There have been many attempts to get immersive audio music into people's homes over the years but they've had only limited success until recently.
Quadraphonic sound was an early incarnation of immersive audio. It was around in various forms from the 1950s to the 1970s and it inspired many ingenious adaptations of recording techniques, recording media and playback systems.
However none of it was enough to tip the format into the mainstream and into people's living rooms, and stereo remains the default format in music to this day.
In the first two decades of the 21st century, the film industry was more successful than the music industry at getting surround sound systems into people's homes.
This was achieved by offering two things:
As a result, the music industry had an opportunity to offer immersive audio releases on compatible media (such as DVD-Audio and SACD) that could be played on these home cinema systems.
Two recent developments have catapulted immersive audio into the mainstream consciousness and onto people's everyday devices.
First, Dolby released Atmos, a fully immersive audio format. Released initially for cinemas it introduced overhead speakers to supplement surround and sub speakers.
Atmos introduced a new paradigm of audio Beds - sent directly to the speakers - and audio Objects - sounds assigned a particular point in the sound field. On playback, Atmos decodes the Beds and Objects and assigns them dynamically to the specific playback speaker configuration that's in use, for example a domestic 5.1 setup or a sound bar.
Atmos also included a binaural mix down for headphones, removing the need for consumers to buy specialist hardware to experience music in spatial audio.
Next, Apple launched Apple Spatial Audio, which streams music mixed in 5.1, 7.1 or Atmos to the Apple Music app, then presents it in Binaural form to listeners using headphones or AirPods.
This combination of technologies solved immersive audio's biggest historical barrier - the need for consumers to buy new hardware and commit to a new playback format. Today, with just a smartphone, an Internet connection and headphones, you can listen to any song that has an immersive audio version at the tap of a screen.
One interesting observation on immersive audio is how its use has settled over the decades as musicians, producers and music listeners work out the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of making music in surround sound.
When stereo was first invented, the pioneering record producers, such as George Martin with the Beatles, took full advantage of the new format and hard panned various instruments, drums and voices to create a novel and exciting listening experience.
With time, however, a convention has evolved where most modern recordings pan the key elements dead centre - bass, kick, vocals etc - then create a stereo image with the remaining instruments. This gives a more solid and powerful sound and makes music more compatible with less-than-ideal listening conditions. Anybody who has sat in a pub listening to a Beatles album, only able to hear half the band through the one speaker that’s nearby will know about that.
The same has happened to immersive audio over time, though the convention is less strictly adhered to than a standard stereo image.
Early surround recordings experimented with putting the listener in the middle of the sound stage and panning different instruments all around.
By now, immersive audio mixes are also finding some kind of equilibrium, with vocals and bass often panned centre front and the rear channels now used more frequently for ambience and quieter sounds than instruments or voices. But this is not universal because there's huge potential for using the immersive sound field for creative expression, depending on the artist's vision.
Classical recordings can make impressive use of immersive audio by having the sound stage of the orchestra spread across the front channels and the surround channels recreating the ambience of the concert hall.
Not all mastering studios are set up for mastering music in immersive audio or Atmos.
An immersive audio setup in 5.1 or 7.1 or Dolby Atmos needs to be built from the ground up and to accommodate the multiple speakers along with appropriate acoustics and the hardware and software needed to process the multi-channel format. A fully-fledged Dolby Atmos setup needs to be calibrated by Dolby.
At Mastering World we're very proud to have the extraordinary talents of Simon Heyworth on our roster, in his incredible studio on Dartmoor in England.
Super Audio Mastering is purpose-built to cater for immersive audio and high resolution mixing and mastering, even naming the studio after a high res audio format, Super Audio CD. Their second room is a fully Dolby-certified Atmos studio where they create Atmos mixes or master their clients' Atmos mixes.
Spatial audio and high resolution audio come in a bewildering variety of speaker formats, audio resolutions, delivery formats and destination media, and Super Audio Mastering have used them all!
If you're considering an Atmos release, we highly recommend hiring a seasoned professional like Simon Heyworth to make sure the result is truly immersive.