Apple released Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos support on the same day as the WWDC21 keynote address. Whilst we have been reporting uncertainty regarding Apple’s binaural implementation, there are mixed reports coming out about the immersive audio experience on Apple Music. In this article, we explore some of the early concerns.

Before we get started, as we will be listening to a number of tracks in Dolby Atmos on Apple Music, let’s make sure that if you want to listen along with us then let’s make sure you are set up to listen in Dolby Atmos on your Apple Device.

What You Need To Listen To Dolby Atmos Tracks On Apple Music

Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones as long as they are fitted with an H1 or W1 chip. Note that the AirPods Pro didn’t launch with spatial audio support, but it should download and install the required firmware automatically.

You don't need a pair of Apple or Beats headphones in order to listen to Dolby Atmos tracks from an iPhone or iPad – any headphones will work, as long as you enable a specific setting.

Once you've got the iOS/iPadOS 14.6 update, and you have an Apple device that supports Dolby Atmos, if you go into Settings on your iPhone or iPad and then to Music, a new Dolby Atmos option will be available.

This is set to Automatic by default, which means Dolby Atmos tracks will play correctly when you're listening via any W1 or H1 enabled pair of Apple or Beats headphones like the AirPods Max, AirPods Pro or standard AirPods.

When you're using third-party headphones, you will need to switch this option to ‘Always On’, even these non-Apple headphones will then playback the Dolby Atmos tracks correctly.

Because this implementation of spatial audio is sound-only, there's no head-tracking involved, and that opens it up to more devices. For example, while the Apple TV can't output spatial audio to a pair of headphones, it will support Dolby Atmos tracks from Apple Music when connected to an Atmos-capable sound system.

In addition, Apple Music will automatically play Dolby Atmos tracks through the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Devices will need to be running at least iOS 14.6, iPadOS 14.6, macOS 11.4 or tvOS 14.6 or later to access the spatial audio with Dolby Atmos support.

Let’s Look At Some Examples Of Dolby Atmos Tracks On Apple Music

Just 2 days after Apple started rolling out Spatial Audio, Chris Welch from The Verge voiced mixed views about some of the spatial audio Dolby Atmos content that is already up on Apple Music. In their article Apple Music’s Spatial Audio Is Sometimes Amazing But Mostly Inconsistent, he said…

“At launch, it’s a very hit or miss experience... …Problem is, with much of the Dolby Atmos content on Apple Music I’ve sampled so far, it doesn’t seem like everyone is making those right calls. It’s a hit-or-miss game of exploration, and songs that truly showcase the immersive potential of Atmos are more often the exception than the rule. In many cases, spatial audio tracks have an artificial wideness to them, unfamiliar placement of vocals and instrumentation, and just sound… off. Distant? Too reverb-y? Pick your preferred interpretation. Yet, Apple is so confident in Apple Music’s spatial audio that essentially overnight it became the default for millions of customers listening with AirPods.”

Here are some of the tracks that Chris Welch has tried with his and my comments. Chris doesn’t say how he made his comparisons. I set my daughter’s iOS device to Dolby Atmos Always-On and recorded the analogue output into Pro Tools, I then bought the corresponding tracks on Apple’s Music Store and then imported them into Pro Tools synced them up and loudness matched them.

• “Don’t Know Why” by Norah Jones

  • CW: Close your eyes, and you could almost transport yourself to a small club where the spread of this mix feels like a live version of Jones’ career-making hit. Stereo doesn’t take you to the same place.

  • MT: I have to agree with Chris the Dolby Atmos mix does set you in a small club with Norah and the band playing live on the stage. The differences are subtle and yet somewhat significant at the same time. The most obvious difference for me was where Norah’s vocal was. In the stereo version, it was dry, tight and right in the middle of my head. On the Apple Music Atmos version, it was forward and in front of me with a sense of space, the whole track felt very natural and has more space. The Atmos mix was what it should be in my eyes, or should that be my ears, subtle, not overdone, not too dry and not too ambient, a mix that enabled me to lose myself in the performance.

• “Paparazzi” by Lady Gaga 

  • CW: With a very surround sound-esque mix (skip to the second verse at 1:23 for the best examples), this is a great example of an old pop hit with an excellent spatial audio treatment.

  • MT: This is another example of not overdoing the Atmos mix, even in a high-energy pop song, the Atmos mix on Apple Music has more space, the vocal is forward in the space and so no longer in the middle of my head. When it gets to the 2nd verse at 1:23, the panning of the various elements in the stereo mix feels much more natural in the Atmos mix. In the stereo mix they come across as a gimmick, like spikes in the mix that stab you between the ears, whereas in the Atmos mix they sound like they should, they have space around them and yet are part of the mix at the same time.

• “Follow Your Arrow” by Kacey Musgraves 

  • CW: Apple mentioned Musgraves as an artist to check out with Atmos. And while her most recent album Golden Hour sounds… fine… her breakthrough Same Trailer Different Park is pretty rough in spatial audio format. “Follow Your Arrow” seems to lose most of its background vocals, and even the main guitar melody is way quieter here than in the regular mix. It almost comes off like a demo recording.

  • MT: I would have to disagree with Chris about this track. For me, the Atmos mix on Apple Music is more polished, rather than like a demo. For me, these are two completely different mixes of the same track, with different elements featured in the two different mixes, rather than a good stereo mix and a bad Atmos mix. Chris is right that the backing vocals are buried in the Atmos track, but the guitar sounds so much better in the Atmos mix than it does in the stereo mix.

• “Alex Chilton” by The Replacements 

  • CW: Is that enough cowbell for you during the chorus? It overpowers everything else and makes me feel like I’m in the old Christopher Walken SNL skit, only with a different band.

  • MT: Now this is an example where the Atmos mix hasn’t worked on Apple Music, the vocal and guitars sound like they are in a cavern and are pushed back in the mix on the Atmos version. What this also means is that when the cowbell comes in it sticks out much more in the Atmos mix than it does in the stereo mix, even though it is at the same level in both mixes. What we don’t know is whether this is due to the Atmos mix or down to Apple’s own binaural rendering engine. Based on the other tracks, I would be much less inclined to point the finger at Apple’s binaural rendering

What about other’s thoughts and experiences. Next, we turn to Production Expert contributor Audrey Martinovich, whose interest in recording was sparked from her background as a classically trained singer who, through experimenting with recording voice lessons and performances, fell in love with engineering. She co-owns Audio for the Arts with her business partner, Buzz Kemper, where in addition to their acoustic music projects, they produce podcasts, radio shows, advertisements, and do post-production for film.

I listened to an Apple Music Spatial Audio pop hits playlist, which began with a stereo version of “Save Your Tears” by The Weeknd with a voice-over describing the differences to listen for, specifically how some synths would sound like they cascaded around the listener. With that particular song, the biggest difference I noticed right away was in the bass. Rather than being centered and focused, it seemed more diffused and spread out. I didn’t feel like any of the synths were cascading down around me, though.

After listening to a few other songs, it seems like the mixing approaches are pretty varied. One school of thought seems to be “place the singer as if they are the listener” which, to me, makes the vocals less punchy and less direct. In some songs, this vocal position almost sounded like there were phase issues attenuating the low mids resulting in a hollow-sounding vocal.

The other school of thought for mixing spatial audio seems to be “place the lead vocals in front of the listener”, which was my personal preference because I thought it maintained the clarity and presence in the vocal better. A mix that I’ve stumbled upon that I thought took advantage of what Dolby Atmos mixes can offer was “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals. The lead vocal was full and clear and feels like the singer is standing right in front of you with backup vocals positioned to the rear left and right of the listener.

As with most new technology, there will probably be a bit of experimenting before a “standard practice” emerges, but it is interesting to A/B a spatial audio mix with the stereo version and try to visualize what the mixer intended. You can do this by turning Spatial Audio on or off in the settings of a compatible device and navigating to “Music.”

Given that Apple announced Spatial Audio and Lossless Quality at the same time, I’m more excited about the Lossless update. I’ve never heard an mp3 that sounded better than the WAV, and right now the stereo versions of mixes are more consistently “better” than the Spatial Audio versions I heard.

Next, we turn to Production Expert contributor Nathaniel Reichmann who is a New York-based, Grammy-nominated producer and mixer, who has worked extensively in television, film, advertising, and classical music. He is lead mixer at Dubway Studios in NYC, a graduate of Bennington College, and an alumnus of the art school Fabrica in Italy and is already mixing tracks in Dolby Atmos. Nathaniel is already mixing tracks in Dolby Atmos and he uses Meric Halo Interfaces in his Dolby Atmos setup and you can read more about his journey into Dolby Atmos and how he used Metric Halo interfaces to create a Dolby Atmos monitor controller in our article Using Metric Halo Interfaces To Create A Low Cost Dolby Atmos Monitor Controller…

Last November, I signed up for TIDAL and installed an Apple TV 4K and an Atmos home theater receiver in my 7.1.4 studio. Nearly every night for a week afterwards I would slip away to the studio after dinner, dim the lights, find a glass of wine and explore.

Because no one was vaccinated yet I couldn’t invite friends or colleagues over, and trying to talk about it on social media was ridiculous. I felt like a kid in a candy store. Albums from artists I’d never heard of sounded amazing, and filled the room with an extraordinary sound. Some major artists on big labels had awful-sounding albums that made me dive for the remote control. It was absolutely hit or miss.

My teenage boys visited the studio and were captivated by the experience. One of them pointed to Apple Music on the Mac and said, “Can we hear all the songs like this?” I own Halo 3d, and had in fact patched the stereo output of Apple Music into my system when the children weren’t there. Like all upmixing algorithms, the experience was disappointing. Interesting as a tool, but a far cry from an original, properly-made Atmos mix. I told my son, “No. Looks like there are only a few hundred albums that sound like this.”

After a while, we would cue up the same album in Atmos and stereo, gain-match the levels, and then switch back and forth. It made us all laugh because the version we were all so accustomed to, stereo, sounded claustrophobic and boxy by comparison. And it wasn’t just the claustrophobia, it was also dynamics. Atmos mixes were made in calibrated rooms without a ton of limiting, so when the drums came in, or when a brass section went for double-forte, it was big and powerful and exciting. Even dance music, which is known for heavy limiting, sounded cooler with a high dynamic range.

Not having an Android device, I couldn’t listen to TIDAL in binaural. And as an Atmos mixer myself, I’d never been that thrilled with the binaural sound coming out of the Dolby Atmos Production Suite. So I will admit that I had turned up my nose to the binaural music experience.

While preparing an album for distribution on Apple Music, a very generous and thoughtful Dolby executive reached out to me and encouraged me to refine the binaural mix parameters in my ADM files. He was right. If I put a bit more effort into what worked and didn’t work in binaural, I could find that happy place in the Venn diagram where the loudspeaker mix was great, and so was the binaural.

I set up my DAW so I could switch between straight stereo and binaural quickly, and found that in some cases, I was making a better-sounding binaural mix in headphones than my finished stereo mix in headphones. That was a surprise.

A couple of months later, I found myself on the couch with Apple Music, my favorite pair of Grado headphones and my iPhone, toggling back and forth between the stereo and Atmos binaural mixes of St. Vincent’s outrageous new album Daddy’s Home. While it’s not my genre of music, the binaural mix of that album is hands-down better than the straight stereo. No contest. It’s funnier, more exciting, sexier. And on loudspeakers…? A hundred times more fun.

If the popular press is panning some immersive albums and praising others, they’re right. It’s not good just because it’s “immersive.” Immersive is a big new canvas, with a host of production pitfalls that I and my colleagues have fallen into (and climbed out of in most cases, I hope!).

Don’t blame the technology. Dolby worked really hard on the construction of this canvas. Now it’s our job to learn how to paint on it.

For me, the loudspeaker experience on Apple Music and TIDAL is very similar in sound. Some outstanding Atmos albums from my late-night listening sessions include Deutsche Grammaphon’s Albrecht Mayer: Mozart, Nidarosdomens Jentekor’s Magnificat (Morten Lindberg’s stellar work), Steven Wilson’s The Future Bites, Fantastic Negrito’s Have You Lost Your Mind Yet, Booka Shade’s Dear Future Self, Rhye’s Home, and my Best New Artist of 2020 pick: Pink Sweat$’ Pink Planet. I produced John Luther Adams’ Become Trilogy and mixed it in Dolby Atmos. Very pleased to have it out on Apple Music. Special thanks must go to Cantaloupe Music, Naxos, and everyone at Dolby for helping with this major release.

In Conclusion

For me, listening to these tracks, and others, the stereo mixes come across as one-dimensional, like a picture on a piece of paper. The Dolby Atmos mixes are like taking that flat image and opening it out like can happen with those 3D greetings cards, the 2D picture opens out and there is space between the parts, is a 3D picture in sound.

That said, I got very little sense of sound coming from behind me, that you get when listening to Dolby Atmos on a 7.1.4 speaker system, so Apple’s term of ‘Spatial Audio’ is much more appropriate when listening to Dolby Atmos through Apple’s binaural renderer.

For me, the takeaway from this is that finally, we have a delivery system where the mixes that have been optimised for headphones, which is a medium, that whether we like it or not, is being used more and more to listen to music.

More To Come

Rest assured we are working on more content to help those of you planning to mix music in Dolby Atmos for Apple Music’s Spatial Audio format.