Apple Launches DJ Mixes in Spatial Audio on Apple Music

[Unregistered 4U]

That the volume is decreased significantly is very odd! This on a atmos AVR and 5.1.2…

Maybe the opposite of what they do for commercials. Psychoacoustically it sounds like the volume has increased when what’s happened is the audio has just been compressed into fewer bands. I can see how providing more “space” for the audio might might it sound quieter.

 

[ErikGrim]

One would assume these are "DJ Mixes" created entirely in a DAW? I don't know any live mixing setup that supports spatial audio.

 

[mjs916]

I keep trying it and then going back to turn it off. The volume is super low and I find myself needing to turn the volume almost to 90% to get decent sound. Some songs it sounds cool, but just not worth it right now. I’ve tried on AirPods Pro and AirPods Max and neither sounds good to me in atmos.

I’ve been thinking that as well. The volume when it is enabled is entirely too low.

 

[Boomish69]

I dont understand how people think this is a gimmick. The songs are mastered or remastered using Dolby Atmos software and sometimes in legit Dolby labs. Do a little research on how its done and how the tracks are placed in certain spacial locations to give it the surround sound.

I don't mean to offend but you should do some research, a true Atmos mix is not "Remastered or many done in Dolby Lab's, that's for R&D, the song individual components have to be mixed again, instead of panning left or right for stereo or panned between surround speakers, it's placed in a 3d environment that the Dolby software can then assign to whatever speakers is doing the playback. That's the really beauty of the system , the same files can playback on headphones are a huge Dolby Atmos cinema with tons of speakers. Trouble is it's currently not being done very well. It's very costly to setup a mix system and cheap alternatives using Logic are proving to be unreliable, added to this the streaming decoder used by Apple means the files sounds different on Apple Music as it does to Amazon. It's a right mess.
Additionally what the public & the marketers probably don't understand is reproduction of music in a 3d environment can cause big problems with phase cancellation, it's hard enough with stereo but in surround & Atmos it can cause tracks to sound thin and hollow if panned frequencies are out of phase, resulting in them canceling each other out.