Ah--that makes sense, given Ciani's historical devotion to quad. It's not truly Atmos, then, but rather "stealth 4.0."
Atmos release of Suzanne Ciani - LIVE Quadraphonic
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Ah--that makes sense, given Ciani's historical devotion to quad. It's not truly Atmos, then, but rather "stealth 4.0."
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Hi all. A very sincere thank you for the listening and feedback.
Yes indeed. As @humprof stated, my approach was very much “stealth quad."
All in all, the value of Atmos for this album is "high resolution, discrete" streaming of the album (for whatever that means in the way that they do it on Tidal HiFi/Amazon HD).
Don't get me wrong, I do love the idea that with Atmos (MPEGH, Sony, DTS and others) you can use all of those speakers but trying to "upmix" into these extra speakers does more harm than good, in my opinion. Many of you also know when Suzanne performs from the Buchla 200e, it is quad... for Suzanne's music, upmixing especially feels "wrong," unless for a specific experiment.
Regarding the speaker usage that @AYanguas mentioned: Yes, I did this intentionally. The traditional usage of Atmos "bed" tracks didn't make sense to me. As I mentioned in the very first post in this thread, "I used Atmos “objects” for the 4 tracks and they’re sitting in the four corners of the room and scale up and down to the different rear speakers depending on your set up."
I found two helpful benefits from this:
Part of my goal when I work on these records is also to lock into a realistic spacial workflow which working-class musicians and producers can also work from to make their own spacial music. Right now, "Atmos Stealth Quad" seems to make the most sense until someone figures out how to import all of that native vector panning data from the DAWs to feed into the Atmos renderer (or whatever flavor of spacial audio)... Who knows maybe this is my next project to sort out.
...I can't stress enough how important workflow issues like this are to making spacial music actually become established instead of research experiments or a subsidized fad. If a kid making music in his bedroom can't access the tech, it's worthless in the long run.
We'll see....
TODAY, Quad has a the big bang for the effort, in my opinion. It's totally very much under utilized and I'm advocating strongly for working musicians to make Quad as their Master instead of Stereo... and frankly, I really like being able to use the Regular Matrix/QS workflow since that is something most listeners can listen to the same 2-channel audio to on any system, getting spacial effects right from the two channel encoded file or better yet go full-on with something like the Involve Surround Master decoder to get especially good results.
Yes indeed. As @humprof stated, my approach was very much “stealth quad."
All in all, the value of Atmos for this album is "high resolution, discrete" streaming of the album (for whatever that means in the way that they do it on Tidal HiFi/Amazon HD).
Don't get me wrong, I do love the idea that with Atmos (MPEGH, Sony, DTS and others) you can use all of those speakers but trying to "upmix" into these extra speakers does more harm than good, in my opinion. Many of you also know when Suzanne performs from the Buchla 200e, it is quad... for Suzanne's music, upmixing especially feels "wrong," unless for a specific experiment.
Regarding the speaker usage that @AYanguas mentioned: Yes, I did this intentionally. The traditional usage of Atmos "bed" tracks didn't make sense to me. As I mentioned in the very first post in this thread, "I used Atmos “objects” for the 4 tracks and they’re sitting in the four corners of the room and scale up and down to the different rear speakers depending on your set up."
I found two helpful benefits from this:
- The mix scales more accurately where the rear speakers were truly in the rear or if people have smaller set ups, it scales down nicely too... and
- I completely removed the bed tracks all together, drastically making the file size smaller. When I originally rendered the Atmos version of the record with bed tracks, I noticed the master file was WAY bigger than the original quad master. With a 5.1 bed (which is the only option to use for quad), the center and LFE tracks both are still generated as silent tracks.... It didn't sit right with me so I did more experimenting to find that removing the bed all together and using objects in four corners were way better. I understand how having a "bed" may help for film workflow but "objects" seem to make a bit more sense to me for music.
Part of my goal when I work on these records is also to lock into a realistic spacial workflow which working-class musicians and producers can also work from to make their own spacial music. Right now, "Atmos Stealth Quad" seems to make the most sense until someone figures out how to import all of that native vector panning data from the DAWs to feed into the Atmos renderer (or whatever flavor of spacial audio)... Who knows maybe this is my next project to sort out.
...I can't stress enough how important workflow issues like this are to making spacial music actually become established instead of research experiments or a subsidized fad. If a kid making music in his bedroom can't access the tech, it's worthless in the long run.
We'll see....
TODAY, Quad has a the big bang for the effort, in my opinion. It's totally very much under utilized and I'm advocating strongly for working musicians to make Quad as their Master instead of Stereo... and frankly, I really like being able to use the Regular Matrix/QS workflow since that is something most listeners can listen to the same 2-channel audio to on any system, getting spacial effects right from the two channel encoded file or better yet go full-on with something like the Involve Surround Master decoder to get especially good results.
Many thanks for these fascinating insights, @kamranv! As a non-engineer, I always appreciate having technical things explained in laymen's terms. But I also love hearing about people finding ways to use new technologies to do things other than what they were intended for. It's great to hear a modern quad mix, and I agree that Suzanne's music is well suited to quad.
I understand @kamranv is referring to the Atmos decoding render process that "select" the available speakers of each installation according to the Atmos object location.
He mention to scale up or scale down to the number of available speakers. But the mixing intention is 4 Atmos objects in the four room corners, at floor level. Traditional QUAD.
It is nice to see that in a 9.1.4 Atmos config the only 4 speakers fired are FL, FR, SBL, SBR. The other ones are completely silent, Checked by my Ears and by my DIY VUmeter.
And yes, after A-B comparing between "Atmos Stealth Quad" from TIDAL and 4.0 Upmixed to 9.1.4, it sound more clear and precise the 4.0. With upmixing you run all speakers, even heights, and some circling around the room sequences seems somehow more progressive, but at the time less clear. The circling around is done so quick and with good progression between each 4.0 speaker that sound more clear.
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Sorry if someone has already posted this. I just listened to the episode of KCRW's Lost Notes podcast on Suzanne Ciani. It's really nice. Nothing about quad--it's mostly about her commercial work (sound design for radio & TV ads, etc.)--but it really humanizes her and the story of her life in electronic music.
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/lost-notes/sonic-sculptor-suzanne-ciani
https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/lost-notes/sonic-sculptor-suzanne-ciani
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For further exploration of Suzanne's non electronic music look no further than this fantastic RBCD from the audiophile PRIVATE MUSIC label:
https://www.amazon.com/Private-Music-Suzanne-Ciani/dp/B0000000L2
https://www.amazon.com/Private-Music-Suzanne-Ciani/dp/B0000000L2
Kaspars Barbals
New member
Not easy at all.. Actually I am working on a new project and looking forward to deliver it to local cinemas here in Latvia. But it is immopsible to contact someone at Dolby to find out how to generate a proper DCP...
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Indeed. I haven’t dared to get into DCP yet.
There is one additional benefit, increased listening and sales from consumers looking for GENUINE Atmos content to play on their systems. IMHO your running a scam on us and it is a dishonest business practice.
There is one additional benefit, increased listening and sales from consumers looking for GENUINE Atmos content to play on their systems. IMHO your running a scam on us and it is a dishonest business practice.
I do not feel as I've been scammed.
The title of the album is LIVE Quadraphonic. So, I would really expect quadraphonic sound.
@kamranv explains how he used Atmos objects for the 4 tracks to be located in the four corners of the room.
The music is mixed ready for Quad. In my tests I found the sound effects are better this way than with the option of DD+ (5.1) upmixed to 7.1.4. It is better when the sound is jumping from the corners.
Usually the Quad mixes are released in 5.1 containers and the Center and LFE channels are silent. Do you feel also scammed when listening to Quads this way because you miss two channel content?
As TIDAL do not stream yet 5.1 tracks, I find very convenient to use the Atmos platform to stream Quad sound.
....dishonest business practice? That expression would be more suitable to describe what Amazon does when calling Dolby Atmos to a different virtualizing codec to be played only in Echo Studio, to increase sales from consumers looking for Genuine Atmos content.
You may be right, I may have over reacted a bit. But I do know I'd be really pissed if I laid my money down expecting a Atmos immersive experience and only got quad? I'd prefer a little more transparency.
Maybe some modern ones, but I had a hell of a time playing most of the ones I had until Gary showed me how to fix them with MMH.
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@AYanguas thx for the help in further explaining the process/intent to @Sal1950
@Sal1950, I am a music producer.
I approach the record by what serves the music best; not by the number of channels, objects or amount of technology used. For the sake of this release in particular, Suzanne's Buchla 200e synth has a 4 channel output with voltage controlled panning . Though we could have chosen to process/synthesize/upmix to objects or more channels, the output would be less like the original performance. I'm also not saying upmixing is a bad thing, though... it's a creative decision. Maybe I'll choose differently for a different release. Maybe not.
Atmos is a very powerful way to delivery music but it doesn't mean that you need to utilize every feature it offers to serve the creative purpose. You may choose differently when you produce music. That is your choice when you make the music.
...For now, Atmos through Tidal seems to be the only (somewhat) widely adopted music service for streaming greater-than-two-channel music. Tidal is one of many albums on the service... and by no means am I endorsing Tidal. You can choose to use it or not. Even if we had decided to release an Atmos Blu-Ray, SACD, or DVD-Audio of this release, my decision in how we used the channels would be the same.
PS: in case you missed it, we went one step further than must people by sharing the multichannel files here, simultaneously when we originally released the album nearly 3 years ago. We, of course, would love it if you used the services to stream so that we get paid but you don't have to.
in summary: Music is creative. There are no rules. We trust you to pay for it as you see fit.
A very dark gray area that I can't seem to find myself comfortable with?
What if I was to produce a album with only the front left and right "channels" used and slapped a big Atmos label on the front of it?
What if folks start remixing old 2 track recordings in a Atmos container and slapping the Atmos label on it to enhance sales?
"Tidal now leads the market segment with over 25,000 Atmos titles"
I'm not accusing you of anything but as I said I'm just not comfortable with the use of Atmos tech and it's logo sales power in this manner.
After all we have plenty of folk selling $5k+ 6' power cords in this industry, there is very little integrity left.
Look at what passes for High Definition music today.
I understand your concern about 4/xx ch being used for Atmos, but I would rather have few speakers used well, than upscaling or badly mixed many speakers used. This seems to be the 1st case. There's a lot of badly mixed content on Atmos.
If you're not happy with the usage, you can maybe use DSU to upmix to fill your speakers.
As Kamran said, Atmos is 1 of the only options on TIDAL to deliver >2ch music discretely. It might be possible to encode to regular EC3 instead for TIDAL & use a 40 layout, skip the Atmos workflow completely, but I'm not sure if this would work, might not qualify for Atmos promotion on TIDAL, and is probably very non-standard & non-compliant with TIDAL.
Atmos should imply at least 2D usage (which is what;s done here). Atmos now is known for height, but keep in mind Atmos was also originally advertised for OBA, so it can expand beyond 7.1, and use 9.1 2D and objects at ELL.
You could do that but it's just a big hassle to go though the Atmos workflow to do this, so might as well do a few more things and do it in surround properly.
This is probably already being done, but only for streaming iirc. So you'll see some old songs available in Atmos, but they are actually remixed into surround, but most of them won't sound great in surround.
I thought that milestone was passed ages ago with Atmos for headphones, phones, soundbars, TV. And I'm aware that much HD music isn't "proper".
I had a listen to the 1st 7mins of "00_LIVE Quadraphonic (Complete)_Suzanne Ciani-LIVE Quadraphonic_180208-Mastered Discrete FourOh.flac" . The introductory noise pan is a bit too loud in the rears, but the bias shifts forward later on & it seems discrete. Might listen to more later on.
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For the record, and to be fair, there was full disclosure in the first post of this thread.
@kamranv , I'm sure you'll not take offense from a passionate post by someone who's not aware of Ms. Ciani's history with quadraphonic sound and your work to promote quad recording and streaming from encoded stereo to Atmos in service of the artist's vision.
It's easy and forgivable to be so focussed on the present and the future that one neglects the past.
There are a few of us here familiar with Suzanne's pioneering work in live quad performance and and early quad encoded vinyl.
I'll try to add a little context in further posts in due course.
Thanks for your participation on this forum, your integrity remains unassailable.
Behold, the Buchla 227 quad routing / signal processing / panning module.
Look at that freaking bottom row.
Four inputs with voltage control to put them into four separately controlled and modulated quad "swirl" cycles.
Suzanne Ciani discusses quad live performance:
"I grew up in quad, because right from the beginning Buchla had a quad interface."
The above 227 module.
Listen for three and a half minutes and be enlightened.
"I grew up in quad, because right from the beginning Buchla had a quad interface."
The above 227 module.
Listen for three and a half minutes and be enlightened.
And in case anybody missed it, one Atmos fan thought the "stealth quad" mix blew the doors off every other Atmos mix.
Hands down the best Atmos album I’ve EVER heard -
The above sound bite explains why that might be the case, that it's the motion of electronic music panning around the surround field that is so entrancing, and it translates best from the four corners of the room.
Which come to think of it, many surround systems would need at least 7 channels to render accurately, as 5.1 "surrounds" typically are not in the rear corners.
Except among those in the know.
Vive la différence!
Hands down the best Atmos album I’ve EVER heard -
The above sound bite explains why that might be the case, that it's the motion of electronic music panning around the surround field that is so entrancing, and it translates best from the four corners of the room.
Which come to think of it, many surround systems would need at least 7 channels to render accurately, as 5.1 "surrounds" typically are not in the rear corners.
Except among those in the know.
Vive la différence!
What does that tell ya?
LOLAs to early live quad performances, I think Pink Floyd has the honor for that.
Pink Floyd play the world's first surround-sound concert
"Sonic innovators don’t come much bigger than Pink Floyd who not only re-imagined sound, but also changed how we take in live music. When the band performed the world’s first-ever surround sound concert at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall on May 12th, 1967, the group would change how we consume live audio forever."
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