Though I enjoy good sound, I don’t consider myself an audiophile in particular, primarily because a large number of people can’t really tell the difference between a lossless audio file and a compressed audio file and it requires super high end equipment. And the truth is: the problem with “fidelity” – is that the listener usually doesn’t know exactly what the original instrument or voice sounded like when it was being recorded. Unless you were in the studio or the venue where the performance took place and heard it acoustically (and not through a microphone and speakers) you can’t know how close to the original the reproduction is. Enter Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos.
Like it or not, it’s the future of music: It offers music lovers a more discernible and readily identifiable way of listening to music – everyone can visualise the Eagles and where each instrumentalist is sitting as they play Hotel California. In fact, in a special release on Spatial Audio as part of Apple Music in May 2021, it was announced that “Since launch, the number of monthly Spatial Audio listeners has more than tripled, with more than 80 percent of worldwide subscribers enjoying the experience, while monthly plays in Spatial Audio have grown by over 1,000 percent.”
Nearly two years on, all major label releases on Apple Music have a Spatial Audio mix available. Icing on cake, older releases continue to be released weekly and highlighted in the app. Last month, Augustman met with Zeke Keran aka Flightsch, a Singaporean hip hop R&B producer who found regional acclaim early on and built a name for himself in the Taiwanese hip hop and pop scene. Keran has developed top hip hop musicians like Yung Raja, and discovered Spatial Audio sometime in 2021 while he was A&R at Universal Music and looked to launching local singer Iman Fandi.
For Thai singer Earth Patravee, the eight year veteran found that producing music in Spatial was akin to not only producing a painting from her mind but also imbuing it with her exact emotions when she was producing it because spatial audio gave her the ability to portray layers of music and her voice differently.
Evan Low aka Evanturetime, who has engineered for the likes of David Foster, while also co-arranging and co-producing Singapore’s National Day Parade in 2022, likens the launch of Spatial Audio as an evolution of the technology and a new way of expressing one’s self. “Your standard AirPods are now able to support spatial audio and this sets a good precedent for the general public to adopt this format naturally without realising it,” he said. As a producer and song-writer he added that, “in the past, we had left and right speakers but humans perceive audio in a 360 space and this opens a new ground when it comes to creation because we can recreate an experience that was unprecedented in the past. This opens up a lot of avenues where artists can express narratives and change things up incredibly. I’m very salty that I could not get Taylor Swift tickets but if you had the support of Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio, you could listen to Tay-Tay via streaming service as if you where there in the middle of the audience. The analogy would be Category One tickets from the comfort of my own room in my pyjamas with a glass of wine. We couldn’t do that and now we can. Spatial Audio is a new canvas.”
Paints for a new canvas: Apple Logic Pro
Given the proliferation of amateur content creation and how a sizzling audio reel can make or break a reel or Instagram story, Logic Pro is yet another potent toolkit in an artist’s repertoire. “Logic Pro already has that support in binaural,” says Low, “and it took me a night before bed with headphones to translate that into Dolby Atmos for a Spatial Audio format. Jeff, our studio guy took a listen and with a few tweaks, we were done. It’s a myth that you need 11 speakers to get this done, all you need is a laptop and a pair of good headphones.”
The logic (no pun intended), is quite solid considering that most consumers use consumer products rather than have audiophile setups, hence, working on a pair of headphones makes more sense rather than translating the audio format with some highfalutin high tech setup.
Music stems are a type of audio file that breaks down a complete track into individual mixes. This allows you to control each of the particular mixes for your production and these tracks commonly include melody, instruments, bass, and drums. Conceivably, with these song stems, one could even remix their favourite oldie and reinterpret the track in a new way.
“You can even reimagine songs to create an effect of being played in a bigger room just by taking a track and delaying it a few milliseconds so it sounds perceptibly like the instrument was way in tieback of the room, simulating the size of space, it’s literally a way to revitalise old songs,” says Low.
In a single project, Apple Logic Pro can run up to a whopping 1,000 stereo audio tracks, 1,000 instrument tracks, and 1,000 auxiliary tracks, and use up to 12 sends per channel strip. Icing on cake, if you recently got a new MacBook Pro or iPad, the software is not only free but also the lifetime updates that continue as Apple persists on incremental tweaks on lesser machines.
Its new 3D Object Panner allows you to visualise and position special effects and instruments in graphical three-dimensional space, letting you create mixes with elevation control by moving objects in the soundscape around you. Furthermore, a Dolby Atmos rendering plug-in can visualise these objects in the mix and monitor in multi-channel mode, either using a discrete speaker system or even binaurally in standard studio headphones.
The app also includes eight Producer Packs originally introduced in GarageBand with royalty-free sounds from famous producers such as Take a Daytrip, Mark Ronson, and Oak Felder, plus slap house and modern ambient sound packs among other sounds—2,800 loops, 50 kits, and 120 instrument patches in all. You even get the original multitrack project of Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”.
Perhaps Zeke nails it best on the head, “Imagine if you’ve never heard about the internet and now you have to create for the internet.”
Essentially, the difficult lies in re-configuring our 2D audio space, an environment we’ve created it for most of our lives and now envisioning sound in all three dimensions. “I think essentially we are in an era of engagement where fans can relate to artists and I would love to add to that perspective. You could hear Dua Lipa singing right beside you. From a national day perspective, it would be incredible to listen to the anthem right in the middle of the national stadium,” continued Low. “A Dungeons & Dragons podcast where you be at the table where they’re playing and you can feel the dice sounds and the positional audio from each player will be insane. We’ve moved from mono to stereo to 5.1 format and now we have Spatial Audio, this is definitely the future.”
The possibilities are endless
For FlightSch, the potential for Spatial Audio is immeasurable. “We are in undiscovered lands right now. We need more minds in the game to be able to push everyone’s creativity. I can only figure out mixes as much as I know but we need to see what others are doing in order to expand its potential creatively,” says Zeke. “For example, experiencing live music in a spatial audio way requires us to figure out a way on how to do that and present it in an immersive virtual reality experience,” he explains.
Indeed, Spatial Audio does expand upon one of the bug bears of virtual reality which breaks the illusion of immersion: sound that doesn’t feel multi-directional. In the real world, you can hear someone creeping up beside you, on non-Spatial Audio enabled headphones, it’s more of a general “coming from the left or right” sensation. Coupled with Apple’s recently demonstrated Apple Vision Pro, this could be the game changer.
Earth is quite enthusiastic about her music being able to speak to the heart, “I won’t use it as an effect but I’ll use it to be closer to the audience. It allows me to whisper closely to the microphone and then sing further back as well. There’s an intimacy.”
“You can do so much more as artists and open a new chapter for music. Before the integration with Logic Pro, you needed proper technical knowledge. Now you can do it all with a click of the button, you can create a Spatial Audio session, it makes Dolby Atmos more accessible to the market,” agreed Zeke.
If they could remaster a song in Spatial Audio, which would they pick and why
“I would go for Michael Jackson’s Remember the Time. An R&B song fused with jack swing. Helps that it was a legendary short film also!” – Zeke
“I would do Adele’s latest album. I also like the song Stranger by nature. There are so many layers and chords, almost like an oldies Jazz song.” – Earth
“The cop out answer will be “Home”. It’s too minimal but if they did an orchestral revamp, it would be great. The national anthem done live would be epic to feel from a first person perspective and to be in the position of the singer. But right off the top of the head, Bohemian Rhapsody because its so choral and so big, with Freddie Mercury in my face and the band surrounding me.” – Evanturetime
HomePods: A new audio experience at home
Designed to work in harmony, the Apple’s new HomePods leverage advanced computational audio to deliver groundbreaking acoustics. The S7 chip is joined with software and system-sensing technology to offer even more advanced computational audio that maximises the full potential of its acoustic system for a groundbreaking listening experience: room sensing technology allows HomePod to recognise sound reflections from nearby surfaces to determine if it is against a wall or freestanding, and then adapts sound in real time.
Precise directional control of its beamforming array of five tweeters separates and beams direct and ambient audio, immersing listeners in crystal-clear vocals and rich instrumentation, making it perfect for Spatial Audio without requiring expensive 11 speaker set ups.
On its own, HomePod delivers immersive, captivating audio quality, with rich, deep bass and stunning high frequencies. A custom-engineered high-excursion woofer that drives the diaphragm a remarkable 20mm, a built-in bass-EQ mic, and beamforming array of five tweeters around the base all work together to achieve a powerful acoustic experience. Paired in stereo, each HomePod plays a channel in perfect harmony for a truly standout listening experience.
HomePod mini features an Apple-designed acoustic waveguide to direct the flow of sound down and out toward the bottom of the speaker for an immersive 360-degree audio experience. This allows customers to place HomePod mini almost anywhere in a room and hear consistent sound. To achieve big sound out of such a compact design, the Apple S5 chip in HomePod mini works with advanced software to analyse the unique characteristics of the music and apply complex tuning models to optimise volume, adjust the dynamic range, and control the movement of the driver and passive radiators in real time.
When placed in a large open-plan area, such as on a kitchen island, it sounds great with well-controlled bass, detailed highs and good mids, with excellent separation of tones. It sounds great with normal and spatial audio tracks, though it can sound a little clean and clinical. Two HomePods can be paired up for even wider sound. Spatial audio tracks can sound fantastic if the recording has been well produced.
Spatial Audio according to JBL: Tour Pro 2 & Tour One M2
While Apple patent filings suggest that the AirPods of the future might showcase “smart cases”, it appears Samsung owned JBL is first to the punch. Winners of the prestigious Red Dot Award for Product Design in 2023, the JBL Tour Pro 2 and JBL Tour One M2 not only feature user friendly designs but also pioneer a new era for audio technology.
Housed in the world’s first smart charging case, the Tour Pro 2 includes an exhaustive, well-rounded list of features: The 1.45” LED touch display controls music, receives calls, manages message notifications in real time without requiring you to interact with the brand’s smartphone app.
JBL’s adaptive noise-cancellation adjusts in real time based on the loudness of your environment strong thanks to its 6-mic design. Furthermore, users can optimise True Adaptive Noise Cancellation performance by taking the Ear Canal Test (in the dedicated JBL app) in a noisy environment and then enjoy signature sound provided via 10-millimeter drivers following the revered Harman response curve – an optimal sound signature that most people prefer.
Taking a call while commuting on public transport or running outdoors will also prove to be a seamless experience, thanks to new improved hardware and software optimisation. However, where it acquits itself admirably is Spatial Audio.
Spatial audio compatibility is one of the Tour Pro 2’s flagship features, adjustable via the JBL smartphone app and case to accommodate three different modes: Movie, Music and Games. Setting the Tour Pro 2 to Music before loading up Apple Music and looking for layers of instrumental interplay in something jazzy like Weaver of Dreams by Freddie Hubbard sees the technology working beautifully. We can hear Hubbard’s iconic trumpet on our left, with snare drums to our right and saxophone behind, making everything separated and distinct. R.E.M.’s Drive gets major credit as well: guitar to our left, bass overhead, harmonica to the right, Stipe himself even commented on his remaster in Dolby Atmos in 2017, “breathtaking,” he said.
But therein lies the conceit, spatial audio works when the stems have fidelity to the artist’s intentions. Many of Apple Music’s catalog passes muster, but it only takes a handful of bad tracks to ruin a good run when a once favourite tune comes across more like a digital filter than 3D audio.
On the Tour One M2 headphones, we couldn’t quite get spatial audio to function as well as the Tour Pro 2 earbuds: Spatial Audio ends up losing a lot of fidelity and it comes across more like an EQ preset or “3D virtualisation” on the soundstage than it does actual Dolby Atmos. Other factors like EQ and Personi-Fi — basically a hearing test that when completed, will personalise the sound based on your hearing. You can basically tune the sound signature to your ears — these play a role. Movement is well represented and it does its best to establish some discernible layers and separation but ultimately, where the Tour One M2 acquits itself is as an incredibly competent pair of stereo headphones: nice bass with balance and grace, with Personi-Fi turned on, you get a soupçon of more vibration from sub-bass details layered. For its price point, it has everything you could possibly want in a wireless headphone.
This story first appeared in Augustman Singapore.
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