatically adapt to whatever playback setup you’re using – a single mono Bluetooth speaker, a car stereo, a pair of headphones, or all the way up to extended home entertainment systems featuring any number of speakers. Of course, the technology for multi-speaker panning and mixing has existed for many decades what Atmos does is simplify and standardise the process. What is Dolby Atmos?ĭolby Atmos allows producers to place sound anywhere around the listener, offering a staggering 128 individual locations to send audio – compared with the meagre two channels that have been the standard since 1958. So, what exactly is Dolby Atmos? Does it really deliver on its promises? And what does it mean for the industry and for consumers? We speak to a number of early adopters to find out. They’re so convinced that you’ll love the immersive sound of Atmos that they’ve gone so far as to make it the default playback mode for their premium subscribers. It is offering what they call Spatial Music as part of their subscription streaming service, Apple Music, and are billing the format as a game-changer akin to the shift from mono to stereo. The American tech behemoth is stepping into the ring, and the hype train has most definitely left the station.

So, why then are we now hearing lots of ‘spacey’ talk buzzing around music forums? Tidal and Amazon Music introduced support for the format almost two years ago with relatively little fanfare. Given that history, it’s not exactly surprising that Dolby’s initial push to get Atmos into the music industry was met largely with indifference.

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