What's New
Dolby Atmos Music™
Bringing new experiences to an old classic.
By David Tovissi
Vice President and General Manager
HARMAN Luxury Audio Group
During our recent JBL MA and Stage 2 launch event at Interscope Records in Santa Monica I had the opportunity to sit down with some of their sound engineers to learn more about how artists create spatial music. Dolby and the Universal Music Group, which owns Interscope, are unlocking new dimensions of music appreciation by creating thousands of songs transformed in Dolby Atmos from a diverse list of artists across a wide range of genres, from hip-hop, pop and rock through jazz and classical music.
The engineers played one of my favorite Sir Elton John songs from the Honky Chateau album, “Rocket Man”. As a cynical, sometime skeptical listener of multichannel music, I was not expecting that track to be so entertaining. I was informed that it was mixed by Greg Penny, who is now in charge of deciding what Elton John’s songs will be reissued in Dolby Atmos.
With Elton John on the piano, Dee Murray on the bass guitar, Davey Johnstone on slide guitar and Nigel Olsson on drums, “Rocket Man” was rendered in Dolby Atmos using 96k copies of the original multitrack according to Penny. He presented it to Dolby at their Burbank Studio using JBL loudspeakers in 2017.
I listened to the track and watched it on the board using Dolby Atmos Mastering Suite. The track, using object-based rendering, is constructed in a way that launches you like a rocket into the world of spatial audio.
Since that evening at Interscope Records, I have been exploring more Dolby Atmos music tracks including the A24 recording of "Stop Making Sense", by the Talking Heads. "Stop Making Sense" is a concert film that was filmed over four nights in 1983 at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood. It is widely considered one of the greatest concert films of all time. Hearing it again in Dolby Atmos brought back memories of my early days in the audio industry.
It is obvious that we are no longer designing movie rooms for our customers, we are designing immersive media rooms that will allow movie, music, and gaming enthusiasts to feel more enveloped in their media.
Here are some key points about Dolby Atmos Music that we should be sharing with our customers. They need to see us as the Subject Matter Experts.
Dolby Atmos provides creative freedom to the artists: Artists can position individual instruments, vocals, and sound effects anywhere in the listening space, allowing for a richer and more dynamic soundscape. Listeners can feel enveloped by the music, with sounds coming from above, below, and all around them.
Dolby Atmos provides enhanced detail: The ability to separate sound elements allows for a clearer perception of individual instruments and subtle sonic details.
Major music streaming services are adding Dolby Atmos tracks to their platforms: Apple Music, Amazon Music HD, and Tidal are increasingly offering Dolby Atmos music, making it more accessible to listeners.
Dolby Atmos enables artists to place individual sounds in a three-dimensional space, effectively "surrounding" the listener with the music, going beyond the traditional left-right stereo sound field, and creating a deeper connection with the music by revealing nuances and details previously unheard. HARMAN works closely with Dolby to ensure that our products meet the stringent criteria for delivering the most immersive and detailed listening experience possible
