There’s not much that Apple makes that I don’t own. Over the years I have invested tens of thousands of pounds in Apple Mac desktops and laptops. I bought an Apple TV when people said it was a stupid idea. I queued for the first iPhone, the second, and the third. I even had the original Motorola Phone that had iTunes built-in. I’ve owned every iPhone since. I’ve owned several Apple Watch models. I have their peripherals including a keyboard, mouse, and many other things. I use a lot of their applications too including Final Cut.
I’m also an early adopter, investing in Apple products way before others and sometimes before they’ve ironed out the kinks in later models.
If anyone deserves an Apple fanboy T-shirt then it’s me.
However, on Spatial Audio they’ve lost me. I think it sounds like sh*t.
Hold your horses some of you may be saying, it’s amazing, a technological marvel. I’m sure it is, but the results I have heard underwhelm me at best and annoy me at worst.
So what’s my problem with it?
Focus
First, it does exactly what many of these pseudo spatialisation technologies do to mixes. They smear them and remove focus, especially from things like the main vocal. Oddly enough at times it does the exact opposite and creates a very tight centre and things just disappear from the sound stage. So it’s also inconsistent.
For example, I recently decided to check out the new Tears for Fears album ‘Tipping Point’. As I started playing the excellent title track and a minute in I thought, what the hell is wrong with this mix? I’ve heard more clarity on tracks played through a PA in an empty stadium. I went into settings and saw that Dolby Atmos had been engaged automatically, which meant on my Apple device I was listening to an Apple Spatial Audio downmix. As soon as I turned it off, everything made sense again. If you are wondering if I was using the right playback device, I was using AirPods Pro. You would expect it to sound right through the device made by Apple to showcase their own technology.
This is no disrespect to those who mixed the track, as I say, in good old-fashioned stereo it sounds great. I’m not sure if this album was mixed in Dolby Atmos at the mixing stage or up-mixed at a later stage. Perhaps it was mixed in Atmos at source and sounds great in the studio, if that’s the case then the Apple translation is way out. Whatever it is, I’ll stick to stereo thanks.
Expert Edgar Rothermich talks in detail about some of the issues in his excellent article Why Your Atmos Mix Will Sound Different On Apple Music
I'll be frank, how Dolby ever allowed Apple Music to be associated with Atmos amazes me. Dolby Atmos is fantastic, it does deliver, but Spatial Audio, no thanks. It’s confusing for the end user who doesn’t spend days on websites like this where we understand the nuanced difference between Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio. Especially as Apple actually use the term Dolby Atmos in the settings of their god awful Music app.
I could write an entire book on how Apple managed to make possibly the worst music listening app in the history of music streaming. An app designed to help you find music seems to achieve the exact opposite. I leave that for another rant.
Of course, the record labels love another chance to release music they already own in a new format, it means that some people will buy music they already own just to hear it in a new format. However, that can only last so long before the buying public either gets bored, run out of money, or think, screw this.
Perhaps you think I’m being too cynical, but you don’t have to have lived on this planet for that long to have seen the rise and fall of numerous ‘next-generation’, ‘game-changing’ media formats to know how fickle the consumer is. Do you know anyone who still wants to buy a 3D TV or some Sting Albums mixed in QSound? Or take a look in the average junk room and you’ll see a set of surround speakers that used to be attached to the TV.
The Pain Of Change
Let me be clear this isn’t a ‘get off my lawn’ moment. I want the technology to work. I also understand that new formats take time to bed in. Go listen to early stereo mixes and some leave a lot to be desired. As time went on and people got used to what worked and didn’t work, we ended up with more desirable stereo mixes. I get that these things take time.
However, engineers and mixers are working with a moving target. Imagine putting weeks, often months into mixing an album and then hearing it sound nothing like you intended. Until Logic Pro 10.7.3, it was very difficult for mix engineers to preview how Apple’s Spatial Audio would handle their Dolby Atmos mixes, not all DAWs offer this. Audio professionals work hard to put the very best version of the music out, and Spatial Audio isn’t doing them any favours. It’s a real shame because Dolby’s binaural rendering of an Atmos mix does a much better job and gives us much more control over how the binaural mix will sound for the consumer listening on headphones. Unfortunately, Apple has chosen to do their own thing here with Spatial Audio, bypassing Dolby’s binaural render engine and metadata.
One can only hope things will improve and Apple will do a better job interpreting the intent of Dolby Atmos mixes with the end result. Maybe there’s some light at the end of the tunnel, as Apple has recently hired Ceri Thomas from Dolby, if anyone can help them sort this audio mess out, he can.
Will Apple Fix It?
One thing does concern me. Apple doesn’t always fix these things, they carry on doing it their own way. For example, in the world of video, many professionals avoid QuickTime in preference for third-party applications like VLC for video playback for similar reasons.
Perhaps Apple is hoping the average listener won’t know the difference, but I can’t imagine that is going to be the case. However, as I’ve already said, Apple has always claimed to be the champion of the creative, not the consumer. In this case, the creative community deserve better from Spatial Audio, until then I’ll stick to old-school stereo.
Discuss.