This NYT piece on Dolby Atmos and spatial audio is fairly bullish on the technology, enough so that I am moved to share an outtake from the Harper’s piece on speakers. Short version: multi-speaker formats can be amazing and elevated or whatever if the process is 1:1. Make a thing in Atmos and play it back in the same environment? Great. But most of what’s in play here was mixed and recorded for stereo playback and is being sold—after being Atmos-ized—in a format that apes the spatial experience for a headphone setting. (Some people, not many, will have an actual multi-speaker format and life is different for them. Bully for these folks.) We are talking about tricks, in other words, not that there’s anything wrong with tricks.
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Dolby Atmos and your phone (June 23 2023)
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This NYT piece on Dolby Atmos and spatial audio is fairly bullish on the technology, enough so that I am moved to share an outtake from the Harper’s piece on speakers. Short version: multi-speaker formats can be amazing and elevated or whatever if the process is 1:1. Make a thing in Atmos and play it back in the same environment? Great. But most of what’s in play here was mixed and recorded for stereo playback and is being sold—after being Atmos-ized—in a format that apes the spatial experience for a headphone setting. (Some people, not many, will have an actual multi-speaker format and life is different for them. Bully for these folks.) We are talking about tricks, in other words, not that there’s anything wrong with tricks.