I appreciate the in-depth explanation! I do believe the comment was meant as „is Atmos another passing fad designed to get people to pay a lot of money for licensed equipment to support a new technology that completely misses any real market need and is completely orthogonal to the way most music is actually heard, the way quadraphonic was?
My vote is „yes“.
Not least because while Apple is one of the major adopters and driving forces of Atmos remixing, their implementation is supposedly rather botched, from what I’ve read.
I’m also generally skeptical of „remixes“ and „remastering“ of classic material. Unless the original was actually messed up, I’ve rarely heard any example where the new version actually improved on the original vision.
Usually, it brings it in-line with modern expectations—none of which have anything to do with what made the material great; on the contrary.
With the iPhone and earbuds already in your pocket, you can listen to something in the Dolby Atmos format, so no, it is not “another passing fad designed to get people to pay a lot of money for licensed equipment to support a new technology that completely misses any real market need and is completely orthogonal to the way most music is actually heard, the way quadraphonic was.” You can play back the format with no special equipment whatsoever.
Quad required the user to buy a special turntable and amplifier to play it back. That’s why it never took off. Not enough customers meant not enough content was created and sold, and the limited content meant not enough people would invest in the gear. The negative feedback loop killed the format before it took off.
Atmos, on the other hand, is already available in many thousands of recordings, with more coming out every week. This is specifically because Apple made the format available on gear that people already owned and didn’t charge an extra premium for the content. The positive feedback loop means the format will eventually be the default standard.
Next, you should realize that plain old stereo is “completely orthogonal to the way most music is actually heard.” Unless you’re listening to an acoustically recorded binaural recording played back in headphones, stereo is a completely artificial construct, usually created by combining multiple monaural tracks split in percentages between two speakers to simulate a relative position between them. When played back through speakers in a room, there is literally nothing in that reproduction method that naturally recreates sound the way live music is actually heard.
On the other hand, because Atmos is capable of creating a binaural output directly into a user’s earbuds, it actually is capable of creating, from a regular multi-track studio recording, a mix that reproduces sound the way music is actually heard. When it’s done well, the result is spectacular. Is it always done well? Of course not. Like any other recording ever made, the result is dependent on the skill of the sound engineers. If they know what they’re doing, however, Atmos makes it possible for those engineers to produce recordings that come as close to “the way music is actually heard” as has ever been possible in the history of recoded music.
As I said, before, I don’t subscribe to Apple Music. But I am interested in Apple Classical. So I start the music app to play my own library and up pops an ad for Apple Classical. It looks interesting and there’s a promotional video which I click on cause I’m interested in watching it and seeing what it’s going to be like. The video won’t play, unless I am a subscriber to Apple Music. What idiot thought that was a good idea? The idea behind Apple Classical is to get people to subscribe to Apple Music. If you’re going to put your ads behind a pay wall I’m just not going to watch them. FU Apple.
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