Peter Gabriel I/O (2CD/Blu-Ray with Dolby Atmos mix out 12/1!)

[ted_b]

Listening now via Apple4K streaming Atmos, new, one song Peter Gabriel.

A new one? Not Panopticom (inside-mix) that we've been chatting about already (this thread and main one)? I don't see any.

 

[marpow]

A new one? Not Panopticom (inside-mix) that we've been chatting about already (this thread and main one)? I don't see any.

Sorry, meant the new one as of this new one on this new thread. Panopticom.
While I am at it, good mix, but I did not like the vocals, Peter's voice seemed behind the other singers. He has such an iconic voice I wanted to hear it more.

 

[J. PUPSTER]

It's not here and there. It's each full moon.
Our opinions aren't important, this is PG!
Can't be sure of course, but seems to me it's a brilliant way of releasing the album while you're still working on the album.
I'm guessing he's still re-writing lyrics and changing things.
He just released a longer making-of video and Panopticom was Panopticon when it was recorded with the band.
I feel lucky to be alive at the same time as him and a happy to be around for this album's long release.

Really cool to be getting gifts of PG music in Atmos on a schedule like this!

Could it be he’s been working on this album for years now, thinking 5.1; but since Atmos has come on strong for music in the past few years he’s going back and tweaking the arrangements/mix to better take advantage of more channels more interesting soundscapes from object based spatial audio .

 

[alansanchez86]

I may be in the minority here, but I'd much rather have the whole album all-at-once, rather than get one track here; one track there.
In fact, i have not even listened to Panopticom. I'd rather have the whole album experience 1st, and then go back later for individual tracks.

It seems that many artists have released a song or two well ahead of the album release. I understand releasing a "single" for radio play. But, do the albums we wait for on here have singles? Sometimes, but not really....

I can wait for the whole album release of "I/O". It's been forever and a year already.

ditto

 

[himey]

ditto

Blame it on the moon (phase).

 

[J. PUPSTER]

Really cool to be getting gifts of PG music in Atmos on a schedule like this!

Could it be he’s been working on this album for years now, thinking 5.1; but since Atmos has come on strong for music in the past few years he’s going back and tweaking the arrangements/mix to better take advantage of more channels more interesting soundscapes from object based spatial audio .

I had to make an important correction in my wording

 

[himey]

Something interesting is that the side channels in the Atmos mix has substantially greater volume than the fronts! I have seen similarly equal before, but never larger by this degree. I am comparing the 5.1.4 channels, after decoded, which is how I output all the streaming (lossy) Atmos. Maybe if we get a Blu-ray version, it will be spread between the sides AND the back channels, I don't know. Really am digging this mix. No issue here with his voice getting buried as someone suggested. The dynamics are very high, especially compared to the two channel, bright-side mix, 13 dr vs 6 dr!

 

[perzon57]

Something interesting is that the side channels in the Atmos mix has substantially greater volume than the fronts! I have seen similarly equal before, but never larger by this degree. I am comparing the 5.1.4 channels, after decoded, which is how I output all the streaming (lossy) Atmos. Maybe if we get a Blu-ray version, it will be spread between the sides AND the back channels, I don't know. Really am digging this mix. No issue here with his voice getting buried as someone suggested. The dynamics are very high, especially compared to the two channel, bright-side mix, 13 dr vs 6 dr!

There are lot of output in the surround back channels also.

 

[Bluedemon25]

Hello. I can't recall but I think this is essentially my first post here. I have been a Peter Gabriel fan after first being a Genesis fan. I'm very excited for this new album. I had the good fortune to see him once on the up tour I believe in 2002 and then once or so again one of them being for the back to front tour. I like the piece panopticom/n? I think I like the dark mix more. I'm quite curious to see what we end up getting. Will we get a double album all one mixes and all another or just his favorite mixes Will it be voter participation determined? Personally as I'm still fond of physical media and I'm aware it's not everyone's thing but I like CDs I just don't have the space or equipment for vinyl I'm hoping we get all the mixes released on CD and some form or at least digital. I'm glad he released that video about the artist and intent behind it and matching to the song I admit a skimmed in one or two parts that I felt got a little too fluffy poofy for me but I'm glad to have it and I'm hoping this goes on for a bit but that we're not waiting beyond the middle of the year much to get an album out and preferably in physical form.


Hope everyone is well tonight it is nice saying hello and talking to you. I'm afraid I can't comment on my thoughts on particular sound as my very groovy old system is having some component malfunctions that I'm not really sure what to do about to try to fix and I can't afford new stuff right now hoping that will be corrected I'm picking things up anyway.

 

[César]

Mixed opinion about the Atmos mix,.now I've had the chance to listen to it with some focus.
While it contains many discreet elements that could have made it a great mix, I find it a bit amateurish (sorry, who am I to judge!).
Vocals are too buried to my liking, specially comparing against the two stereo mixes. They are mainly in the two main fronts and they get more and more subdued by the rears as you increase the volume. In fact, I feel like the rears are too predominant. There's also a guitar track isolated in the front speaker that you can hardly hear unless to place your ear next to the speaker.
I'm really happy to get I/O in Atmos, but it's one of these mixes that I'm inclined to tweak.
And now let's wait for the next full or half moons for the rest of the album.

 

[ted_b]

I agree that the rears are a bit unbalanced compared to the overall "bubble" but I don't find anything especially buried. I'll listen a couple more times tonight and change my stance if needed.

 

[popshop]

Interesting situation in the i/o bandcamp subscription (anyone else on it?). From PG's team:
"Hi there,
A few people have messaged here and on social media asking why the In-Side Mix in Dolby Atmos is not available on Bandcamp.
We have checked with Bandcamp to see whether this is possible and, unfortunately, they've replied to say that it isn't.
We're told that they only support stereo and that Atmos mixes would either receive an error during upload or be switched to stereo during the encoding process. That being the case we'd much rather you heard the stereo mixes available as the Bright-Side and Dark-Side Mixes.
Sorry for the disappointment but we hope you continue to enjoy the stereo mixes that are available."
....of course folks have been trying to get bandcamp to support MCH for years, and still the workaround is providing a link to a dropbox/google drive folder that has the files. Then the issue becomes playing the files. @sjcorne I know you've had success with folks playing mkv and mp4 files with IAA. I personally haven't figured it out on a PC with foobar or VLC, and I wonder how many of these PG/bandcamp folks could - or if most just want a binaural mix via headphones.
Someone in the comments said it sounded great through amazon and an AVR. I didn't even know amazon could play on anything other than the echo things. The meaning of the song as an inversion of the Panopticon spy theme loses a little potency when it is distributed via amazon...
Not sure why PG didn't also give it to Tidal.
Anyway, it's still the wild west. It would be cool if PG partnered with IAA, or put files in a folder in the cloud, or built a site that could play the files...but I'm not sure they need to do anything more than have it on Apple.
Thoughts?

 

[sjcorne]

It would be cool if PG partnered with IAA…

Already reached out to them when the “Panopticom” Atmos mix came out a few days ago

 

[humprof]

Interesting situation in the i/o bandcamp subscription (anyone else on it?). From PG's team:
"Hi there,
A few people have messaged here and on social media asking why the In-Side Mix in Dolby Atmos is not available on Bandcamp.
We have checked with Bandcamp to see whether this is possible and, unfortunately, they've replied to say that it isn't.
We're told that they only support stereo and that Atmos mixes would either receive an error during upload or be switched to stereo during the encoding process. That being the case we'd much rather you heard the stereo mixes available as the Bright-Side and Dark-Side Mixes.
Sorry for the disappointment but we hope you continue to enjoy the stereo mixes that are available."
....of course folks have been trying to get bandcamp to support MCH for years, and still the workaround is providing a link to a dropbox/google drive folder that has the files. Then the issue becomes playing the files. @sjcorne I know you've had success with folks playing mkv and mp4 files with IAA. I personally haven't figured it out on a PC with foobar or VLC, and I wonder how many of these PG/bandcamp folks could - or if most just want a binaural mix via headphones.
Someone in the comments said it sounded great through amazon and an AVR. I didn't even know amazon could play on anything other than the echo things. The meaning of the song as an inversion of the Panopticon spy theme loses a little potency when it is distributed via amazon...
Not sure why PG didn't also give it to Tidal.
Anyway, it's still the wild west. It would be cool if PG partnered with IAA, or put files in a folder in the cloud, or built a site that could play the files...but I'm not sure they need to do anything more than have it on Apple.
Thoughts?

Obviously the PG camp are climbing a bunch of learning curves all at once here. (I'm still doing a giant eye-roll at the byzantine release schedule. Somebody on the Genesis discussion boards was wondering on which phases of the moon we'd get the upside, downside, and inside-out mixes.) Glad to hear IAA is on the case, though!

@himey reported elsewhere that in just the past few days, Amazon Music has quietly added support for Atmos over HDMI via Fire Stick and Cube.

@popshop: if you want help configuring VLC for Atmos mkv/mp4 playback, lemme know. It's mainly a matter of finding the "pass-through" option in the advanced settings. Windows TV & Movies is another option, although playlists are easier in VLC. Kodi also works with the proper settings ticked.

 

[fripppp]

Not sure why PG didn't also give it to Tidal.

Uhmm.. It was on Tidal just the other day, I just heard it there. I went to link it here and it's gone now.. weird..

 

[himey]

Uhmm.. It was on Tidal just the other day, I just heard it there. I went to link it here and it's gone now.. weird..

It was on this "new arrivals" playlist Monday...

 

[himey]

"Truly discrete channels" isn't really the right way to look at it, as the use of objects allows the mix to expand beyond even the number of speakers used in the studio it was created in. Steven Wilson uses a 7.1.4 setup, but some guitar parts in his Grateful Dead Atmos mixes appear partially in the wide speakers on a 9.1.x setup because he assigned them to objects positioned somewhere between the front & side channels.

The Dolby Atmos Renderer software used at the mixing stage is the same thing as that 'tiny chip' in our AVRs, allowing the mix to expand and contract based on the # of available speakers in one's setup. I guess I could understand the skepticism around this, but there's really no trickery involved - what you hear from the streaming services on speakers is absolutely the same as what they heard in the studio (albeit with less detail and some artifacts from the low bitrate). Take my word for it, I have the ADM masters for a number of albums to compare directly.

Post #3 here is helping me to understand it much more.

Simplified, objects are used like bed channels when streaming. The main disadvantage is that objects are usually at a lower bitrate, so rather than having 7 full bitrate channels for the bed, the bed is 5 channels, and objects are used to complete the layout.

 

[privateuniverse]

A video about the album's artwork:

 

[ted_b]

After posting a response to @César yesterday (and saying I'd listen again in the evening) I am slightly more in agreement that PG's vocals could be brought forward more. So I tried something rather easy, I lowered the sides/rears by 2 db and voila, the mix sounds much more balanced. This is a slippery slope, as one could probably do these kinds of tweaks on many surround and/or Atmos mixes...so I am kinda sorry I heard this.

 

[Tribby2001]

In regards to 7+(?) Atmos speakers, an ideal SACD 5.1 configuration recommends all speakers be identical. So how do you hang 48" tall tombstone sized speakers with 15" bass drivers from the ceiling?