We’ve discussed many aspects of Dolby Atmos on this site, from the theory behind the format, to the equipment requirements, to the workflow. In short we talked about what Atmos is and how to do it but something we’ve talked about less is whether we should mix in Atmos.

The commercial argument changes over time. If there is demand and budget then the answer is clearly yes when it comes to doing the work. In our survey Who Is Mixing In Atmos? We Have The Survey Results we found a significant uptake of people working in Atmos and unlike the position a handful of years ago when Atmos was almost exclusively a Post format, we’re finding more and more music mixers are working in Atmos. In autumn 2022 when we asked Dolby Atmos For Music - Is It Worth It? we found a mixed set of responses, for all of the potential of the format there were still business issues, with the significant investment in time equipment and skills required to transition to an Atmos workflow not necessarily being reflected in the budgets available for mixes.

A key driver in creating demand has been the adoption of the format across streaming platforms, with Tidal, Amazon and particularly Apple Music all streaming immersive music. This is further compounded by many, maybe even most, labels now making Atmos mixes a requirement for new music.

This brings me to the subject of this article, in a recent conversation between Russ and myself. We were debating the merits of remixing legacy releases and while we didn’t completely concur, there were many areas in which we agreed. So should we be remixing in Atmos?

Does Atmos Sound ‘Better’?

Turning first to the technical. While there are many benefits to mixing in Atmos, it has to be said that as a format stereo has an awful lot going for it. It’s been the de facto standard for recorded music for over 50 years and in spite of many attempts to upgrade, it’s still overwhelmingly prevalent. Good stereo sounds great. It’s simple, well understood and deliverable in the home, to normal people, with equipment they already have. Atmos is more deliverable than it used to be, it’s the format binaural reproduction has been waiting for to pull it out of the niche it’s been in for decades, and I recently saw the amazing Sonos EAR 300 Atmos smart speaker and that’s a remarkable achievement for £450. But convincing consumers who aren’t audio enthusiasts that they need anything more than stereo was always going to be hard.

More Space

While not an inherent characteristic of Atmos, the agreed loudness for Atmos for Music is -18 LUFS. This additional dynamic range is frequently recognised by mixers as something of a luxury. Although frequently misunderstood, increased headroom doesn’t preclude the use of heavy limiting as an aesthetic choice, but it does allow for greater dynamics if desired. However the principal new technical opportunity presented by Atmos is in the soundfield and having a full hemisphere of space available for mixing rather than a horizontal 90 degrees in front of the listener. This offers huge potential at the mix stage.

Just as in the early days of stereo, not all of the experiments have been good, and to some listeners Atmos mixes are synonymous with frenetic, attention-seeking panning, but when used sympathetically the extra space can make an Atmos mix more revealing and easier to listen to. A significant part of the skill of mixing dense music in stereo is finding room for all the elements to sit together in a cohesive whole without crowding or masking each other. Good Atmos mixes achieve this beautifully, without the use of distracting panner-based pyrotechnics. As Steve Genewick put it on our podcast on Atmos for Music “When I’m mixing, I’m not making a demo tape for Atmos”.

However this space changes the way records sound. That competition for space, that congestion, is a part of the way records sound. In the same way as compression and limiting can benefit the sound of records as much as harm them. When the perceived necessity to limit hard to create a ‘competitive’ mix is removed by loudness normalisation, many mixers still choose to limit hard and not to make use of the dynamic headroom available because they like the sound. In exactly the same way, when freed of the congestion and crowding of fitting all elements into the relatively small soundstage of a stereo mix, some people miss the effect that congestion brought. In a recent interview on the Atmos remix of Pet Sounds Giles Martin said ‘I get people writing [to] me saying, “you know, we don’t need to hear everything” and I think they’ve got a good point. It’s meant to be a mush.’

Audience Resistance And The Definitive Version

This effect of audience resistance to changing a familiar and loved recording is by definition peculiar to the remixing of legacy, usually classic, releases. New music is unencumbered by this because it is new. Alternative mixes can exist and while people might prefer one over another, it’s not a big deal in the same way that remixing the Beatles is. It’s a peculiarity of the recording process that a legacy artist might have played a song thousands of times in a career lasting decades but there is only one version which counts, a recording which was probably made within days or even hours of writing the song and containing many arbitrary choices. However, to deviate from that version is often controversial.

So if the definitive version exists and enjoys that status because it is so familiar and loved by so many, why remix it in Atmos at all? Remasters of classic recordings are of course an opportunity for record companies to sell their biggest selling titles all over again and not all of us remember fondly digital remasters of records made twenty years ago which, while often attempting to address technical deficiencies, by virtue of being released during the loudness wars, frequently sounded louder, brighter and wider but often not ‘better’. Annoyingly these are often the versions you’ll encounter on streaming platforms, with original releases harder to track down.

The loudness-normalized world we now live in spares us from the worst excesses of this but Atmos is interesting in that, unlike previous legacy re-releases of music which was distributed on physical media like CD, Blu Ray, DVD Audio and SACD, Atmos is distributed over streaming platforms so if the motivation is to sell more product, a stereo vinyl release might be more profitable.

Some legacy music titles lend themselves to Atmos remixes better than others. Music from the 60s like the aforementioned Beatles and Beach Boys are so iconic that they were always candidates despite the limited track counts of the tape machines these were recorded to. Moving into the 70s and 80s the availability of more suitable multitracks improves the situation and the demand for tools which can separate mixed material or upmix material must be driven in part by this issue. Legacy artists potentially stand to benefit from the remixing of live recordings and concert footage where the immersion of Atmos offers opportunities on source material which isn’t the ‘untouchable’ definitive recording.

A New Format For New Music?

New music offers fresh and, I think, exciting possibilities. Music which is created in 2023 is coming into a world where Atmos is already a consideration. It isn’t yet the case that the Atmos mix is as important as the stereo mix, though I can see a time where the binaural render of the Atmos mix won’t be far behind the stereo. It is in theory possible for the Atmos mix to be the definitive version with the stereo version being a derivative of the Atmos mix and maybe in not very long the distinction between the two will become meaningless. Having heard some Atmos mixes in which, rather than a stereo recording being pulled apart and reversioned into an Atmos soundfield, the arrangement itself is created in that soundfield. An excellent example of this I heard recently on my visit to Sensound was ‘Concrete Over Water’ by Jockstrap. This piece exploits the opportunities of Atmos from the ground up, If you have the means to hear it properly in Atmos I recommend it. Once Atmos is no longer an ‘add on’ we’ll see the real potential of the format.

In the meantime, when presented with the option of hearing music I love in Atmos, I’m going to try it out. I couldn’t resist Bohemian Rhapsody in Atmos. Did I enjoy it? Not as much as I thought but I still checked it out. And the important thing here is that we don’t lose anything by having Atmos remixes. If I don’t think it’s as good as the stereo, I’ll just listen to that old familiar recording next time. In the same interview as quoted from earlier, Giles Martin said in response to negative feedback of his remix of Sgt Pepper along the lines of “We don’t like what you do. We much prefer the original,” -  “Great, go and listen to it. That’s the whole point”.

What Atmos remixes have you heard which you enjoyed as much as or even perhaps more than the original?