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It’s going to change the industry

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kfbkfb

kfbkfb

From Billboard: Studios Are Rushing to Record Music in Hi-Def Surround Sound

Studios Are Rushing to Record Music in Hi-Def Surround Sound Artists are paying a high premium to have songs mixed for Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio -- formats that have seen a "massive rate of adoption" at studios. BY STEVE KNOPPER For the past two years, Sylvia Massy has spent more than...
www.quadraphonicquad.com www.quadraphonicquad.com
^^^
In March 2020, according to Dolby, just 30 studios were equipped for mixing in Dolby Atmos, but today the number is nearly 600


(I still think that [terrestrial] stereo radio could benefit from broadcasting these surround sound mixes using one of the old quadraphonic matrix systems - in order to try to compete better with streaming)


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
I still think that [terrestrial] stereo radio could benefit from broadcasting these surround sound mixes using one of the old quadraphonic matrix systems - in order to try to compete better with streaming)
Click to expand...
With earbuds and car stereos the norm, surround sound would not offer anything to terrestrial radio. Earbuds have two channels. Car stereos when competing with road and vehicle noise, hardly even benefit from two channel stereo. And nearly nobody buys expensive home audios systems like we did in the 70's and 80's.
 
We've had this conversation before. I've been to several demonstrations of Dolby Atmos. I can attest that it's very impressive. However, it's only impressive when experienced in a theater-sized room that has been properly outfitted with speakers and amplification to create the proper experience.

So this kind of experience might be worth looking into if you have an expensive home theater system. But even then, it will need to be augmented with more speakers and amplification to create the proper effect. This isn't really the kind of thing people can experience in earbuds or through their phone. My friends in the movie and theater business are as excited about this as they were about IMAX and other high quality film technologies. But given the listening environments people use for radio today, I don't see a big application for it.

Also keep in mind that this is trademarked technology, so any usage of it will require some kind of credit, and most likely a payment.
 
If most people who still listen to radio do so in the car and at work, this is a really tough sell. As others have stated, back in the 70s and 80s when the world was much smaller and there were far, far fewer competing technologies and there were more audiophiles with a keen interest in things like quadraphonic, then maybe....But cut to 2022 and even if radio was the leading or in some cases only option...Where in the car is the 'sweet spot'? Driver? Passenger? What about those in the back seats? Vehicles like SUVs and vans that hold several passengers? Install multiple systems with complete sets of speakers for each seat in the vehicle? At work listeners in offices usually have desktop radios or if in a larger more open workspaces with more co-workers, they wear headphones or use earbuds. I don't see many people installing Atmos systems in their cubicles or offices.
 
^^^
Benjamin Bauer...suggesting that an SQ disc heard binaurally would be fairly accurately decoded.

(this YouTube audio is SQ quad encoded stereo, the top lights are for the front channels, bottom for the back channels, I don't have any earbuds to try, I may go out and get some inexpensive ones to see how they work "decoding" this)

Atmos -> SQ is easy and SQ quad encoding is compatible with stereo infrastructures (radio, mp3 etc.).


also:

Automotive Surround

MutiChannel Sound of the road, on the water, and in the air!
www.quadraphonicquad.com www.quadraphonicquad.com


aside: I'm a little surprised there are so many "recording studios", I thought a lot of artists/musicians had home "studios" consisting of a Microsoft/Apple computer + "studio" software.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
aside: I'm a little surprised there are so many "recording studios", I thought a lot of artists/musicians had home "studios" consisting of a Microsoft/Apple computer + "studio" software.
Click to expand...

There are both. If you're recording vocals, you can do them in the home studio. If you want to add strings or record with full band (something Dave Cobb likes to do) you need a studio for the room acoustics.
 
A large segment of the population lives in small apartments, where large sound systems aren't really practical, and use of them is a great way to get complaints from neighbors.

The days of the big stereo system are behind us. Unless a new set of headphones is developed that can imitate surround sound, this is the next version of quadrophonic, AM stereo, etc.
 

Personalized Spatial Audio in iOS 16 (adding HRTF to Airpods?)

Not sure if you have seen, but iOS16 will allow you to scan your head and ears using a truedepth camera on your iPhone/iPad and get a better binaural experience with Dolby Atmos track in Apple Music...
www.quadraphonicquad.com www.quadraphonicquad.com

Surround Virtualization for Headphones

So this is coming from some discussion of Surround Virtualization in a thread on Apple's Atmos Headphones: https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/how-does-atmos-on-apple-headphones-actually-work.29544/ It got me moving to (Re) test a few different solutions and share my results and...
www.quadraphonicquad.com www.quadraphonicquad.com



Various companies are working on surround sound via headphones, Amazon sells stereo mp3s of a Sony 360 reality audio surround sound demo album (I bought a few of these, IMHO, they sound better than stereo - speakers[home/car], headphones[home]).

It could be that preprocessing for surround sound for stereo headphone/earbud listening will be the way surround sound becomes the norm (only about 1/2 century after the big record companies thought it would).


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
It could be that preprocessing for surround sound for stereo headphone/earbud listening will be the way surround sound becomes the norm (only about 1/2 century after the big record companies thought it would).
Click to expand...

The real effect is in a theater sized room with speakers all around and lots of amplification. Then you FEEL the sound. Headphones are just two dimensional. You really miss the impact. Like watching a concert on TV vs. being there and feeling it.
 
kfbkfb said:
It would be a (radio) industrywide thing,
Click to expand...

There's nothing in the linked article that mentions radio. Getting the "industry" to do anything is impossible.

I read one comment in the article that rang true to me:

During the Q&A portion, one audience member told an anecdote in which he sat in on an Atmos mixing session and enjoyed what he heard through a multichannel speaker system. However, he was dissatisfied with the binaural render on headphones – so he asked why they can’t simply deliver two unique immersive mixes for headphones and speakers? The answer, unfortunately, came down to budget.
Click to expand...

As I said, this is an environmental experience, best heard in a theater. Not on headphones.
 
Back in the '70s quad era there were some quadraphonic headphones with separate front and rear drivers in each ear cup.

The same technique has been adapted to let people who are deaf in one ear hear "stereo" sound, by putting both drivers in one ear cup, and one driver is closer to the ear than the other, giving a slight acoustic difference between the two channels.
 
Yes, the headphone issue is a sticky wicket - but if an Atmos (or 360RA) mix is all that's available, perhaps a predetermined immersive -> quad dowmmix system could be developed (similar in concept to Dolby Digital 5.1 -> Dolby Surround dowmix) to make it easy to create a 5.1/4.0 mix for separate sales and/or to use with a matrix quad encoder.


Again, the record companies would do all the SQ quad encoding, radio stations would continue to receive songs in stereo (they would just happen to be SQ matrix encoded Atmos downmixes instead is mere stereo).


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
Again, the record companies would do all the SQ quad encoding, radio stations would continue to receive songs in stereo (they would just happen to be SQ matrix encoded Atmos downmixes instead is mere stereo).
Click to expand...

Where are you getting this "radio stations would receive songs" stuff?
 
I vaguely recall that the FCC was asked if any additional approval was needed to broadcast matrix quad encoded content on stereo FM radio - the FCC said it was OK, not additional permission was needed.

(at the time, I didn't pay much attention to matrix quad on FM stereo radio, I was more interested in discrete quad FM radio)


Kirk Bayne
 
Record companies create the content that radio stations broadcast, currently, the record companies create stereo mixes to send to the radio stations, these same record companies could instead send "stereo" mixes that are actually SQ matrix encoded quad downmixes of Atmos immersive mixes.


Kirk Bayne
 
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